Thomas Chaloner (courtier)

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 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.

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.

From this he recognised that the rock from which the alum was made was similar to that abundant in several areas in and around his cousin's Guisborough estate, in present day Redcar and Cleveland.

[8][9] In James I's time Chaloner's works suffered from acute unprofitability, frequent changes of management and claims of corrupt dealing.

Under Charles I the crown claimed them as royal mines, and they were granted to Sir Paul Pindar for £12,500 a year to the king and £2,240 to Edmund, Earl of Mulgrave and another, and after paying eight hundred workmen still produced an immense profit.

[4] He wrote to Chancellor Egerton that he was with James VI eight days before the death of Elizabeth I, advising on the government to be established at the Union of the Crowns when she died.

[11] Chaloner attended James on his journey to take possession of the English throne, and on the arrival at York headed the deputation to the mayor.

[4][12] Chaloner discussed with Robert, Lord Sidney a plan to extend the park of Nonsuch Palace for the convenience of the queen.

[14] In 1605 he attended the prince to Oxford — Magdalen College being chosen out of respect to him — and there, along with forty-two noblemen, gentlemen, and esquires, he was made a Master of Arts.

On Phineas Pette's trial for insufficiency as a shipwright, the king chose Chaloner to make the experiments on the powers and capacities of ships.

Bees, giving it in 1608 a good building site, with timber, stone, and forty tons of sea coal, with an acre and a half of adjoining land and there were two Chaloner scholarships still existing in 1890.