THE SLANNINGS OF LEYE, BICKLEIGH,

AND MARISTOW.

BY WINSLOW JONES.

(Read at Plympton, July, 1887.)

THE Slannings having been originally settled at Leye, in Plympton St. Mary, the present meeting seems to be a fitting occasion for giving an account of the family, the interest of which, however, is mainly limited to two of its members to Nicholas, who was killed in a duel in 1599, and to the distinguished cavalier of the same name, who received a fatal wound at the assault of Bristol.

There are pedigrees of the family in the Devon Visitations of 1564 and 1620, which were edited by Dr. Colby in 1881, and 1872; but these Visitation-pedigrees give few details; there are also slight notices of the family in Westcote's View of Devonshire in 1630, Prince's Worthies (1701), and the additional notes in the edition of 1810 (from which my quotations are taken), the Lysons' Devonshire (1822), some of the papers on Tavistock by Mr. A. J. Kempe, F.S.A., the brother of Mrs. Bray, in the 100th vol. of the Gentleman's Magazine (1830), Burke's Extinct Baronetage (2nd edition, 1844), Dr. Oliver's Exeter Monasticon (1846), some of the six papers by Mr. J. C. Bellamy* on Bickleigh and Tamerton Foliot, which appeared in the Plymouth Herald of 1852-3, and Mr. J. Brooking Rowe's Cistercian Houses of Devon (1878); but most of these publications appeared before the Public Record Office and the Probate Registry at Somerset House were available for research, and it is to these latter sources that I am principally indebted for my information.

Mr. Bellamy was a surgeon at Plymouth, and the author of two small works on Natural History, and A Thousand Facts in the History of Devon and Cornwall, reprinted in 1850 from the Plymouth Journal. May 12th, 1854, aged 41.

He died on

Unfortunately the parochial registers of Plympton St. Mary are only extant from 1603, while those of Bickleigh begin in 1694; and the Tamerton registers down to 1794 perished in a fire in the beginning of that year. The wills and administrations, moreover, which were proved in and granted by the Archdeaconry Court of Totnes, (which had jurisdiction over Plympton St. Mary and the adjacent parishes,) are only extant from 1600, and the Index at the Probate Court at Exeter, which commences in 1513, affords scanty information.

Without a genealogical tree no statements are very intelligible, and one is therefore subjoined, which is founded on those in the two Visitations; but the evidence is defective as to the first three generations. The name is speit in different ways, but I have adopted the modern spelling.

The earliest member of the family of whom there is any documentary mention appears to be Nicholas Slanning, who was an annuitant of the Augustinian Priory of Plympton at the time of its surrender to the Crown on March 1st, 30th Hen. 8, 1538-9, when, according to the Exeter Monasticon, p. 133, he was entitled, "besides his pension, livery-gown, and meat and drink, to 4s. for the shoeing of his horse yearly, and grass for his horse by the assignment of the steward of the monastery, or else 5s. yearly in lieu of the same grass;" but I am unable to identify him with either Nicholas of the first or third generation.

The founder of the fortune and position of the family was John Slanning, who on July 29th, 37th Hen. VIII., 1545,* when steward of the Inner Temple, and, it is to be hoped, not an unjust one, applied to purchase various portions of the property of the dissolved Cistercian Monastery of Buckland; and who may have been the John of the second generation. On September 24th, 1546, he obtained a grant of the manors and advowsons of Bickleigh and Walkhampton, the manor of Shaugh, Heale barton in Bickleigh, Mayburg, and the hundred of Roborough; and it is also stated by Dr. Oliver, in an account of the parish of Tamerton, which appeared in the Exeter Flying Post of January 13th, 1853, that the domain of Maristow, in that parish, formerly part of the possessions of Plympton Priory, which had been granted

* See "Augmentation Particulars for Grants," Hen. VIII., at the Record Office.

+ Exeter Monasticon, p. 382, and Rowe's Cistercian Houses, p. 18, s. 33. Anthony Butler was associated with John Slanning in the purchase, but, doubtless, with regard to other property appropriated to him.

by the Crown to Philip and Anthony Champernown in 1544, was six years later disposed of by them to the Slannings, and I presume that the purchaser was the same Inner Temple * steward. By his will, dated September 16th, 1558, in which he is described as "John Slanning, esquier" only, he gave to his kinsman, Henry Cliff, the lease of Chilcott, and the manor of Modbury,t to John and William Slanning, as tenants in common in fee, all such lands as he had within the lordship of Prior's Shaugh, in Devonshire, and to Nicholas Slanning and his heirs the manor of Bickleigh, in Devonshire, the lordship of Walkhampton with the donation of the benefice, and all the residue of his goods and lands, and appointed the said Nicholas his executor, who proved the will in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury (afterwards referred to as the P.C. of C.), on October 28th, 1558. (Noodes, 63.1) The Slanning devisees are not referred to by the testator as relations, but they doubtless were so, and were the three sons of Nicholas Slanning and Elizabeth Maynard of the third generation.

Nicholas, the residuary devisee of the steward, is stated, in the Visitation of 1564, to have married the daughter of William Amadas, and in the early part of 1558 he was elected M.P. for Plymouth. By a fine of Trinity Term, 10th Eliz., (1568,) he settled the manors of Bickleigh and Shaugh, and the advowson of Bickleigh and Heale farm in Bickleigh, upon his wife Margaret, for her life; and by indenture of October 3rd, 21st Eliz., (1579,) he limited all his estates, subject to the first settlement, to the use of himself and the heirs of his body by any woman he might marry after the death of Margaret; and, in default of such heirs, to the use of his brother, John Slanning, the elder, of Leye, in tail male, with remainder to the use of Nicholas Slanning, of Newton Ferrers, (the son, as will be hereafter seen, of his youngest brother William, who was then dead,) in tail male, with remainder to the use of his own daughter Agnes, in tail male, with remainder to the use of Mary and Elizabeth, the two daughters of the said John Slanning, of Leye, in succession, in tail male, with remainder to the use of the said

The Lysons, in their account of Tamerton, p. 471, state that Maristow was resold by the Champernowns, in 1550, to John Slanning, of Shaugh, Esq., and the steward may have had a house there.

The manor of Modbury belonged to the Champernowns, and John Slanning can only have had a limited interest in it.

The earlier books in the Prerogative, containing copies of wills, are marked with the names of officials, or of persons of some note at the time, and not, like the modern ones, by years.