Thomas Chaloner (statesman)

A courtier, Roger was a Gentleman-Usher of the Privy Chamber to King Henry VIII, a Teller of the Receipt of the Exchequer, and a Freeman of the City of London through the Worshipful Company of Mercers.

Chaloner bought books for William Cecil in Antwerp including an illustrated work on architecture which he suggested might be useful for Burghley House at Stamford.

His most important work, De Rep. Anglorum instauranda libri decem, written while he was in Spain, was first published by William Malim (1579, 3 pts.

Janet E. Ashbee, 1901); A book of the Office of Servantes (1543), translated from Gilbert Cousin (Gilbertus Cognatus); and An homilie of Saint John Chrysostome ... Englished by T. C.

[5] In 1598 Chaloner is mentioned in Francis Meres' Palladis Tamia as a pastoral poet: "As Theocritus in Greeke, Virgil and Mantuan in Latine, Sanazar in Italian, and the Authour of Amyntae Gaudia and Walsinghams Melibaeus are the best for pastorall: so amongst us the best in this kind are Sir Philip Sidney, master Challener, Spencer, Stephen Gosson, Abraham Fraunce and Barnefield."

Palladis Tamia is important in English literary history as the first critical account of the poems and early plays of William Shakespeare.