The regicide Thomas Chaloner (1595–1661) was the third son of the famous Elizabethan naturalist, also named Thomas Chaloner (1561–1615). The older Chaloner married twice and sired eighteen children, and opened alum mines on his Yorkshire estates, but these were later confiscated by Charles I. It was probably the dispute over the mines’ revenues that led the family to support Cromwell during the civil wars, and encouraged the younger Chaloner to sign Charles’s death warrant and act as one of his judges. He was exempted from the pardon issued by Charles II at the Restoration, and fled to Holland, where he died the following year. He was a colourful figure in the drab days of the Commonwealth, who played practical jokes and was publicly denounced as a drunkard by Cromwell. Little is known about his last days in the pretty Dutch town of Middelburg, although one biographer claimed he died in abject poverty.