[1] He entered the foreign service and held posts in Paris and Stockholm before entering the House of Commons in 1841 as a member of parliament for South Durham, which seat he held until 1859,[1][2] when he switched to Hastings, which he represented until his accession to the dukedom and elevation to the House of Lords on the death of his brother on 6 September 1864.

[5] During the crisis which led to the collapse in 1866 of Lord Russell's second ministry over the question of parliamentary reform, he was considered a possible compromise prime minister in a Whig-Conservative anti-reform coalition government, but such plans came to nothing.

[6] In 1867 he served as treasurer of the Salop Infirmary in Shrewsbury,[7] and in 1885 financed the rebuilding of the parish church at Uppington, Shropshire where part of his estates were.

[9] At Chevening on 2 August 1854, Vane married Lady Dalmeny (1819–1901), the daughter of Philip Henry Stanhope, 4th Earl Stanhope and widow of Archibald Primrose, Lord Dalmeny, by whom she was the mother of Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, who was seven years old at that time.

In 1891 the Committee for Privileges and Conduct of the House of Lords declared the title of Duke of Cleveland extinct but declared Henry Vane to be the rightful heir of the title Baron Barnard and to the estates of Raby Castle and Barnard Castle, which latter had been purchased in 1626 by the Vane family.