(Vol. vi., p. 292.)
I have been waiting for several months in expectation of seeing some
satisfactory reply to URSULA'S Query. It seems, however, that, in common
with myself, your numerous correspondents are quite at a nonplus. Wood,
in his _Athenæ Oxoniensis_, vol. ii. p. 163., mentions this Edmund
Chaloner as being about nineteen (URSULA says twenty-one) years old at
the death of his father, James Chaloner, in 1660. Wood, Granger, as also
Burke in his _Extinct Baronetage_, represent James as being the fourth
son of Sir Thomas Chaloner of Gisborough, in the county of York, and
this appears to be the general impression as to his parentage. In a
_History of Cheshire_, however, written, I believe, by Cowdray, and
published in 1791, the author claims him as a native of that county, and
makes him to be of much {335} humbler birth and descent than any of his
other biographers. Hear him in his own words:
"Our succeeding (Cheshire) collectors form a family harmonic
trio, a father, son, and grandson, of the surname of Chaloner,
and of the several Christian names, Thomas, Jacob, and
_James_. Thomas was an arms-painter in Chester about 1594; he
knew the value of learning sufficiently to give his son a
better education than he received himself. And this son
followed the same occupation in Chester, and made collections,
about the year 1620. But it was _James_, the grandson, who
reflected the greatest credit upon his family, by a very
concise, accurate, and sensible account of the Isle of Man,
printed at the end of King's _Vale Royal_, in 1656. He laid
the foundation of a learned education in our much honoured
college (Brazennoze); and when the parliament invested Lord
Fairfax with the Seignory of Man, he was one of his lordship's
three commissioners for settling the affairs of that island.
The antiquarian collections of all the three Chaloners are
valuable."
Without specially binding myself to either one of these conflicting
testimonies, I may be allowed to suggest that, apart from any proof to
the contrary, the inference that he was a native of Chester is a
perfectly fair and legitimate one. His _Short Treatise of the Isle of
Man_, which was the only work he ever sent to press, was printed at the
end of that famous Cheshire work, the _Vale Royal of England_, in 1656,
and was illustrated with engravings by Daniel King, the editor of that
work, himself a Cheshire man. Independent of this, his biographer Wood
informs us that he was "a singular lover of antiquities," and that he
"made collections of arms, monuments, &c., in Staffordshire, Salop, and
_Chester_," the which collections are now, I believe, in the British
Museum.* He made no collections for Yorkshire, nor yet for London, where
he is stated by Wood to have been born. One thing is certain, James
Chaloner of Chester was living at the time this treatise was written,
and was, moreover, a famous antiquary, and a collector for this, his
native county; but whether he was, _de facto_, the regicide, or merely
his cotemporary, I leave it to older and wiser heads to determine.