Born in Courteenhall, Northamptonshire to a family with a good name but little wealth, Richard Lane received his early education in the prestigious Westminster School, London and then Trinity College, Cambridge before being accepted to the Middle Temple Inn of Law in London. There he rose on merit from student to Master of the Bench, ultimately becoming a senior professor and overall administrator of Middle Temple. Remarkably, Lane had dual careers, serving as the Recorder (a special judge) of his home town of Northampton at the same time. But as tensions between parliament and the king escalated toward Civil War in the early 1640’s, Lane (a firm royalist) was called into the service of King Charles I. That fateful service would ultimately carry Lane into the highest office in the monarchy a non-royal can hold. But it would also cause a victorious and vengeful parliament to confiscate his home and property, and to send him into an exile from which he would never return.

• Origins of the Lost Lord Keeper Project
• Sir Richard Lane’s Early Life and Career
• Sir Richard Lane and the Civil War
• Sir Richard Lane’s Exile And Lost Grave
• The Great Seal of England
• The 1657 “Lane’s Reports” Book
• A Man Without a Face: The Lost Portrait of Sir Richard Lane
• Sir Richard Lane’s Family and Lineage
• The Trail of Strafford: Harbinger of the coming Civil War
• The Uxbridge Treaty House