Background
He was born at Bifrons near Canterbury, second son of Sir Guylford Slingsby, Controller of the Navy, and Margaret Walter. He was the grandson of Sir Francis Slingsby of Scriven and thus a first cousin of Sir Henry Slingsby, 1st Baronet.
He was born at Bifrons near Canterbury, second son of Sir Guylford Slingsby, Controller of the Navy, and Margaret Walter. He was the grandson of Sir Francis Slingsby of Scriven and thus a first cousin of Sir Henry Slingsby, 1st Baronet.
He entered the Navy as a boy and when only 22 was given his first command, the Eighth Lyon"s Whelp. In 1636 he commanded the Third Lyon"s Whelp, and then the Expedition, in which he transported arms from the Tower of London to Edinburgh in 1640. He then commanded a small squadron in the English Channel, and in 1642 escorted the Portuguese Ambassador to Lisbon in the Garland.
On the outbreak of the Civil War he declared for Charles I, but his men mutinied and he was imprisoned.
On his release he joined the King at Oxford and in 1644 went to the Continent to raise funds. Robert later returned to England alone, and in 1650, like so many defeated Royalists, he compounded id est (that is) paid a fine in return for being left with sufficient means to live on.
Robert was then described as being "infirm and wounded, and not likely to live long". At the Restoration, he was given his father"s old office of Controller of the Navy, and made first and last of the Slingsby baronets of Newcells.
He had already presented the King with his book "The Past and Present State of His Majesty"s Navy" which argued for regular payment, prohibition of trading by officers and the encouragement of merchant shipping.
Samuel Pepys praised the great efforts Slingsby had taken over it, but added drily that he had too high an opinion of his own work. Despite such occasional jibes, a warm friendship sprung up between Slingsby and Pepys: Slingsby invited Pepys regularly to his house, read him his verses, and drew on his memory of the Navy to explain how Pepys" own office, Clerk of the Acts, had been performed when he was young. Slingsby did not enjoy office long: on 22 October 1661 Pepys noted that he was sick of ague and fever (an intermittent fever which killed several thousand people in London in 1661-1664), and on the 24th he "continued ill, which makes them all afeared for him".
He died on 26 October to Pepys" grief: "he being a man that had loved me and had many qualities that made me love him above all the officers and Commissioners in the Navy".
Both Batten and Penn professed grief at Slingsby" death, but Pepys regarded them as a pair of hypocrites. He had no son and the title died with him.
According to Pepys he had at least one daughter.