He was educated like his father at Emmanuel College, Cambridge where he studied mathematics.

On 18 May 1812, he married Augusta Law,[1] daughter of George Henry Law, Bishop of Chester and under his patronage Slade was made Rector of Teversham, Cambridgeshire in 1813 and a Canon of Chester Cathedral in 1816.

[2] The following year, it was arranged for him to exchange his Teversham living for the position of vicar of Bolton le Moors,[3] then a large parish in the Diocese of Chester with a fast-growing population living in appalling conditions with only one town centre parish church.

For the next forty years Canon Slade dedicated himself to improving the conditions of the people of Bolton and to building churches in the expanding suburbs.

On 29 December 1856, he resigned his Bolton living and retired to West Kirby on the Wirral Peninsula.