SLANNING, Sir Nicholas (?1606-43), of Hele, Bickleigh, Devon.

The Slannings were a family anciently settled in Devon, at Ley in the parish of Plympton St Mary. They were beneficiaries of the dissolution of Plympton priory and Buckland abbey; Nicholas Slanning, great-great grandfather of our MP, acquired manors in the hinterland of Plymouth and by so doing raised the family into the ranks of the gentry. His son, also Nicholas Slanning†, was town clerk, coroner and mayor of Plymouth and sat for that town in the Parliaments of 1558 and 1559.26HP Commons 1558-1603. The nephew of the Tudor MP, another Nicholas, was described by a contemporary as ‘a worshipful esquire and a proper gentleman, of goodly living and deserved credit’, but in June 1599 was killed by Sir John Fitz in a swordfight on the open road after a dinner in Tavistock.27The Bloudie Booke (1605), sig. A3ii. The victim’s sudden death was the outcome of an honour dispute: Fitz had boasted during the dinner that his lands were held only of the queen, to be corrected by Slanning who reminded him in front of the company of land transactions between the two of them that made Fitz a mere tenant.28Plymouth and W. Devon RO, 70/113; The Bloudie Booke, sig. A3ii-iv. Slanning left a ten-year old son, Gamaliel, father of the subject of this biography. Gamaliel’s marriage to his second cousin, Margaret Marler, whose mother was the daughter of the former Member for Plymouth, reunited the two branches of the Slannings and consolidated their estates. Gamaliel died in 1612, and the subsequent inquisition post mortem provides us with the date of Nicholas’s birth. The authority of this date needs to be treated with some caution, however, as another IPM, held in 1634 after the death of Gamaliel’s younger brother, provides a date for Nicholas’s birth some six years earlier than that given by the inquisition of 1612.29Jones, ‘The Slannings’, 459.

John Prince, in his Worthies of Devon, asserts that Slanning attended Oxford University, although no college affiliation has been found. Slanning was said to be ‘well skilled in that pleasant and useful kind of philosophy called mechanical or experimental’, and to have acquired martial skills in the Low Countries, ‘the great academy of arms’. By these means, he was set up in a range of accomplishments, ‘able to attend as well the crucible as the gun’.30Prince, Worthies (1701), 567. The only verifiable record of his education is that of his admission to the Inner Temple in 1628. More important to his future career than any of his early achievements was Slanning’s marriage in 1625 to the daughter of Sir James Bagg†, the egregious office-holder and vice-admiral of the southern parts of Cornwall. Bagg was a loyal servant of the lord high admiral, George Villiers, 1st duke of Buckingham, and through this avenue of patronage Slanning was able in due course to acquire office himself. The marriage to Gertrude Bagg also almost in itself accounts for Slanning’s allegiance to the crown.

The first record of Slanning’s employment in the service of the king comes in April 1628 when Bagg nominated him as an assistant to James Hay, 1st earl of Carlisle, in the earl’s diplomatic mission to secure an anti-French alliance in Europe.31CSP Dom. 1628-9, pp. 84-5. Slanning’s knighthood in 1632 was probably intended as a reward for Bagg’s many years of service to the king, not to mention his extensive personal outlay in the interests of the monarchy. In April 1635, Slanning was appointed captain of the important fort of Pendennis, which guarded Falmouth harbour, and from there over the next few years he kept the government informed of marauding Turkish warships, the movements of Dutch shipping in the south west and progress in the negotiations between William Rainborowe* and the king of Morocco.32CSP Dom. 1635, pp. 389, 442, 612; 1636-7, pp. 134, 163, 207; 1637, pp. 337, 430. With Bagg and the corporation of Plymouth, Slanning petitioned for the repair of Catwater harbour in Plymouth, and he was named to the commission of the peace in Devon as well as Cornwall, so that his influence continued in both counties of the south west peninsula.33CSP Dom. 1635-6, p. 65. Slanning’s rise in local importance continued after Bagg’s death in August 1638. Algernon Percy†, 4th earl of Northumberland, Buckingham’s successor as lord high admiral, appointed him to fill Bagg’s own office of vice-admiral, and in February 1639 Slanning was paid £300 for unspecified services to the king.34CSP Dom. 1638-9, p. 502. This was probably connected to his part in the army sent to the north of England to confront the Scots. Slanning shipped a regiment of 100 men to Workington, and he himself seems to have gone to guard the town of Carlisle. Despite disagreements among the Cornish gentry over the competing demands on manpower in their county – the harvest and the tin mines needed men as much if not more than the king’s army in the north – Slanning continued an energetic and loyal servant of the king, and was selected for service in the king’s bodyguard.35CSP Dom. 1638-9, pp. 502, 580-1; 1639, p. 37; 1640, pp. 372, 458; Granville, Hist. Granville Fam. 219.

Slanning’s growing prominence in the military counsels of the king in the south west was not matched by enhancement of his landed wealth. Both his father and grandfather had died leaving heirs who were minors and therefore subject to wardship.36Plymouth and W. Devon RO, 70/300, 301, 313, 313a; Coventry Docquets, 348. The debts of Nicholas’s grandfather were scheduled in 1621, and as early as 1633 Slanning was granted licence to alienate five manors and two advowsons.37Plymouth and W. Devon RO, 70/314, 315; Coventry Docquets, 630. In February 1639, possibly partly as an act of tidying his affairs before going north with his soldiers, he mortgaged another manor and other properties in Cornwall.38Cornw. RO, AD 301/2. His duties as captain of Pendennis Fort were not rewarded with prompt payments of the fees due to him.39Add. 33278, f. 13v. Nevertheless, the corporation of Plympton Erle honoured Slanning with the post of recorder before he was elected to the first Parliament of 1640, an honour which suggests that his financial affairs bore little or no relevance to his selection. He would have been elected on his own considerable interest in Plympton and district. He was returned, taking first place in the indenture, with Sir Thomas Hele.

Slanning is not known to have contributed to debate or to the work of committees in the Short Parliament, but his name figured in the proceedings of the committee of privileges on disputed elections. On 20 April, it was alleged in the House that Sir Richard Strode had returned himself for Plympton, on an indenture, and an enquiry was launched as to how the return had reached the clerk of the crown.40CJ ii. 7a. It became apparent eight days later that Slanning had also been a candidate at the election for Bere Alston, in an arrangement whereby the election was suspended to see whether either Slanning or another candidate, Thomas Wise*, were returned as knights of the shire in either Devon or Cornwall. At the committee of privileges, Slanning was reported to have offered money to an elector to secure votes; he himself admitted offering money but justified himself by claiming that he was trying to buy ‘something’, presumably property, to secure a voice for himself in the Bere Alston election.41Aston’s Diary, 77, 149, 150, 151. He stood again in the second election of 1640, again for more than one constituency, and was returned for Plympton and Penryn in Cornwall, where he had property. Slanning chose to sit for Penryn, and the earl of Northumberland’s client, Hugh Potter, took the Plympton seat he vacated.42CJ ii. 22b.

Through the various twists and turns of the elections in the south west in 1640, Slanning remained loyal to the king’s interest. At some point, probably in October, he was summoned to attend the king secretly; the condition imposed upon him that he was to pretend he was visiting London on his own account is typical of the king’s penchant for conspiratorial gestures. It has been suggested that he was entrusted with some mission concerning the elections, but if the suggested date of the summons to the king is correct, it was a little late in the day, as the boroughs were already making their returns.43CSP Dom. 1640-1, p. 209; Keeler, Long Parl. 339-40. Slanning’s first recorded intervention in the proceedings of the Commons took place on 27 November, when he offered a petition on behalf of the group of investors involved in the ‘Lindsey fen’ or ‘800 fen’, a Lincolnshire drainage scheme promoted at court. Henry Killigrew* was another from Slanning’s district of south west Devon and east Cornwall involved in this project. Because attendance in the House was sparse, Slanning was asked to present the petition again, but there is no record of his having done so.44CJ ii. 37a; Procs. LP i. 332, 342. In January 1641, he was named to a committee required to clarify the law on the ownership of salt marshes, a natural interest for a number of other Members from Slanning’s area, Robert Trelawny, John Upton I and Sir Richard Buller, whose properties were near the sea. On 27 April he was named to the committee for the bill on addressing abuses in ecclesiastical courts.45CJ ii. 73b, 128b. Nomination to only two committees in the first six months of a very busy Parliament strongly suggests that Slanning was out of sympathy with its overall direction. That he was standing out against the run of events was evident on 21 April. When the vote was taken on whether to proceed with the attainder of the 1st earl of Strafford (Sir Thomas Wentworth†), Slanning was among the minority who opposed the trial, with Hugh Pollarde the only other Devonian taking that stance.46Procs LP iv. 42, 51.

Slanning took the Protestation without quibble on 3 May, and was given leave on the 21st to attend the Lords to provide expert testimony on the state of the country’s forts, but just under a month later was allowed leave to go home.47CJ ii. 133b, 153b; Procs. LP iv. 503. The motion to grant him leave was moved by Sir Guy Palmes. Permission was subject to the proviso that excused Members should travel immediately rather than remain in London to the confusion of the clerks, but Slanning seems to have needed no such urging, as he stayed away from the Commons for the rest of the year.48Procs. LP v. 226; CJ ii. 178b. In late January 1642, he was ordered to attend the House to answer allegations that he had recently sent letters to the Cornish ports to warn them to look out for, and detain, any of the Five Members (one of whom was Slanning’s neighbour, William Strode I*) escaping abroad. His ally in this episode was Francis Bassett, soon to be a stalwart of the king’s party in Cornwall.49CJ ii. 401a, b, 402b. Slanning came in late (28 Jan.) to have the allegations repeated to him, and flatly denied them, arguing that he was merely passing on the king’s printed order, ‘which he bought for a penny’.50PJ i. 208, 210, 214.

Slanning’s letter was recovered by the Commons, and on 15 February was referred to a committee to examine. This did not deter Slanning from continuing in his duties as governor of Pendennis, and on 26 February he informed the House of intelligence from Scotland that he had gathered in Cornwall, which was doubtless unhelpful to the radical leadership of the Commons.51PJ i. 474-5. On 12 March he was named to the committee on gunpowder.52CJ ii. 432a, 476a. His support for the king against the Five Members compounded his record as a Straffordian and an enemy of the junto, but he shared enough of the anti-Irish and anti-papist anxiety gripping the House to move on 11 April that a number of friars bound for Ireland be examined by a Commons committee.53PJ ii. 145-6, 151.

Slanning was still at Westminster on 11 June, when again he stood out contrary to the trend, this time against the pledges of money that Members were announcing in support of the parliamentary cause. Slanning’s position was that ‘when the king and both Houses of Parliament shall command it he shall be ready to serve them with his life and fortune, till then he desires not to intermeddle’.54PJ iii. 480. Soon after this, Slanning must have returned to the south west. By 21 July, his name was on a list of royalist MPs summoned back to Westminster to account for themselves.55CJ ii. 685b; PJ iii. 252. He went to implement the king’s commission of array, and was confronted by the Cornish militia commissioners for Parliament; when told by them that the Commons required him in London, Slanning maintained ‘a politic silence’.56LJ v. 275a. The militia commissioners wrote an account of their observations of the summer assizes in Cornwall and the efforts there by Slanning and others to influence the people. It was received by the Commons on 8 August; after it was read the following day, he was disabled from sitting any longer in that Parliament, and was sent for as a delinquent. Parliament was never able to bring him to the bar.57CJ ii. 710b, 711a, b. On 7 September, he wrote from Lostwithiel in response to a summons from the Lords, asking innocently whether as a member of the Commons who had taken the Protestation to uphold its privileges, he could appear before their lordships without breaching the privileges of the lower House. His disablement on 9 August was airily overlooked.58LJ v. 364a.

Slanning’s military experience made him a leading and valued member of the king’s army in the west during the early months of the civil war. He raised his own regiment of foot, his fastness of Pendennis Castle providing the royalists with their Cornish headquarters.59Bellum Civile, 19, 23. By December, he was among the commanders of a force camped outside Plymouth. Despite the gloomy assessment of the military situation by the besieged parliamentarians in Plymouth, a raiding party from that town fell on the royalists at Modbury on 7 December. Slanning was lucky to make ‘a very narrow escape’, but with Sir John Berkeley* and John Ashburnham* he managed to regroup and advanced as far into Devon as Tavistock.60Bellum Civile, 25-6, 30-1; Remarkable Passages Newly Received (1642, E.130.16). By late February 1643 Slanning was back at Modbury, from where the siege of Plymouth was resumed. A large force under Henry Grey*, 1st earl of Stamford, fell upon them there, a parliamentarian report of the battle asserting that ‘Sir Nicholas Slane received a death’s wound’.61A True and Perfect Relation of the Passages in Devonshire (1643) 4 (E.91.4); Harl. 164, f. 307v; Bellum Civile, 34. Despite this heavy defeat and the raising of the siege of Plymouth, a treaty was arranged between the royalists and parliamentarians of Devon and Cornwall. Slanning was one of the commissioners for the royalist side in the cessation. The treaty was endorsed by Sir John Northcote* and Sir John Bampfylde*, but was opposed by Thomas Gewen*, Charles Vaghan* and Thomas Boone*.62Som. RO, DD WO 56/6/30; Bodl. Nalson II, f. 332. When a renewal of the cessation was proposed in March, Edmund Prideaux I* and Anthony Nicoll* were deputed by the Commons to visit Exeter to frustrate it, as it was felt that the treaty threw away a golden opportunity to destroy the royalist army.63Harl. 164, f. 321; A Continuation of Certaine Speciall and Remarkable Passages no. 37 (16-23 Mar. 1643, E. 247.7). While Slanning was, in form at least, a commissioner for the cessation, in practice he had become notorious in the Commons for establishing out of Falmouth a trade on the king’s behalf with the French and for seizing ships of a parliamentarian allegiance.64Add. 18777 ff. 143v, 150v.

Slanning fought at Sourton Down (25 Apr.), where he was again lucky to escape from the parliamentarians, but commanded his regiment at Stratton (16 May), a notable victory for the Cornish army.65Bellum Civile, 39-40, 42-4. At the battle of Lansdown near Bath (5 July), Slanning led up to 300 musketeers in an attack on Sir William Waller’s* reserve of dragoons, which enabled the troops of Prince Maurice and Robert Dormer, 1st earl of Carnarvon, to launch a charge which was decisive in securing victory for the king.66Bellum Civile, 53-4; Clarendon, Hist. iii. 90. (Sir) Edward Hyde* recorded how Slanning scorned bullets, and ‘almost thought they could not hit him’. On 26 July, at the storming of Bristol, Slanning was hit in the thigh by a musket ball, and died of his wounds, probably three weeks later. His funeral may have taken place in September. According to Hyde, Slanning’s second and only surviving son was born the day that he was fatally wounded.67Clarendon, Hist. iii. 103n, 109, 113-4; Bellum Civile, 58, 92-3; Jones, ‘The Slannings’, 462. The action at Bristol, though successful in taking the city, was costly for the royalists, who also lost John Trevanion* in the same battle. Royalist losses in the west country earlier that year included Sir Bevill Grenvile* and Sidney Godolphin*. The four of them were apotheosised as ‘the four wheels of Charles’s wain’, a pun which played both on their importance to the king’s war effort or ‘wain’ (wagon) and their immortality: ‘Charles’s wain’ was a contemporary phrase for the constellation of the Great Bear.68Prince, Worthies, 568. The ‘Charles’ in the phrase is thought originally to have been Charlemagne, and was current many centuries before Charles I was born. The poet Francis Wortley linked Slanning and Grenvile as the greatest of the four: ‘Of all the west the king had no two friends/ More really his, more glorious in their ends’.69F. Wortley, Characters and Elegies (1646), 50 (E.344.21). Gertrude Slanning’s second marriage was to another cavalier, Richard Arundell*. His son, Nicholas†, sat for Plympton Erle in 1667 and Penryn in three later Parliaments as a tory, but was the last of his family to serve as a Member.70HP Commons 1660-1690.