Nicholas Slanning

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Sir Nicholas Slanning (1 September 1606– July/August 1643)[1] was a royalist army officer active in the West of England, during the Civil War. He should not be confused with his maternal grandfather, Nicholas Slanning (died 1583), or his son, Nicholas, who was granted a baronetcy by the restored monarchy [2].

Contents

[edit] Background

The Slanning family is first documented in 1538 and spanned nine generations until the extinction of the male line in 1700. It was granted or acquired land in Bickleigh, Walkhampton, Maybury, and Roborough, all near Plymouth.

The Sir Nicholas Slanning of Civil War fame born in 1606 to Margaret, née Marler, and Gamaliel Slanning and inherited Maristow, Walkhampton, and Bickleigh in 1612.

He married Gertrude, daughter of Sir James Bagge of Little Saltrum in 1625. They had two sons and two daughters.

He attended Exeter College, Oxford and was admitted to the Inner Temple in 1628. However, he left the next year for the Low Countries “to learn the arts of war”.

[edit] Military activities

He returned and was knighted in 1632 and appointed to the Commission for Piracy in Devon and Cornwall and Vice-Admiral of the Southern Shores of both counties. His maritime responsibilities were sufficiently well fulfilled for him to be appointed Governor of Pendennis Castle guarding the entrance to Falmouth harbour, in 1635, in succession to William Killigrew.

In February 1639 he embarked with 13 guns and 100 officers bound for Cumberland to participate in the abortive “ First Bishops' War” . It is possible that the men and guns were for the defence of Carlisle, but Slanning headed for York to command a company in a regiment of foot “appointed to guard the King's person”, with the rank of Sergeant Major. He returned home following the ‘ pacification of Berwick’ in June and by March 1640 was Recorder to Plympton St. Maurice.

[edit] Parliamentary activities

He was elected to represent the rotten borough of Plympton Erle in the ‘Short Parliament’. He was also the Lieutenant-Colonel of a " trayned band" of 157 men, two-thirds musketeers and the remainder pikemen.

Slanning and Sir Francis Bassett were given the responsibility for levies from the West of Cornwall for the ‘Second Bishop's War’. After the Treaty of Ripon he hurried back to stand for Parliament.

In October 1640 he was elected for Penryn to the ‘Long Parliament’ (in a way which was to give rise to charges of bribery). His sympathies were soon apparent, since his was among the 59 names of the members posted for voting against the Bill of Attainder of Strafford. Seven other Cornish MPs also voted against the Bill, including Godolphin, Trevanion, and Richard Arundel, who was later to marry Slanning's widow.

In June 1641 he returned to Cornwall to resume his governorship of Pendennis Castle. but was back in London that winter, and in January 1642 was called to attend the House of Commons for sending letters to Francis Bassett in Cornwall for the arrest of the “Five Members”, should they try to embark from a Cornish port, a charge that Slanning denied. He was still in the House in February and supplied it with information concerning “four Scottish merchants lately arrived in Cornwall”, but probably left for Pendennis in April when many MPs withdrew. He was certainly in Cornwall when, on August 9th, he was disbarred from the Commons and ordered to attend the House as a ‘delinquent’.

[edit] War against Parliament

On 25th August Hopton entered Cornwall after separating from the Marquis of Hertford following their failed attempts to secure Wiltshire, Dorset, and Somerset. He first visited Sir Bevil Grenvile at Stowe then, after brushing aside Bullers's Militia, headed for Pendennis on September 24th to confer with Slanning before appearing voluntarily before the assizes at Truro.

After his successful defence of his actions, recruiting began and that October the famous five regiments of Cornish foot were formed under Colonel William Godolphin, Sir Bevill Grenvile, Sir Nicholas Slanning, Colonel John Trevanion and Warwick, Lord Mohun. The first four of these were known as the 'wheels on Charles's wain'

A seventeenth century ode included the distich:

“Gone the four wheels of Charles's wain, Grenville, Godolphin, Slanning, Trevannion slain”

Slanning's regiment of foot, known as "the Tinners", was formed in November 1642 [3]. He was released from his governorship of Pendennis Castle, succeeded by Sir John Arundell in 1843.

Hopton first used them to make an unsuccessful attempt on Exeter then fell back on Plympton, took it, and invested Plymouth on December 1st. Later that month they took Alphington, Powderham, and Topsham but failed to capture Exeter in a night attack. Their first field battle was Braddock (actually Pinnock) Down in January 1643 when Ruthin's forces were forced to flee back through Liskeard and on to Saltash, while the Earl of Stamford withdrew from Launceston. Slanning's regiment, along with those of Grenvile and Trevanion and half of the horse and dragoons, pursued Stamford while the rest followed up Ruthin.

Hopton, after some futile negotiations, invested Plymouth again and this led to Slanning's sole command in battle, but not until after the first ‘wheel’ was lost when the court poet Sydney Godolphin died of a wound received in a skirmish at Chagford. In February 1643 Slanning, in command of a detachment consisting of his and Trevanion's regiments, was attacked at Modbury by Chudleigh. He was able to execute that most difficult of manoeuvres, a fighting withdrawal against superior forces, but at the cost of 250 killed or wounded, 1,000 muskets and five guns.

The Cornish forces now quit Devon and things remained quiet until the encounter battle of Polston Bridge, Launceston in April, when the arrival of Slanning's and Trevanion's regiments proved decisive. Two days later there was another encounter battle, the ‘Western Wonder’ of the Cavalier ballad, at Sourton Down, where in the middle of a violent thunderstorm, Chudleigh was able to hold the field and Hopton again retreated to Launceston.

Slanning and his men had a brief sojourn at Saltash before rejoining the rest in a rendezvous with Grenvile's foot. They brushed aside a small force at Week St. Mary on May 13th and at 5.00a.m. on the 16th attacked the forces on Stratton (now Stamford) Hill, Stratton. This produced their most spectacular victory when, after ten hours of fighting uphill against twice their number of much better equipped enemy with a dug-in battery, they gained the position, killing 300 and capturing 1,700 with fourteen guns, £300 and plentiful provisions, at a cost of 80 men. Slanning and Trevanion commanded the westernmost of the four columns.

The army was about to lose its independence though, and received orders to rendezvous with Prince Maurice's men, whom they met at Chard in Somerset in June. This combined force now took Taunton, Bridgwater, Dunster Castle and Wells. Their first contact with Waller was a cavalry skirmish at Chewton Mendip. He was driven out of Monkton Farleigh on July 3rd and two days later followed the pyrrhic victory of Lansdown where the next ‘wheel’, Sir Bevill Grenvile, fell. The foot were now besieged in Devizes but witnessed the destruction of Waller's forces at Roundway Down. The Western Royalists took Bath, and after joining Prince Rupert on July 26th 1643 they stormed Bristol. The Western Army attacked the South Eastern defences at 3.00 a.m. in three tertia, one commanded by Slanning.

Bristol fell after some thirteen hours fighting, but so did the last two ‘wheels’: Slanning and Trevanion were both mortally wounded. Sir Nicholas Slanning, whose leg had been broken by a musket ball, died a few days later [4], quipping “that he had always despised bullets, having been so used to them, and almost thought they could not hurt him”, and professing “great joy and satisfaction in the losing of his life in the King's service to whom he had always dedicated it”.

No record remains of where Sir Nicholas Slanning was buried. The Sir Nicholas Slanning buried at St Mary the Virgin at Bickleigh, Devon was this Sir Nicholas's grandfather, but Slanning's body may have been returned there for burial since some of his arms reached Bickleigh and his helmet and gauntlet may still be seen, by arrangement, at the church.

[edit] Modern Celebration

The name of Sir Nicholas Slanning and his men lives on in the guise of "Sir Nicholas Slanning his regiment of foote", a part of The Sealed Knot.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

[edit] References

  1. ^ Date of birth and death given by ODNB article by Mary Wolffe, ‘Slanning, Sir Nicholas (1606–1643)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [1], (accessed 5 Dec 2007) :“26 July 1643; he was mortally wounded and died a few days later”.
  2. ^ Burke's "A genealogical and heraldic history of the extinct and dormant baronetcies" (1838), pages 489-490 "Slanning of Maristow", on Google Books.
  3. ^ Mark Stoyle West Britons: Cornish identities and the early modern British state, University of Exeter Press, 2002 ISBN0-85989-688-9. pp.205-207 lists the officers of the regiment 1642-1646.
  4. ^ Date of death stated as "a few days after" the day of the battle by ODNB.