Imagine being a teenager entrusted with top-secret government intelligence and embarking on state-sponsored travels beyond your homeland. This was the reality for Henry Vane the younger (1613-1662), an aristocratic English sixteen-year-old who would eventually become a politician, a theologian, and the sixth governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.[1] Held today at Santa Clara University’s Archives & Special Collections (and pictured above), a parchment letter created in 1629 provides a fascinating look into Vane’s first voyage beyond England and which set him on a lifelong journey of religious controversy and political engagement.[2]
Signed by King Charles I (faintly, at the very top), this official document grants the young and socially privileged Vane permission to travel beyond England and into the European Continent. Addressing any admirals, captains, and representatives of the law that Vane might encounter during his voyage, the letter clarifies that Vane has the right “to passe out of this our Realme into the parts beyond the Seas,” and specifically “for the space of three yeares.” Vane did not embark on his travels alone, for the letter also mentions “Andre Trunchen, and Gameliel hawkings his Servants”; we also learn that the young man carried with him fifty pounds and other necessaries for his journey. These costs added up; apparently, Vane’s father (also named Henry) wrote that “I have bred my eldest son and six others beyond seas, which has been very chargeable to me” – that is, burdensome and financially costly.[3]
Vane’s travel authorization had some strings attached, however. After all, his journey was state business. The letter stipulates that the young man must not
haunt or resort into the Territories or domynions of any forraine Prince or Potentate, not being wth in league or Amity, nor yet wittingly keepe Company wth any person or psons departed out of this our Realme wthout our license, or that contrary to the same, doe yet remaine on the otherside of the Seas; And that he vse not the Company of any Iesuite, Seminary, preist, or otherwise evill affected pson to our State.
Clearly, there were limits to where Vane could travel and with whom he could associate. Strictly off-limits are foreign rulers opposed to the English crown (lacking “Amity” with Charles), Englishmen who have gone abroad without permission or overstaying their voyage’s agreed-upon terms, or religious clergy supposedly inimical to the English people. This, significantly, includes Jesuits, and it is most likely for this mention of the Society of Jesus that Vane’s travel permit was selected for SCU’s library collections. (Brief summaries about SCU’s Jesuitica and Jesuits in Fiction collections can be found on the department website.) Less than a decade before Vane’s birth, in 1605, a Catholic plot to blow up the English Parliament set all of London on edge, and the English Jesuit Henry Garnet was known to have something to do with it.[4] Surely Vane should avoid these sorts of “evill affected” characters, suggests this official document.
What we see in this letter offers a first look into the travels that would come to define Vane’s career in theology and politics. Once on the Continent, Vane traveled through major Protestant intellectual centers of France, Switzerland, and the Netherlands, where he studied. By 1631 he had reached Vienna, for some of his letters from his journeys survive; interestingly, they are written in French and cipher, a kind of secret code, and treat of politics in Europe. Vane returned to England briefly after the interval specified in this travel permit, where he was commended for his “Great improvement”; the same account states that “his French [is] good, his discourse discreet, his fashion comely and fair.”[5] Perhaps “Andre Trunchen,” the servant mentioned in the royal travel permit, was a Frenchman entrusted with the young Henry’s linguistic cultivation. Only four years prior, after all, the eminent scholar Francis Bacon recommended “That Young Men trauaile vnder some Tutor, or graue Seruant . . . So that he be such a one, that hath the Language, and hath been in the Country before.”[6] In spite of Vane’s evident “improvement,” religious disputes caused him to voyage to North America, where – at only twenty-three – he became the sixth Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. This position suited Vane’s puritan beliefs, which conflicted with those of his father and the Caroline court.
Vane’s tenure as colonial governor was fraught with religious, political, and military difficulties. His support for the establishment of Rhode Island and his friendship with the Narragansett advocate Roger Williams made him out to be a somewhat equitable figure. At the same time, Vane’s support for the religious reformer Anne Hutchinson alienated many would-be allies, and he also authorized a military campaign to eliminate the Pequot tribe in present-day Connecticut. As Michael Winship has discussed, Vane was generally skeptical of clerical power, and radicalist tendencies manifested in his dealings both in New England and during his return to England.[7] The statesman’s participation in religious and political reform in England helped strengthen the English Commonwealth, a project led by Oliver Cromwell, and his involvement with the Commonwealth ultimately resulted in his execution after the Restoration in 1662. (Vane’s activity during the Interregnum is a lengthy and complex subject, and this brief account only scratches the surface.)
Vane’s travel permit is written in
an elegant secretary hand, a type of early English handwriting that is
difficult for the modern reader to decipher. I’ve prepared a near-complete
transcription for anyone curious about the details of its contents. At 390
years old, this unique document attests to the early stages in the life of one
of seventeenth-century England’s most interesting political reformers, a figure
who made his name and attracted trenchant criticism in both Europe and North
America.
[1] For an overview of Vane’s life and for further reading, see Ruth E. Mayers, “Sir Henry Vane the younger (1613-1662),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004).
[2] DA397.C4 Env. Sec.A, Archives and Special Collections, Santa Clara University.
[3] Charles Dalton, History of the Wrays of Glentworth, 1523-1852, vol. 2 (Aberdeen, 1881), 112.
[4] An account of this episode and its tumultuous fallout appears in James Shapiro, The Year of Lear: Shakespeare in 1606 (New York, 2015), 119-34.
[5] Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, Volume 5: 1631-1633, ed. John Bruce (Nedeln, 1967), 294.
[6] Francis Bacon, “Of Trauaile,” in The essayes or councells, ciuill and morall (London, 1625), sig. O2v.
[7] Michael Winship, Making Heretics: Militant Protestantism and Free Grace in Massachusetts, 1636-1641 (Princeton, 2002), 245.