Parliamentary Activities
In April 1640, Slanning was elected Member of Parliament for Plympton Erle for the Short Parliament in what appears to be an unresolved double return. Slanning was also the Lieutenant-Colonel of a "trayned band" of 157 men, two-thirds musketeers and the remainder pikemen. He and Sir Francis Bassett were given the responsibility for levies from the West of Cornwall for the Second Bishops' War. After the Treaty of Ripon he hurried back to stand for Parliament.
In October 1640 Slanning was elected for both Plympton Erle and Penryn to the Long Parliament (in a way which was to give rise to charges of bribery), and chose to sit for Penryn. 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 later married 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 9 August, he was barred from the Commons and ordered to attend the House as a "delinquent".
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Famous quotes containing the word activities:
“Both gossip and joking are intrinsically valuable activities. Both are essentially social activities that strengthen interpersonal bonds—we do not tell jokes and gossip to ourselves. As popular activities that evade social restrictions, they often refer to topics that are inaccessible to serious public discussion. Gossip and joking often appear together: when we gossip we usually tell jokes and when we are joking we often gossip as well.”
—Aaron Ben-Ze’Ev, Israeli philosopher. “The Vindication of Gossip,” Good Gossip, University Press of Kansas (1994)