James Chaloner

a younger son of Sir Tho. Chaloner mention’d before, under the year 1615, was born in London, and at 13 years of age 1616, became a Communer of Brasnose Coll, where continuing 3 or 4 years, went afterwards either to travel or to the Inns of Court. Upon the breaking out of the Civil War in 1642, he sided with the Parliament, and being a person of a mean fortune and ready to run with all Parties, he was chosen a Recruiter for Auldborough or Oldburg in Yorksh. to sit in that unhappy Parliament which began at Westminster 3 Nov. 1640, upon the receeding of two loyal persons (who had been elected by the Members of that Borough) to his Majesty at Oxon. About the same time he took the Covenant, and afterwards siding with the Independents, was, by the power of Fairfax the Generalissimo, appointed Secretary to the Committee for the reformation of the University of Oxon in 1647, and in the year following, upon Cromwells Invitation, one of the Judges of King Ch. 1. Afterwards he was appointed one of the three Commissioners by the said Fairfax to survey and take an account of the Isle of Man, an. 1652. which Isle had been given to him the said Fairfax by the Parliament for the great service he did them against the King, and at length was made Governour of one of the Castles there, known, if I mistake not, by the name of Peel Castle. He hath written,

A short Treatise of the Isle of Man. Lond. 1656. fol. divided in six Chapters. Illustrated with Cuts, and published by Daniel King of Cheshire, at the end of the survey of Cheshire, intit. The Vale Royal of England, written by Will. Smith and Will. Webb Gentlemen. This Dan. King who was a pitiful pretender to Antiquities, was a most ignorant silly Fellow, (as Sir Will. Dugdale hath informed me by letters,) an errant Knave, and not able to write one line of true English. Afterwards he married a light Huswife, who stealing that money from him which for many years before he had been scraping together by his progging and necessitous tricks and shifts, died heartbroken for his loss near York house in the Strand within the liberty of Westminster, about 1664. As for Chaloner, who was esteemed by some an ingenious man, and a singular lover of Antiquities, he had made divers Collections of Arms, Genealogies, Seals, Monuments, &c. from antient Evidences: which being so done, were fairly written by him in paper books, and afterwards perused by the learned Dr. Rob. Sanderson an eminent Antiquary, as some of his Collections from the said books inform me. The said Chaloner also had made Collections of Arms, Monuments, &c. in Staffordshire, Shropshire, and Chester; which coming into the hands of John son of Augustine Vincent Windsore Herald, were by him intit. Chaloners Collections for Staffordshire, Salop and Chester, marked with J. C. What became of them after his death, which hapned in Drewry-lane in January 1671, I know not.1660. In Mar. or Apr. in sixteen hundred and sixty, were Messengers sent from the superior Power then in being to take into their custody the said James Chaloner, and to secure his Castle for the use of his Majesty; but he having received timely notice of their coming, he dispatched away himself by poyson, taken, as ’tis said, in a Posset, made by his Concubine, whom he there for several years had kept, leaving then behind him a son named Edmund of about 19 years of age, begotten on the body of his lawful wife named Ursula, daughter of Sir Will. Fairfax of Steeton in Yorkshire.