SLINGESBY, Sir Henry (1602-58), of Redhouse, Moor Monkton, Yorks.

Although the Slingsbys had settled in the Knaresborough area in the fourteenth century, it was not until 1572 that a member of the family had represented the borough at Westminster.27Dugdale’s Vis. Yorks. ii. 65; HP Commons 1558-1603, ‘Francis Slingsby’. Slingesby’s father, who was returned for the town in every Parliament between 1601 and 1624, held numerous offices under the duchy of Lancaster and was a leading member of the council of the north. In 1629, he was appointed vice-president of the council by Viscount Wentworth (Sir Thomas Wentworth†, the future earl of Strafford).28HP Commons, 1604-1629 ‘Sir Henry Slingsby’. With the death of his elder brother abroad in 1617, Slingesby became heir to the estate and, as such, was accepted as a pupil of the puritan divine John Preston at Queens’, Cambridge, where Slingesby shared rooms with James Fiennes* – eldest son of the future parliamentarian grandee, William Fiennes, 1st Viscount Saye and Sele – and, it seems, with the godly peer, Theophilus Clinton, 4th earl of Lincoln. Preston chose Slingesby to accompany him on a proposed tour of the universities and academies of the Netherlands in 1621, aimed ostensibly at improving their Latin, although doubt has been cast on whether Preston did indeed take his pupil on this trip or travelled alone as an unofficial envoy on business concerning the Spanish match.29Life of Doctor Preston ed. Harcourt, 73-5; I. Morgan, Prince Charles’s Puritan Chaplain (1957), 29-30; Smith, Without Touch of Dishonour, 13, 18-21. It may well have been Preston who inspired Slingesby’s ‘lifelong distaste for ecclesiastical ornament and ceremonies’.30Slingsby Diary ed. Parsons, 302, 304, 310, 311, 316, 318; Morgan, Puritan Chaplain, 31; HP Commons, 1604-29, ‘Henry Slingsby’.

Slingesby succeeded his father as MP for Knaresborough in 1625, but either did not stand or was defeated (by Henry Benson*) in 1626, and in March of that year he obtained a royal licence to travel abroad for three years.31APC 1625-6, p. 375; HP Commons 1604-29, ‘Henry Slingsby’. He had returned to Yorkshire by 1628, when he was out-polled by Benson in the parliamentary election at Knaresborough.32HP Commons 1604-29, ‘Knaresborough’. After his father’s death in 1634, Slingesby appears to have devoted much of his time to managing the family estate, which included lands in and around Knaresborough, several manors in the West Riding and properties in London, Middlesex and Essex. ‘A gentleman of a good understanding, but of a very melancholic nature and of very few words’, he was more inclined to building and farming projects and to study – his diary reveals that he was well versed in the Bible, the classics and humanist works – than to the pursuit of office.33Add. 27990, f. 36; Clarendon, Hist. vi. 65; Slingsby Diary ed. Parsons, passim; Cliffe, Yorks. 34, 45, 103-4, 107, 117, 249. He showed little interest in local government or politics and was never made a magistrate. In 1638, he performed the duties of a West Riding deputy lieutenant for a few months, but without a commission, merely a letter of authorisation from Viscount Wentworth.34Slingsby Diary ed. Parsons, 14. Although recommended to Wentworth that year for appointment as a West Riding militia colonel, there is no evidence in his diary or elsewhere that he assumed such a command before 1642.35Sheffield City Archives, WWM/Str P18/111; W. Yorks. Archives (Bradford), 32D86/28, p. 27.

Slingesby’s antipathy to religious ceremonies both recommended him to the godly Essex knight Sir William Masham* as a potential son-in-law (although nothing came of this proposed match) and concerned the Laudian archbishop of York, Richard Neile, to the extent that he refused to consecrate Slingesby’s chapel at Redhouse, lest it should be used for conventicles.36Slingsby Diary ed. Parsons, 19; J.T. Cliffe, The Puritan Gentry (1984), 66. Despite her family’s strong Catholic connections, Slingesby’s wife – a daughter of the Sir Thomas Belasyse (father of Henry* and John Belasyse*) – was a patron of the York city preacher Henry Aiscough, a ‘moderate puritan’.37Slingsby Diary ed. Parsons, 9; VCH York, 201; Marchant, Puritans, 226-7. In 1639, Slingesby considered ousting the incumbent of Knaresborough and presenting Aiscough in his place, but was prevented from doing so on legal grounds.38Slingsby Diary ed. Parsons, 37. Slingesby’s sister Mary – the mother of the godly republican Slingisby Bethell* – attended nonconformist conventicles in York during the 1630s, and his sister Anne was rumoured (falsely, she insisted) ‘to follow some fantastical Brownists [church separatists]’ and was certainly pained when ‘the Word is so weakly taught that one shall find no profit or comfort in it’.39Slingsby Diary ed. Parsons, 283-4; Marchant, Puritans, 81. Slingesby himself had conceived a lasting admiration by 1639 for the Laudian but highly ascetic prebend of York, Timothy Thurcross, although he remained uncomfortable with ‘the late imposed ceremonies of bowing and adoring towards the altar’, which he believed ‘came too near idolatry, to adore a place with rich cloths and other furniture and to command to use towards it bodily worship ... and herein we do of late draw near to the superstition of the Church of Rome, who do suffer such external devotion to efface and wear out the inward devotion of the heart’.40Slingsby Diary ed. Parsons, 7-9, 19, 20, 330; Leeds Univ. Lib. DD149/60.

Slingesby’s piety evidently combined something of the ‘painful’ earnestness and sobriety of the godly with the reverence for order and decency in worship of the Laudians. Commenting in his diary on the first bishops’ war of 1639 – possibly with the benefit of hindsight – he condemned Charles I’s determination to impose religious uniformity on the Scots by force as an incitement to bloodshed and further rebellion. Equally, however, he suspected that the religious grievances of the Covenanters were a ‘pretence and cloak for wickedness’. As a volunteer in the cavalry troop of the earl of Holland – the general of horse in the royal army – he took part in the ineffectual campaigning on the Scottish border that ended with the Pacification of Berwick in June 1639.41Slingsby Diary ed. Parsons, 11-13, 32-9.

In the elections to the Short Parliament in the spring of 1640, Slingesby was returned for Knaresborough, having relied upon his servant Thomas Richardson to foil the ‘subtle plots’ of Henry Benson and his electoral partner Sir Richard Hutton†.42Supra, ‘Knaresborough’; Slingsby Diary ed. Parsons, 50-1. Slingesby received no committee appointments in the Short Parliament, and a speech on 4 May attributed to him, in which the speaker asserted that it was ‘rebellion’ for anyone not to pay Ship Monday, was almost certainly made instead by his cousin, Guilford Slyngesby.43Procs. Short Parl. 196-7; Aston’s Diary, 140-1. Although Slingesby was resident in Yorkshire during the summer of 1640, he failed to sign the county gentry’s petitions to the king of July and August, complaining about the cost of billeting and pleading poverty in the face of royal efforts to mobilise the trained bands for service during the second bishops’ war.44Slingsby Diary ed. Parsons, 56-8. However, he did sign the Yorkshire county indenture, on 5 October, returning two of the summer’s leading petitioners, the 2nd Baron Fairfax (Sir Ferdinando Fairfax*) and Henry Belasyse to the Long Parliament.45C219/43/3/89.

As a parliamentary candidate for Knaresborough in the elections to the Long Parliament, Slingesby topped the poll after another fiercely fought contest with Benson and Hutton.46Supra, ‘Knaresborough’; Slingsby Diary ed. Parsons, 63. As in previous Parliaments, he was ‘reserved and inactive’ in the House, receiving no committee appointments and making no recorded contribution to debate.47CSP Dom. 1658-9, p. 21. He appears to have been aligned with no particular political grouping at Westminster, ‘having no relation to or dependence upon the court’ and little in common with the more ardent reformers.48Clarendon, Hist. vi. 65. Although he supported moves in 1641 for the exclusion of the bishops from the Lords, being hostile to Laudian prelacy, he opposed the campaign for abolishing episcopacy root and branch:

I could never be of that opinion that the government of the church, as it is now establish’d by bishops and archbishops to be of absolute necessity, so that the taking of them away should quite overturn the state and the essence of the Christian church. But I am of opinion that the taking of them out of the church, as that government is now established and so long continu’d, may be of dangerous consequence to the peace of the church.49Slingsby Diary ed. Parsons, 66-7.

The ‘common people ... would think themselves loose and absolved from all government’, he feared, ‘when they should see that which they so much venerated [episcopacy] so easily subvert’d’.50Slingsby Diary ed. Parsons, 68.

Slingesby took his first leave from the Commons some time in February 1641, and on 23 March he joined Lord Fairfax, Sir Thomas Fairfax* and other Yorkshire gentlemen in a petition to Parliament for a statute establishing a court of justice at York in place of the proscribed council of the north.51Fairfax Corresp. ed. Johnson, ii. 181; HMC Lords, n.s. xi. 255-6. He returned to Westminster late in March and was one of seven Yorkshire Members who voted against Strafford’s bill of attainder on 21 April.52Slingsby Diary ed. Parsons, 71; Procs. LP iv. 42, 51; Cliffe, Yorks. 328. Perhaps his closest connection with the earl by this date consisted in the fact that Guilford Slyngesby was Strafford’s secretary.53Supra, ‘Guilford Slyngesby’. Twelve days later, on 3 May, he took the Protestation.54CJ ii. 133b.

Slingesby returned to Yorkshire during the autumn 1641 recess, and early in November he was asked by Sir Thomas Fairfax to recommend the puritan and future regicide Sir William Constable* (who had been a ward of Slingesby’s father) for Knaresborough in place of Henry Benson, recently disabled from sitting. Slingesby informed Benson that he had lost his seat and requested that he ‘use his means for electing a friend’ whom Slingesby would name. Benson, however, on receiving what Thomas Stockdale* (Lord Fairfax’s man-on-business) termed this ‘unadvised intelligence’, ‘laboured all the borough men’ for his stepson William Dearlove*. Constable asked Slingesby to come to Knaresborough in person on election day, but Slingesby would not be separated from his wife on their journey down to London and instead sent Thomas Richardson. In the event, Dearlove prevailed on a poll in which only two of Slingesby’s tenants voted for Constable, which was far short of the ‘30 voices of his dependents’ that Slingesby could usually muster.55Supra, ‘Knaresborough’; ‘Sir William Constable’; Slingsby Diary ed. Parsons, 72, 73; Bodl. Fairfax 32, f. 35; Fairfax Corresp. ed. Johnson, ii. 262-3.

Having resumed his seat in November 1641, Slingesby appears to have remained in London until 20 May 1642, when he and Henry Belasyse returned to Yorkshire – in Slingesby’s case to take command of a militia regiment based at York of which he had been commissioned colonel by the king on 11 May.56Slingsby Diary ed. Parsons, 73, 75 On 16 June – two days before he was named to the Yorkshire commission of array – Slingesby was declared absent without leave by the Commons, and in August he joined Henry and John Belasyse and other Yorkshire royalists in a petition to Parliament, protesting at the proceedings of Sir John Hotham* as parliamentary governor of Hull.57CJ ii. 626; Northants. RO, FH133; LJ v. 273b-274a. When Slingesby, Sir Edward Osborne*, Sir John Ramsden* and other royalist gentlemen attempted later that month to secure York for the king and, more specifically, against the Hothams, they were successfully resisted by the corporation.58York City Archives, York House Bk. 36, f. 74v. On 6 September, the Commons disabled Slingesby from sitting for neglecting the service of the House and signing the August petition.59CJ ii. 754a.

In the autumn of 1642, Slingesby was among the group of prominent Yorkshire royalists that invited the commander of the king’s northern army, the earl of Newcastle, to secure the county against the Hothams and their allies.60Newcastle Mems. ed. C.H. Firth (1886), 189, 190. He was an active member of the royalist committee set up late in 1642 to maintain Newcastle’s army; and in February 1643, he was party to the so-called Yorkshire engagement, by which the signatories pledged their estates as security on loans for the supply of the earl’s troops.61Bodl. Firth c.7, f. 8; Add. 18981, f. 121v; CCAM 908. He himself lent £500 (although in his diary he gave the figure as £100) – an amount that only the very wealthy Sir William Savile* was willing to equal – and signed bonds on the engagement for large sums of money.62Bodl. Tanner 62, ff. 655-6; Doncaster Archives, DD/CROM/11/6; CCAM 909; Slingsby Diary ed. Parsons, 85. Commissioned by Newcastle in December 1642 to raise a regiment of foot, he was disabled by the Commons again on 21 January 1643 (presumably the House had forgotten its earlier resolution to this effect) ‘for having been in actual war against the Parliament’.63Slingsby Diary ed. Parsons, 87; CJ ii. 938b. With royalist control of Yorkshire threatened by the Fairfaxes and the Scots in the spring of 1644, Slingesby, Osborne, Sir Brian Palmes*, Sir Paul Neile*, Sir Robert Stryckland* and other gentlemen wrote to Prince Rupert late in March, imploring him to come to the county’s defence.64Bodl. Firth c.7, f. 8; Add. 18981, ff. 121r-v. He may have he fought at Marston Moor that July – it is not clear from his diary whether he was on the field or remained in York in command of his militia regiment – and in December he attended the Oxford Parliament (he subsequently had a medal struck commemorating his ride to the city).65Slingsby Diary ed. Parsons, 112-14, 137, 140; Smith, Without Touch of Dishonour, 76, 88; J.W. Clay, ‘The gentry of Yorks. at the time of the civil war’, YAJ xxiii. 374. Serving with the king’s main field army in 1645 as part of Sir Marmaduke Langdale’s northern horse, he was present at the capture of Leicester late in May and fought at Naseby in June. In October, he joined the royalist garrison at Newark and was there when the town surrendered the following May. On 11 May 1646, at the king’s command, he returned home to Yorkshire.66Slingsby Diary ed. Parsons, 118-19, 143-53, 171, 173-4, 178-9.

Slingesby petitioned to compound on the Newark articles in July 1646, but for some reason his case was not proceeded upon at Goldsmiths’ Hall.67CCC 1387. He refused to compound thereafter, claiming that he had ‘neither personal money to answer the sum nor credit’ and that, in his opinion, ‘there was no establishment [legitimate political order] or settled peace’.68Slingsby Diary ed. Parsons, 345, 434. But perhaps the main obstacle to his compounding was his unwillingness to take the negative oath and Covenant: ‘the one makes me renounce my allegiance, the other my religion’.69Slingsby Diary ed. Parsons, 119. Because he had neither compounded nor received a pardon from Parliament, he was obliged to live in close confinement at Redhouse in order to avoid detection and arrest.70Slingsby Diary ed. Parsons, 119, 180, 183, 345. His name was included in the Rump’s 1651 act for the sale of forfeited estates, despite the efforts of his ‘many friends’ at Westminster – and notably, Sir John Bourchier* – to secure his exemption. In 1652, Slingesby’s nephews Slingisby Bethell and Robert Stapylton* purchased his estate from the treason trustees for about £7,000, which they then held in trust for his family.71CJ vi. 460a; A. and O. ii. 521; Leeds. Univ. Lib. DD149/56, 61, 67; Slingsby Diary ed. Parsons, 343-52.

Undaunted by the confiscation of his estate, Slingesby was in contact with the Sealed Knot by 1654, lending £100 to a royalist agent and reportedly delivering a letter from Charles Stuart to Lady Fairfax, aimed at winning over her husband.72Underdown, Royalist Conspiracy, 91, 121. Implicated in the abortive Yorkshire rising of 1655, he was imprisoned at Hull, where he attempted to subvert several of the garrison officers as part of a design to betray the town to the king’s forces. With the approval and encouragement of Oliver Cromwell* and Secretary John Thurloe*, the officers led Slingesby on until he had compromised himself sufficiently to justify a charge of treason before the new high court of justice in May 1658.73TSP iv. 462, 468, 614, 680; v. 777, 781, 870; vii. 13-14, 46-7, 98, 111-13, 121-5, 127; Slingsby Diary ed. Parsons, 418-39; Underdown, Royalist Conspiracy, 141, 166, 175, 228. In his defence, Slingesby argued (with some justification) that he had been trepanned by the officers:

They have said that seriously against me which was spoken in mirth between us. I never sought to them but they to me. The commission [from Charles Stuart, which Slingesby offered to one of the officers] was procured by no intercourse with any persons beyond the seas, but a blank which I had for four years together. Nor had I any correspondence beyond sea to carry on any design here.74Slingsby Diary ed. Parsons, 431.

But the court was not convinced by his insistence that ‘what I said or did was but in jest’, and on 2 June he was sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered.75Slingsby Diary ed. Parsons, 427, 439. Great efforts were made to save him, particularly by his nephew Lord Fauconberg (Thomas Belasyse*) who, according to (Sir) Edward Hyde*, ‘engaged his wife [Cromwell’s daughter] and all his new allies to intercede for him’, but the protector was ‘inexorable’ – although he did consent to commute Slingesby’s sentence to death by beheading.76TSP vii. 159; Clarendon, Hist. vi. 65; Slingsby Diary ed. Parsons, 440. On 8 June 1658, Slingesby was executed on Tower Hill, his body being taken for burial in Knaresborough church by his relatives.77Slingsby Diary ed. Parsons, 412, 440-1.

In his will, made four days before his death and apparently never entered in probate, Slingesby charged his heir, Thomas Slingsby, with honouring bequests of more than £4,000.78Smith, Without Touch of Dishonour, 177-8. Perhaps his greatest legacy, certainly to posterity, was his diary, which was published in 1806 and again in 1836.79Nottingham Univ. Lib. Ga 12714; Smith, Without Touch of Dishonour, 33. After the Restoration, it was claimed that he had died a Catholic, although as late as 1651 he professed himself a member of the Church of England.80Calendarium Catholicum...Catalogue of the Lords, Knight and Gentlemen (of the Catholic Religion) that were Slain in the Late War (1689), unpag.; Slingsby Diary ed. Parsons, 346. His estate passed in 1660 to his eldest son Sir Thomas Slingsby, who represented Yorkshire between 1670 and 1679, Knaresborough in all three Exclusion Parliaments and Scarborough in 1685. Slingesby’s second son, Henry, sat for Portsmouth in the Parliaments of 1685 and 1689.81HP Commons 1660-1690, ‘Henry Slingsby I’; ‘Sir Thomas Slingsby’.