Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 10.djvu/39

 the barber surgeons in 1541, Dr. Chambre is depicted kneeling first of the three royal physicians on the king's right hand, witnessing the giving of the sealed charter into the hand of Thomas Vicary. He wears a gown trimmed with fur, and has a biretta-like cap on his head. He has a straight, but somewhat short, nose, well-marked eyebrows, a very long clean-shaven chin, and an almost severe expression of face. Chambre was censor of the College of Physicians in 1523. He wrote no medical book, but some of his prescriptions for lotions and plasters are preserved in manuscript (Sloane MS, 1047, Brit. Mus. ff. 25-9, and 84-6), and a letter signed by him on the health of Queen Jane Seymour is extant. His first preferment was an ecclesiastical one, and he received much advancement in the church. In 1508 he was given the living of Bowden in Leicestershire, from 1494 to 1509 he held the prebend of Codringham in Lincoln Cathedral, and from 1509 to 1549 that of Leighton Buzzard in the same, and in the same diocese, as then constituted, he held the archdeaconry of Bedford from 1525 to 1549, while he was also treasurer of Wells 1510 to 1543, and in 1537 canon of Wiveliscombe; he was precentor of Exeter 1524 to 1549, canon of Windsor 1509 to 1549, warden of Merton College, Oxford, 1525 to 1544, archdeacon of Meath 1540 to 1542, and dean of the collegiate chapel of St. Stephen's, Westminster. Thus in 1540 this royal physician was also head of a college at Oxford, and held preferments in one Irish and three English dioceses. He built the beautiful cloisters of St. Stephen's chapel at his own cost, but lived to see them demolished while he himself acquiesced in the changes of the times. He died in 1549, and was buried in St. Margaret's, Westminster.  CHAMBRE, WILLIAM (fl. 1365?), whom Wharton considers to have been one of the continuators of Robert de Graystanes' 'Historia Dunelmensis,' appears to have flourished in the latter half of the fourteenth century. Wharton, however, calls him the author of all the 'Continuation of Graystanes' printed in the 'Anglia Sacra, and as this extends to 1571, it is probable that he would have assigned William de Chambre to the sixteenth century or later. The entire question, however, in the absence of direct information, resolves itself into one of internal evidence. The whole or part of the so-called 'Continuation of Robert de Graystanes' is preserved in three manuscripts. In every case it follows immediately after Graystanes' 'Historia Dunelmensis,' which appears to have been completed about 1837. Of these three exemplars one is to be found in the library of the dean and chapter at York (xvi. i. 12); another at the British Museum {Cotton. MS. Titus A, ii.); and the third in the Bodleian Library at Oxford (Fairfax MS. 6). The Cotton. MS., which, however, only contains a small part of the 'Continuation,' breaks off after the conclusion of the life in 1345 of Richard de Bury; Richard was the successful competitor of Graystanes for the see of Durham. This part of the 'Continuation' bears a note ascribing the 'Vita Ricardi' to William de Chambre. The Oxford manuscript agrees with the Cotton. MS. up to the election of Richard, after which it omits the concluding passage of Graystanes' work and transposes the position of the first paragraph relating to Richard de Bury. From this point to the death of the last-named bishop it agrees almost verbally with the Cotton. MS. This Oxford manuscript, however, is continued in different hands to 1571; and it should be noticed that both the character of the writing and the colour of the ink show a very marked change at the point where the history of Graystanes and the 'Vita Ricardi' touch. Ink and handwriting again change at the conclusion of the 'Vita,' and once or twice more in the course of the remaining fifteen leaves of this manuscript.

The only reason given by Wharton for ascribing the whole of the 'Continuatio Historiæ Dunelmensis,' as found in the Oxford manuscript, to William de Chambre, is that in the Cotton. MS. the 'Vita Ricardi' is assigned to this author. But it is evident from the description just given of this 'Vita' that, even in the Oxford manuscript of the 'Continuatio,' it stands out as a distinct work from Graystanes' 'History' which procedes it, and the loose collection of documents that follows it. Hence it is quite conceivable, and even probable, that it was written, as the Cotton. MS. states, by William de Chambre, who, in this case, need not be considered as the author of what follows in the Oxford manuscript. This conclusion is supported by the account Mr. Raine gives of the York manuscript, the whole of which, including the 'Vita Ricardi' (but apparently no more of the 'Continuatio Historiæ Dunelmensis'), is written in a fourteenth-century hand. Hence the author of the 'Vita' must have lived in this century, and may very well have been a contemporary of the bishop