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 pale engrailed gules, over all on a bend azure three griffin head 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:

Slanning and Sir Francis Bassett were given the responsibility for levies from the West of Cornwall for the ‘Second Bishop's 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 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’.