All the defence which Vane could make was fruitless. The court,
considering more the general opinion of his active guilt in the
beginning and prosecution of the civil wars, than the articles of
treason charged against him, took advantage of the letter of the
law, and brought him in guilty. His courage deserted him not upon his
condemnation. Though timid by nature, the persuasion of a just cause
supported him against the terrors of death, while his enthusiasm,
excited by the prospect of glory, embellished the conclusion of a life,
which through the whole course of it, had been so much disfigured by the
prevalence of that principle. Lest pity for a courageous sufferer
should make impression on the populace, drummers were placed under the
scaffold, whose noise, as he began to launch out in reflections on the
government, drowned his voice, and admonished him to temper the ardor of
his zeal. He was not astonished at this unexpected incident. In all
his behavior there appeared a firm and animated intrepidity; and he
considered death but as a passage to that eternal felicity which he
believed to be prepared for him.
This man, so celebrated for his parliamentary talents, and for his
capacity in business, has left some writings behind him: they treat, all
of them, of religious subjects, and are absolutely unintelligible: no
traces of eloquence, or even of common sense, appear in them.
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