James Chaloner

James Chaloner (1602–1660) was an English politician on the Parliamentary side in the English Civil War, and commissioner at the trial of King Charles I.

Chaloner was born in the parish of St Olave Silver Street, London, the fourth son of the courtier Sir Thomas Chaloner of Guisborough, Yorkshire, and Elizabeth Fleetwood of London, and grandson of Sir Thomas Chaloner, poet and ambassador of Queen Elizabeth. On 10 April 1648 he became one of the Members of Parliament for Aldborough, Yorkshire. He was not excluded from Parliament during Pride's Purge on 20 December 1648 and declared his opposition to the earlier Commons vote accepting Charles I's answers in the Treaty of Newport as grounds for continuing negotiations. In January 1649 he was appointed to sit as a commissioner at the trial of Charles I and sat for a total of six sessions. Unlike his elder brother Thomas Chaloner, he did not sign the royal death warrant.

During the Interregnum he was active in the Commonwealth and enjoyed the patronage of Thomas Fairfax, but under the Protectorate he played no active part in national politics. In 1655 he fell under suspicion of encouraging Fairfax to join the Sealed Knot uprising in Yorkshire, so to remove him from scrutiny Fairfax found him an appointment as governor of the Isle of Man. He was still the governor in 1659 when he declared for General George Monck during the second Commonwealth. The London faction of the New Model Army arrested him, but on 7 December that year, as the London faction's star fell and Monck's rose, the Rump ordered Chaloner's release, and in January 1660 confirmed his governorship of the Isle of Man.

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