Thomas Chaloner (court official)

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Sir Thomas Chaloner (* 1561 or around 1564 ; † November 17, 1615 ) was an English court official who also founded the English alum industry on his property in Yorkshire .

Life

Chaloner was the illegitimate son of statesman and poet Thomas Chaloner (1521-1565) and was able to study at St. Paul's School in London and Oxford (Magdalen College) thanks to his father's friend William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley . After a trip to Italy from 1580 to 1583 he became a courtier and married the daughter Elizabeth of another friend of his father, William Fleetwood. In 1586 he was a Member of Parliament for St Mawes and in 1604 for Lostwithiel. While he was taking part in a military expedition to France in 1591, he was knighted as a Knight Bachelor . In 1592 he became Justice of the Peace in Buckinghamshire. In 1596/97 he was back in Italy, especially in Florence . From his father he had lands in Gisborough Abbey in Yorkshire, which was dissolved under King Henry VIII . On the advice of Robert Cecil , he went to Scotland at the end of the Elizabethan era and became a favorite of King James VI. of Scotland, later James I of England . From 1603 he was governor of the so-called Courtly College , the court of the son of Jacob I, Henry Frederick Stuart, Prince of Wales (1594-1612). He accompanied him to Oxford (Magdalen College) as the head of a small court. In 1605 he was commissioned to restore Kenilworth Castle .

The king also entrusted him with technological expertise. So he helped with the execution of fireworks and examined in court proceedings, for example, ship suppliers regarding powder. In 1608 he proposed the manufacture of earthenware water pipes.

He was married twice and had numerous children.

Alum industry

Alum was used, among other things, in the textile industry as a fixative for paints and was imported into England from the Papal States. When this was no longer possible after the break in relations with the Vatican under Henry VIII, alternatives were sought. Chaloner already had references to alum on his estates from a book by his cousin of the same name ( Thomas Chaloner ) from 1584 and he had studied alum production on his trip to Italy in the Papal States. In 1606/07 he entered into a partnership with his brother-in-law Sir David Foulis, Lord Sheffield and Sir John Bourchier and they received an alum monopoly for 31 years in northern England (imports were banned). The first factories were built around 1607. Yorkshire ruins are still a reminder of this early chemical industry in England. The alum shale was crushed and slowly roasted in piles to oxidize the iron sulfide to iron sulfate, which was then washed out. The remainder was concentrated by boiling and treated with base containing potassium (urine collected from the population, seaweed). The alum crystallized out faster and could be separated.

The alum industry had teething problems under James I, but was very profitable after Charles I nationalized it. The industry existed in Yorkshire until the 1850s and was replaced by a process for alum synthesis by Louis Le Chatelier . However, the role of alum in the textile industry soon waned with the introduction of synthetic dyes such as mauvein .

literature

  • Chaloner, Sir Thomas (? 1564-1615), of Richmond Palace, Surr., Steeple Claydon, Bucks. and Clerkenwell, Mdx. In: Andrew Thrush, John P. Ferris (Eds.): The History of Parliament. The House of Commons 1604-1629. Cambridge University Press 2010

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Derek Lowe, Das Chemiebuch, Librero 2017, p. 60
  2. ↑ For example, regarding the distinction from his eponymous cousin, the naturalist
  3. ↑ The book from 1586 mentioned there and the characterization as a natural scientist is confused with his cousin of the same name.
personal data
SURNAME Chaloner, Thomas
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British court official and chemical entrepreneur
DATE OF BIRTH around 1564
DATE OF DEATH November 17, 1615