southward, penetrated the Straits of Magellan, touched at Montevideo, recrossed the Atlantic by Ascension and the Azores, and reached Sheerness in May 1876. This voyage is without parallel in the history of scientific research. The “Challenger ” Report was issued in fifty volumes (London, 1880–1895), mainly under the direction of Sir John Murray, who succeeded Wyville Thomson in this work in 1882. Specialists in every branch of science assisted in its production. The zoological collections alone formed the basis for the majority of the volumes; the deep-sea soundings and samples of the deposits, the chemical analysis of water samples, the meteorological, water-temperature, magnetic, geological, and botanical observations were fully worked out, and a summary of the scientific results, narrative of the cruise and indices were also provided.
See also Lord G. Campbell, Log Letters from the “Challenger ”, (1876); W. J. J. Spry, Cruise of H.M.S. “Challenger ” (1876); Sir C. Wyville Thomson, Voyage of the “Challenger,” The Atlantic, Preliminary Account of General Results (1877); J. J. Wild, At Anchor; Narrative of Experiences afloat and ashore during the Voyage of H.M.S. “Challenger ” (1878); H. N. Moseley, Notes by a Naturalist on the “Challenger ” (1879).
CHALLONER, RICHARD (1691–1781), English Roman Catholic prelate, was born at Lewes, Sussex, on the 29th of September 1691. After the death of his father, who was a rigid Dissenter, his mother, left in poverty, lived with some Roman Catholic families. Thus it came about that he was brought up as a Roman Catholic, chiefly at the seat of Mr Holman at Warkworth, Northamptonshire, where the Rev. John Gother, a celebrated controversialist, officiated as chaplain. In 1704 he was sent to the English College at Douai, where he was ordained a priest in 1716, took his degrees in divinity, and was appointed professor in that faculty. In 1730 he was sent on the English mission and stationed in London. The controversial treatises which he published in rapid succession attracted much attention, particularly his Catholic Christian Instructed (1737), which was prefaced by a witty reply to Dr Conyers Middleton’s Letters from Rome, showing an Exact Conformity between Popery and Paganism. Middleton is said to have been so irritated that he endeavoured to put the penal laws in force against his antagonist, who prudently withdrew from London. In 1741 Challoner was raised to the episcopal dignity at Hammersmith, and nominated coadjutor with right of succession to Bishop Benjamin Petre, vicar-apostolic of the London district, whom he succeeded in 1758. He resided principally in London, but was obliged to retire into the country during the “No Popery” riots of 1780. He died on the 12th of January 1781, and was buried at Milton, Berkshire. Bishop Challoner was the author of numerous controversial and devotional works, which have been frequently reprinted and translated into various languages. He compiled the Garden of the Soul (1740?), which continues to be the most popular manual of devotion among English-speaking Roman Catholics, and he revised an edition of the Douai version of the Scriptures (1749–1750), correcting the language and orthography, which in many places had become obsolete. Of his historical works the most valuable is one which was intended to be a Roman Catholic antidote to Foxe’s well-known martyrology. It is entitled Memoirs of Missionary Priests and other Catholicks of both Sexes who suffered Death or Imprisonment in England on account of their Religion, from the year 1577 till the end of the reign of Charles II. (2 vols. 1741, frequently reprinted). He also published anonymously, in 1745, the lives of English, Scotch and Irish saints, under the title of Britannia Sancta, an interesting work which has, however, been superseded by that of Alban Butler.
For a complete list of his writings see J. Gillow’s Bibl. Dict. of Eng. Cath. i. 452-458; Barnard, Life of R. Challoner (1784); Flanagan, History of the Catholic Church in England (1857); there is also a critical history of Challoner by Rev. E. Burton.
CHALMERS, ALEXANDER (1750–1834), Scottish writer, was born in Aberdeen on the 29th of March 1759. He was educated as a doctor, but gave up this profession for journalism, and he was for some time editor of the Morning Herald. Besides editions of the works of Shakespeare, Beattie, Fielding, Johnson, Warton, Pope, Gibbon, Bolingbroke, he published A General Biographical Dictionary in 32 vols.(1812–1817); a Glossary to Shakspeare (1797); an edition of Steevens’s Shakespeare (1809); and the British Essayists, beginning with the Tatler and ending with the Observer, with biographical and historical prefaces and a general index. He died in London on the 19th of December 1834.
CHALMERS, GEORGE (1742–1825), Scottish antiquarian and political writer, was born at Fochabers, a village in the county of Moray, in 1742. His father, James Chalmers, was a grandson of George Chalmers of Pittensear, a small estate in the parish of Lhanbryde, now St Andrews-Lhanbryde, in the same county, possessed by the main line of the family from about the beginning of the 17th to the middle of the 18th century. After completing the usual course at King’s College, Aberdeen, young Chalmers studied law in Edinburgh for several years. Two uncles on the father’s side having settled in America, he visited Maryland in 1763, with the view, it is said, of assisting to recover a tract of land of some extent about which a dispute had arisen, and was in this way induced to commence practice as a lawyer at Baltimore, where for a time he met with much success. Having, however, espoused the cause of the Royalist party on the breaking out of the American War of Independence, he found it expedient to abandon his professional prospects in the New World, and return to his native country. For the losses he had sustained as a colonist he received no compensation, and several years elapsed before he obtained an appointment that placed him in a state of comfort and independence.
In the meantime Chalmers applied himself with great diligence and assiduity to the investigation of the history and establishment of the English colonies in North America; and enjoying free access to the state papers and other documents preserved among what were then termed the plantation records, he became possessed of much important information. His work entitled Political Annals of the present United Colonies from their Settlement to the Peace of 1763, 4to, London, 1780, was to have formed two volumes; but the second, which should have contained the period between 1688 and 1763, never appeared. The first volume, however, is complete in itself, and traces the original settlement of the different American colonies, and the progressive changes in their constitutions and forms of government as affected by the state of public affairs in the parent kingdom. Independently of its value as being compiled from original documents, it bears evidence of great research, and has been of essential benefit to later writers. Continuing his researches, he next gave to the world An Estimate of the Comparative Strength of Britain during the Present and Four Preceding Reigns, London, 1782, which passed through several editions. At length, in August 1786, Chalmers, whose sufferings as a Royalist must have strongly recommended him to the government of the day, was appointed chief clerk to the committee of privy council on matters relating to trade, a situation which he retained till his death in 1825, a period of nearly forty years. As his official duties made no great demands on his time, he had abundant leisure to devote to his favourite studies,—the antiquities and topography of Scotland having thenceforth special attractions for his busy pen.
Besides biographical sketches of Defoe, Sir John Davies, Allan Ramsay, Sir David Lyndsay, Churchyard and others, prefixed to editions of their respective works, Chalmers wrote a life of Thomas Paine, the author of the Rights of Man, which he published under the assumed name of Francis Oldys, A.M., of the University of Pennsylvania; and a life of Ruddiman, in which considerable light is thrown on the state of literature in Scotland during the earlier part of the last century. His life of Mary, Queen of Scots, in two 4to vols., was first published in 1818. It is founded on a MS. left by John Whitaker, the historian of Manchester; but Chalmers informs us that he found it necessary to rewrite the whole. The history of that ill-fated queen occupied much of his attention, and his last work, A Detection of the Love-Letters lately attributed in Hugh Campbell’s work to Mary Queen of Scots, is an exposure of an attempt to represent as genuine some fictitious letters said to have passed between Mary and Bothwell
