Author: Alan Wicks

Orders of the day, Volume 31, Issue 2, March/April 1999

A seventeenth century ode included the distich:

“Gone the four wheels of Charles’s wain,
Grenvile, Godolphin, Slanning, Trevannion slain”.

This is the story of one of those ‘wheels’ - Sir Nicholas Slanning, who was “as well able to attend the crucible as the gun”.

The Slanning family, with its arms argent, two pales engrailed gules, over all on a bend azure three griffin heads erased or, 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 was probably 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. He attended Exeter College, Oxford and was admitted to the Inner Temple in 1628, but left the next year for the Low Countries “to learn the arts of war”. 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 at Falmouth in 1635.

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 and was elected to represent the borough in the ‘Short Parliament’. He was also the Lieutenant-Colonel of a ‘trayned band’ of 157 men, two-thirds musketeers and the remainder pikemen, with the following equipment:

Horse defensive arms, are a back, brest and pot, pistol proof; offensive, a sword and a case of pistells, their barrell not under 14 inches in length; horse furniture, a great saddle or pad with burrs and straps to affix the holster.

Footman’s arms: musquett barell not under three foot; the gage of the bore for twelve bullets (new) but ye old way fourteen to the pound; a collar of bandaliers with a sworde.

Pykemen’s arms: a pyke of ashe not under 16 foote head and foote included, with a backe, brest, head-piece, and a sword, ye old pyke fifteen...(illegible, ?feet); Musquettier, half a pound poudder and three yards of match, half a pound of bulletts.

Horse, a qr a pound pouder and one of bulletts; 5s. for every days omission (presumably of attendance).

Slanning and Sir Francis Bassett were given the responsibility for levies from the West of Cornwall for the ‘Second Bishops’ War’. Since these would have been the last to arrive at York, they were probably with the King rather than Conway at the time of his defeat. After the Treaty of Ripon he hurried back to stand for Parliament, but the men whom he had commanded were left until the following August. In October 1640 he was elected 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 two of the other ‘wheels’, Godolphin and 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. The next month his Cornish levies began their long journey home and we get a revealing glimpse of them in August when Sir William Courtney had “...seen the disposition of men that have arms and strength and sometimes their officers suffer the soldiers to be their masters for their own ends...” He was back in London that winter, and in January 1642 (NS) was called to attend the House 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’.

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 Bevill Grenvile at Stowe then, after brushing aside Buller’s Militia, headed for Pendennis 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.

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 extraordinary 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 3.00a.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 three weeks later, 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 ‘our’ 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.

Note: Full documentation and sources are in The Crucible and the Gun, a work in progress.