Lane, Sir Richard

, knt. lord chief baron of the exchequer, was born in the latter part of the sixteenth century, and was the son of Richard Lane of Courtenhall in Northamptonshire, by Elizabeth his wife, daughter of Clement Vincent of Harpole, in the same county. He studied law in the Middle Temple, with great success, and being called to the bar, became eminent in his profession. In the 5th Charles I. he was elected Lent reader of his inn, but the plague which broke out about that time, prevented his reading. In 1640 he was counsel for the unhappy earl of Strafford; and soon after was made attorney to prince Charles. As the Long-parliament grew more capricious and tyrannical in its proceedings, he began to be alarmed for his property, and entrusted his intimate friend Buistrode Whitlocke, with his chamber in the Middle Temple, his goods and library; and leaving London, joined the king at Oxford, where, in 1643, he was made serjeant at law, lord chief baron of the exchequer, a knight, and one of his majesty’s privy council. The university also conferred on him the degree of LL. D. “with more,” says Wood, “than ordinary ceremony.” In the latter end of the following year, he was nominated one of his majesty’s commissioners to treat of peace with the parliament at Uxbridge, and on Aug. 30, 1645, he had the great seal delivered to him at Oxford, on the death of Edward lord Littleton. In May and June 1646, he was one of the | commissioners appointed to treat with the parliament for the surrender of the garrison of Oxford, apd soon alter went abroad to avoid the general persecution of the royalists which the parliament meditated. He died in the island of Jersey in 1650, or 1651, Wood tells a strange story of the fate of the goods he entrusted to Whitlocke. He says, that during sir Richard’s residence abroad, lm son applied to Whitlocke, who would not own that he knew such a man as sir Richard, and kept the goods. That this story is not without foundation, appears from Whitlocke’s receipt for his pension, &c. printed by Peck, to which he adds, “And I have likewise obtained some bookes and manuscripts, which were the lord Littleton’s; and some few bookes and manuscripts, which were sir Richard Lane’s; in all worth about So/.” Sir Richard Lane’s “Reports in the court of Exchequer in the reign of king James,” were published in 1657, folio. ¹