A STORY today of bed and bawd, of infidelity and of goings on in very high places, of high birth and low morals and of taking the lord's name in Vane.

Far from sensational, it is merely proof - were ever it needed - that there is nothing new under the sun.

Two weeks ago, it may be recalled, the column recorded that while passing a pint in the pub outside Preston railway station we chanced upon a sad but charming old song about Lord and Lady Barnard and about the unfortunate Little Musgrave, who not only got his wicked way with her ladyship but got his comeuppance, an' all.

The Barnards, whose family name is Vane, have long been masters of Raby Castle in County Durham and of much else besides. A kindly reader now suggests we uncover more of the perhaps homonymic Frances Hawes, formally known as Viscountess Vane and less deferentially as Lady Fanny.

"It's riveting stuff," she promises, and if the story of Little Musgrave sings of a medieval Lady Chatterley, then the Dictionary of National Biography on Lady Fanny reads like an 18th century News of the World.

M'LADY Hawes, said to be a woman of striking beauty but of little or no dowry, was 19 when she married Lord William, son of the Duke of Hamilton.

Hamilton was pretty much on his aristocratic uppers, too. Queen Caroline called them the handsome beggars.

After two years of marriage, Lord William died. Ten months later, Lady Fanny married the second Viscount Vane, whose large inherited fortune was mainly from estates in the Newcastle area.

Lady Vane, throughout their long marriage, expressed an "exaggerated abhorrence" for her husband; his lordship had "a doting fondness for his wife which led him to ignore her most flagrant peccadilloes".

It was perhaps just as well.

AS early as January 1737, barely 18 months after their marriage, poor Vane was obliged to advertise in the popular prints for the "recovery" of his wife. For the next 30 years, notes the DoNB, her escapades were frequent and costly.

Regarded as the finest minuet dancer in England - "and as extravagant as the most capricious of danseuses" - her ladyship stepped lightly around her wedding vows, entertaining house guests by ridiculing her husband.

The parties were long and lascivious, Frances frequently obliged to sell her furniture to pay her gambling debts.

In 1751 she wrote "Memoirs of a lady of Quality", said to be a thinly disguised account of her own lavish love life, obliging Tobias Smollett to include it as chapter 81 in Peregrine Pickle, thus adding spice to an already salacious novel.

Fortunately for the viscount, who had qualities of his own and steadfastly refused to divorce his wife, she spent her last 20 years in bed - nothing new there, then - reading the thoughts of Lord Chesterfield.

"The testimony to her beauty," adds the DoNB, "is as strong as the fact that she remained to the last a stranger to the veriest rudiments of good feeling."

LORD Chesterfield was originally a Stanhope, though whether in any way linked to the genteel Weardale town of that name is too long and tenuous to unravel.

Best remembered for his Letters to his Son - "Wear your learning like your watch, in a private pocket" - he also observed of sex that its pleasures were momentary, its position ridiculous and its expense damnable.

Whether the poor, poorly Viscountess agreed is unknown. Her ladyship was obliged to take it lying down.

FRANCES Hawes, in truth, was but a distant relation in these Vane glorious pursuits. Anne Vane, maid of (rather dubious) honour to Queen Caroline and mistress of Frederick, Prince of Wales, lay much closer to home.

Anne (1705-36) was daughter of the second Lord Barnard of Raby Castle and sister of the Earl of Darlington. In 1732, she gave birth to a son.

"She lay in with little mystery at St James Palace," says the Dictionary of National Biography, "yet it was doubtful whether the prince was the parent."

Both Lord Hervey and Lord Harrington had also confided in Sir Robert Walpole, the prime minister, that they believed themselves to have pram pushing rights. "Anne was nothing if not popular," says our esteemed card marker, joyously.

The child died in infancy, his mother a few weeks later. She was known as the Honourable Mrs Vane, though quite why no-one has ever been certain.

Sadly, there are no pictures of Anne or of Lady Fanny. Another of Raby Castle, quite striking itself, will probably have to suffice.

LORD be, there's more. Little Musgrave, he who bedded a Barnard and slept forever thereafter, is believed to have been the Earl of Westmoreland. Even now, we hear, Lord Barnard's special guests are given a copy of the "Handbook to Raby Castle", written long ago by the fourth and last Duchess of Cleveland.

She'd been a Stanhope, too, which seems very confusing, and was the mother of Lord Roseberry, who became prime minister. Goodness knows what they all did about Christmas cards.

The book, at any rate, includes Robert Surtees's poem on Langley Dale, where an old tower was said to be the home of Westmoreland's mistress - "a nobleman who, from more than one account, appears to have been of a very amorous disposition".

The tower near Staindrop, now known as the Old Lodge, is home to Henry Vane, Lord Barnard's son.

Surtees's poem began:

As I once Raby Park did pass

I heard a fair maid weep and wail,

The chiefest of her song it was

Farewell the sweets of Langley Dale.

Westmoreland is also said to have acted irreligiously with the parson's wife and to have "amused himself" with Lady Kirkcaldy. It's probably what happens when mixing with the county set.

...and finally, since other matters will have to lie sleeping until next week, a note on what happened as we travelled south down the A1, just north of Bradbury in County Durham, at 1.45pm on Bank Holiday Monday.

The female driver 100 yards ahead seemed suddenly to lose control, careered at 70mph across the carriageway and down a steep and grassy embankment, smashed through a wooden fence, wrecked another 50 yards of fencing and finally stopped, still upright, in a field.

Though shocked, the driver and her passenger appeared otherwise to be unscathed.

The papers tend only to report the really serious accidents. How many more are avoided by the remarkable construction of the modern motor car?

Like those two remarkably lucky ladies, we hope next week once more to live to tell the tale.

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Published: ??/??/2004