Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 10.djvu/265

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Chilmark
257
Chilmead

carefully trained and disciplined. What he had done for himself he was willing that others should also do for themselves, and he recognised that the result of each man's investigation would probably find a different expression according to his education, prejudices, and his moral earnestness. He abandoned the search for any absolute system, and was contented to discover one which in his opinion was free from serious error. Hence, on the one hand, he argued for a greater emancipation of the individual reason from authority than had hitherto been claimed; on the other hand, he set up toleration as the necessary 'element' for the intellectual life of reasonable men. On both these points, however, Chillingworth's position was purely intellectual, and he did not face the practical issues which immediately opened before him. His conception of the articles, as articles of peace and union, not necessarily articles of belief, paid no heed to the church as an organised society, and would have destroyed its corporate unity. His plan for toleration was founded upon the impossibility of any man attaining to more than relative certainty, and would have rendered zeal and enthusiasm impossible. In fact, Chillingworth's views, lofty as they were, laboured under the defects of an academic thinker whose experience of intellectual problems was larger than his knowledge of the world and of human nature. Still, he put forward a conception of rationalism which was destined to influence other branches of speculation besides theology, and he stated an idea of toleration which was soon fruitful of results.

The early editions of Chillingworth's works have been already mentioned. Besides these is an edition, Dublin, 1762, London, 8 vols. 1820; and the best modern edition, Oxford, 3 vols. 1838. In the Lambeth MSS. Codd. Miscell. No. 943, there are eighteen short papers of Chillingworth, chiefly on points of controversy, and in the Bodleian, Tanner 233, are a few others.

[Wood's Athenæ Oxon. ii. 20, &c.; Des Maizeaux, Historical and Critical Account of the Life of William Chillingworth (Lond. 1725); Life by Rev. Thomas Birch, prefixed to the edition of Chillingworth's Works, 1742; article on Chillingworth in Biographia Britannica, ii. 1322, &c.]

M. C.


CHILMARK or CHYLMARK, JOHN (fl. 1386), schoolman, was a fellow of Merton College, Oxford (Leland, Collectanea, iii. 55), and a master of arts. It appears from an account preserved among the muniments of Exeter College that in 1386 he paid ten shillings ‘in parte solutionis scolarum bassarum iuxta scholas ubi scamuum situatur in medio' (Wood, History and Antiquities of the University of Oxford, ed. Gutch, vol. ii. pt. ii. p. 742); so that in that year he must have been engaged in lecturing in the schools belonging to Exeter College. (On the intercourse subsisting between Exeter and Merton see C. W. Boase, Register of Exeter College, intr. p. ix.) Chilmark enjoyed a considerable reputation for his attainments in philosophy, and specially in mathematics; but his best known work, ‘De Actione Elementorum, was a parently only an abridgment of one by Dumbleton (‘Compendium e Actione Elementorum abstractum de quarta parte J. Dumbletoni,’ Bodl. Libr. Cod. Diqb. 77, ff. 153 b to 163). Chilmark’s other productions, which are unpublished, are entitled ‘De Motu’ (Cod. Bodl. 676, ff. ll-38); ‘De Qualitate sc., Propositionis’ (ibid. ff. 69 b to 75 b); and ‘De Alteratione’ (ibid. ff. 76-101). The first and third of these exist also in a manuscript at New College, Oxford (Cod. 289), which moreover contains Chilmark’s treatises ‘De Augmentatione,' ‘De Prioritate,’ and ‘De Aggregatione’ (H. O. Coxe, Cat. of Oxford MSS., New College, p. 104, col. 2). Tanner (Bibl. Brit. p. 178) Further mentions ‘Opuscula Logica’ as found in a Merton manuscript, which seems to have disappeared, and a treatise ‘De Accidentiis Planetarum,’ which is possibly only a mistake for the ‘De Actione [also called ‘De Accidentiis,’ Leland, l.c.] Elementorum.’

[See also Leland’s Comm. de Script. Brit. cdlviii. pp. 397 f.; Bale's Script. Brit. Cat. vi. 99, 605.]

R. L. P.


CHILMEAD, EDMUND (1610–1654), miscellaneous writer (erroneously mentioned as Edward in several books), was born in 1610 at Stow-in-the-Wold, Gloucestershire. He became one of the clerks of Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1625, and copied out music-books for the college choir in 1632 and 1634. He graduated B.A. in 1628, and M.A. in 1632, and became in the latter year one of the chaplains of Christ Church, Oxford. He was ejected in 1648 as a royalist, and came to London in great necessity. Here he took lodgings with Thomas Este, the musician and printer of music. In a large room at the Black Horse, Aldersgate Street, Este’s house, he started a weekly musical meeting. He added to the income thus earned by translating. While at college, in 1636, he drew up ‘Catalogue MSS. Græcorum in Bibl. Bod.’ for the use of students, considered the most complete of its time, and in 1640 he published) ‘A Treatise of the Essence, Causes, Symptoms, Prognosticks, and Cures of Love or Erotique