SLATER, Richard (1634-99), of Nottingham and Nuthall, Notts.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1660-1690, ed. B.D. Henning, 1983
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

Mar. 1679
Oct. 1679
1698 - 17 Aug. 1699

Family and Education

b. 25 Nov. 1634, 1st. s. of Anthony Slater, Grocer, of Cheapside, London and Stainsby, Stainton, Yorks. by Jane. da. of Richard Woodward, Grocer, of London. educ. L. Inn 1651. m. Elizabeth, 3 da. suc. fa. 1639.1

Offices Held

Commr. for militia, Notts. 1659, Mar. 1660, j.p. Mar.-July 1660, Feb. 1688-d.; commr. for assessment, Notts. 1673-80, 1689-90, Nottingham 1679-80; sheriff, Notts. 1676-7, dep. lt. Feb. 1688-d.; commr. for inquiry into recusancy fines, Notts., Derbys. and Lincs. Mar. 1688.2

Biography

Slater’s father and grandfather, both members of the Grocers’ Company, had acquired considerable though scattered landed property. Besides three valuable messuages in London, he inherited the manor of Stainsby with 300 acres, two-thirds of the manor of Nuthall with 370 acres and the reversion of King’s Norton Grange in Worcestershire with 140 acres. His mother’s re-marriage to Sir John Farwell, of a Somerset gentry family, no doubt helped him socially, but did not suffice to retain him in local office after the Restoration. He was enough of an Anglican to present a chalice and paten to Nuthall church in 1662. During the second Dutch war he was described as an ill-affected person, zealous in publishing ill news, and his house at Nottingham the resort of all those of like temper. ‘The meetings at his house resemble London coffee-houses for liberty of speech and descanting upon their intelligence.’ He was duly suppressed, and little more is known of him until he was returned for the borough, some five miles from his principal residence, to the three Exclusion Parliaments. He was marked ‘honest’ by Shaftesbury, and was moderately active in 1679, when he was named to the committee to take the disbandment accounts and to three others; but he was absent from the exclusion bill division. He was very active in the second Exclusion Parliament, being appointed to 17 committees, of which the most important were for the comprehension bill and repealing the Corporations Act. At Oxford he was named only to the committee of elections and privileges. He made no speeches.3

Slater seems to have been bolder out of Parliament, for in 1682 he joined William Sacheverell in resisting the new charter, and he opposed the court candidates at the Nottinghamshire election of 1685, desisting only when the Pierrepont interest declared against him. Like Sacheverell, he became a Whig collaborator in 1688. He was added to the lieutenancy and made a commissioner of inquiry into recusancy fines. James II’s electoral agents recommended him for Nottingham as having fully declared himself in the King’s interest, but he does not seem to have stood in 1689. When he regained his seat he voted with the Whigs. He died on 17 Aug. 1699 at the age of 64. Nuthall eventually came to his great-grandson Sir Charles Sedley, MP for Nottingham 1747-54 and 1774-8.4

Ref Volumes: 1660-1690

Author: John. P. Ferris

Notes

  • 1. Wards 7/93/271; Vis. London (Harl. Soc. xvii), 367.
  • 2. Cal. Treas. Bks. viii. 1806.
  • 3. Wards 5/32; Som. Wills, iv. 66; R. Holden, An Ancient Yew Tree’s Story, 9; CSP Dom. 1667, pp. 333, 415.
  • 4. CSP Dom. 1682, p. 437; 1687-9, p. 273; Spencer mss, John Millington to Ld. Halifax, 23 Mar. 1685; Thoroton, Notts. ii. 254-6; Luttrell, iv. 552; information from K.S.S. Train.