FANE, Vere (1678-99)

Le Despenser succeeded to the earldom of Westmorland following the early death of his father. The family owned lands in several counties, with the principal holdings divided between Kent and Northampton, but at the 4th earl’s death the estate was encumbered with debts. TNA, C33/299, f. 130. Recommended to the care of the king, Westmorland replaced Thomas Wentworth, Baron Raby (later earl of Strafford), as an officer in the Life Guards and was present in the king’s train when he met Tsar Peter at Utrecht in 1697. Add. 34223, f. 7; Luttrell, Brief Relation, iv. 253, 274. The following year Westmorland was chosen to accompany Hans Willem Bentinck, earl of Portland, to Holland. HMC Hastings, ii. 303; Luttrell, Brief Relation, iv. 330. There, Westmorland was entered at the academy at the Hague, where he rapidly gained the king’s favour. The dowager Lady Westmorland hoped that her popular son would restore the family’s woeful financial condition through promotion at court, but in May 1699 Westmorland fell sick and died just days short of his twenty-first birthday, reputedly of a fever caught at a ball hosted by the Princess of Denmark (the future Queen Anne). His premature death stalled his mother’s hopes of an early revival of the family’s fortunes and catapulted his younger brother, Thomas Fane, then serving as a volunteer aboard the Resolution, into prominence as 6th earl of Westmorland. Add. 34223, f. 8.