Henry Ralph Fletcher-Vane was born on 13 January 1830, educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford, and succeeded his father to the baronetcy in 1842 at the tender age of 12.

[3] In 1852 it was rumoured that Sir Henry was amorously involved with Isabella Henrietta Theodora Long, the granddaughter of Horatio Walpole, 2nd Earl of Orford:[5] It is stated that a marriage is on the tapis between Sir Harry Vane, Bart., of Hutton hall and Armathwaite, Cumberland, and Isabella Henrietta Theodora, youngest daughter of Henry Lawes Long, Esq., of Hampton Lodge, Surrey, and the Lady Catherine Long.In 1871, at the age of 41, Sir Henry married Margaret Maxwell Gladstone at Glencairn in Dumfries, Scotland.

In 1835, Thomas and two of his brothers, Robert and William, became the trustees and executors of their father's will and guardians of their younger siblings.

Ironically, Sir Henry may have met his wife through the introduction of Frederick Henry-Vane, who had been at Eton with William Ewart Gladstone.

The two were honourable gentlemen, my father and my cousin, [and] would never have come to legal blows had they not been egged on by their respective solicitors, both of whom eventually committed suicide after it having been proved that they had defrauded widows and orphans".

On Bushey Heath they were attacked by highwaymen, he shot one of them, the others flying-but the result of this shock caused premature confinement, which happened at the house of a doctor at Watford.The above account is not corroborated by any of the extant law reports of the trial.

[11] Debrett's Baronetage of 1905 states Sir Henry's seats as Hutton in the Forest and Scarness Cottage in Bassenthwaite.

[16] The litigation challenging Sir Henry Ralph Vane's legitimacy to the Hutton estates was conducted in the 1870s and was prosecuted by Francis's father.

Certainly, the literature of Hutton in the Forest makes no mention of Sir Francis Patrick Fletcher-Vane, 5th Baronet.

Sir Francis Fletcher-Vane did survive the Dowager Lady Vane (widow of the 4th Baronet), who died at Scarness Cottage in Bassenthwaite in 1916, and he survived Major-General Frederick Drummond Vincent Wing CB, who was killed in action during the First World War in 1915.