FLETCHER VANE, Sir Frederick, 2nd Bt. (1760-1832), of Hutton Hall and Armathwaite, Cumb.

Vane, who succeeded to his father’s baronetcy less than a month after its creation, replaced his kinsman Viscount Barnard at Winchelsea when he was called to the Upper House as 3rd Earl of Darlington in 1792. He was excused from attending the House on 4 Mar. 1793 ‘on account of the ill state of his health’,CJ, xlviii. 318. and voted once with the Foxite Whigs on the amendment to the address, 21 Jan. 1794, before vacating in favour of John Hiley Addington in February. It is not clear whether Darlington, from whom Vane differed in politics, had intended him merely as a stopgap or whether he had by this time lost control of the seat to Richard Barwell.

In 1796 Vane replaced Wilson Braddyll as the partner of John Christian Curwen in the anti-Lowther interest at Carlisle, where he survived a long and expensive contest and a petition against his return. Having been proposed by Fox, he was elected to Brooks’s on 30 Oct. 1796,Memorials of Brooks’s, 50. voted four times with the Whigs before the secession, and joined the Whig Club on 11 Apr. 1797. He did not vote for Grey’s motion for parliamentary reform, 26 May 1797, having on 1 May taken sick leave. He opposed assessed taxes, 4 Jan. 1798, and supported Grey’s motion for inquiry into the state of the nation, 25 Mar. 1801. He lost his seat at Carlisle in 1802, when a compromise to share the representation of the borough was agreed with Lord Lowther, but Darlington, whose politics were now those of Vane, returned him for Winchelsea, which he had repurchased, in 1806. Vane supported Brand’s motion, 9 Apr. 1807, but retired in favour of Sir Oswald Mosley shortly after the general election of 1807. His only recorded contribution to debate was to move for the postponement of a petition concerning Darlington’s borough of Tregony on 13 Jan. 1807.

Vane, who was one of Brougham’s ‘stoutest supporters’ in his attack on the Lowthers in Westmorland in 1818, unsuccessfully stood against the Lowther interest at Cockermouth and was only restrained by Brougham from supporting Curwen against Viscount Morpeth in Cumberland. He signed the requisition for a Cumberland county meeting in October 1819 to consider Peterloo and wrote to Brougham on 30 Sept.:

I made this addition opposite my name, ‘and also to consider of the necessity of a reform in Parliament’. If that question is not brought forward, it might appear that a change of ministers was our only object, but I suppose most of us will be of opinion that no change can be of much use without a reform in the borough system.Add. 51561, Brougham to Holland, 28 June; 51565, same to Lady Holland, 25 June 1818; Brougham mss 27490.

He died in March 1832.