Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 09.djvu/443

  Fields Burial Ground; Proceedings in reference to its Preservation, 1867,' bear his signature. For many years after the foundation of the commission its actions did not meet with the approval of the public, but for some time before Chalk's retirement the increased resources at its command and the improvement which ensued in the pecuniary condition of the clergy led to a change in opinion. His cautious and impassive demeanour was affected neither by censure nor by praise. 

CHALKHILL, JOHN (fl. 1600), poet, was the author of a work which was published under the title of 'Thealma and Clearchus. A Pastoral History in smooth and easie Verse. Written long since by John Chalkhill, Esq., an Acquaintant and Friend of Edmund Spencer,' London, 1683, 8vo. The poem, which possesses considerable merit, was edited by Izaak Walton, whose preface is dated 7 May 1678, though the work was not published till five years later, when the editor was ninety years old. Walton, who had known the writer, says of him: 'And I have also this truth to say of the author, that he was in his time a man generally known and as well belov'd; for he was humble and obliging in his behaviour, a gentleman, a scholar, very innocent and prudent: and indeed his whole life was useful, quiet, and virtuous.' In the 'Compleat Angler,' published thirty years before, there occur two songs—'O, the sweet contentment' and 'O, the gallant fisher's life'—signed 'Io Chalkhill.' So meagre were the facts known of the author of 'Thealma and Clearchus' until a comparatively recent period that the Rev. Samuel W. Singer, in the introduction to a reprint of the poem issued from the Chiswick Press in 1820, advanced the theory, afterwards adopted by a writer in the 'Retrospective Review,' that Walton was its author as well as its editor, and that Chalkhill was altogether 'a fictitious personage.' But Mr. F. Somner Merryweather, in two letters in the 'Gentleman's Magazine' for 1860, has shown from the Middlesex county records that towards the close of Queen Elizabeth's reign Ivon or Ion Chalkhill, Gent., was one of the coroners for that county, and that he subscribed his name 'Ion' and sometimes 'Io Chalkhill,' just as it is subscribed to the songs in Walton's 'Angler.' It is conjectured, therefore, that the coroner may have been identical with the poet. Moreover it is worthy of note that Walton married Ann Ken, a sister of Bishop Ken and daughter of Thomas Ken, an attorney, by his first wife. This Thomas Ken married a second wife, Martha Chalkhill, the second daughter of John Chalkhill of Kingsbury in Middlesex, and of Martha his wife, daughter of Thomas Brown, great-aunt to John Brown, who was clerk of the parliament.

Chalkhill has been conjecturally credited with the authorship of another poem, 'Alcilia, Philopartheus Louing Follie,' but that he did not write that work is conclusively shown by Dr. A. B. Grosart in the introduction to his reprint of that work (Manchester, 1879) from the unique copy of the original edition (1595) preserved in the town library at Hamburg. 

CHALKLEY, THOMAS (1675–1741), quaker, the son of George Chalkley, a quaker tradesman in Southwark, was sent to a day school when nine years old. Chalkley was fond of gambling till, when he was ten years old, he was convinced of its sinfulness, and burnt a pack of cards which he had saved money to buy. When about twenty he was pressed and carried on board a ship of war. On his saying that he would not fight, the captain ordered him to be put ashore. At this time he was apprenticed to his father. When he was out of his time he spent some months in visiting most of the quaker meetings in the south of England, and then worked as a journeyman with his father. In 1697 he paid a ministerial visit to Edinburgh, where he preached in the open air, as the Friends had been locked out of their meeting-house. The provost returned the keys on the ground that they would do less harm indoors than out. Chalkley sailed from Gravesend at the end of 1697, and landed at Virginia in January 1698. He seems to have visited nearly every place of any size in the puritan colonies, and on his return to England married Martha Betterton in 1699. He then returned to America, and in 1700 bought some land in Philadelphia. The following year he made a preaching excursion to 