Thomas Chaloner

Sir Thomas Chaloner (1559 – 17 November 1615) was an English courtier and Governor of the Courtly College for the household of Prince Henry, son of James I. He was also responsible for introducing alum manufacturing to England. He was Member of Parliament for St Mawes in 1586 and for Lostwithiel in 1604. His third son was the Regicide Parliamentarian Thomas Chaloner. He is sometimes confused with his cousin Thomas Chaloner, a naturalist who prospected for alum. Elizabethan period Chaloner was the illegitimate son of statesman and poet Sir Thomas Chaloner, and Ethelreda Frodsham; his father died in 1565, and his mother then married Edward Brocket (son of Sir John Brocket, knt., of Wheathampstead, Hertfordshire). He owed his education mainly to his father's friend, William Cecil, Lord Burghley, at St Paul's School, London and at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he was noted for his poetical abilities, but took no degree. In 1579 Chaloner wrote the dedication to Lord Burghley of his father's poetical works. He began his travels in 1580, and became, especially in Italy, intimate with the learned men of the time. He returned home three years after to become a favourite at court, and married Elizabeth, daughter of his father's friend, William Fleetwood, then Recorder of London. Her sister married Sir David Foulis, 1st Baronet. He was M.P. for St Mawes in 1586 and for Lostwithiel in 1604. In 1588 he taught, at Christ Church, Oxford, Robert Dudley, son of Robert, Earl of Leicester, and was knighted while serving with the English army in France in 1591. In 1592 Chaloner was made justice of the peace for Buckinghamshire. In 1596–7 he was again abroad, and his letters, chiefly from Florence, to the Earl of Essex and Anthony Bacon are in the Lambeth Library.