‘On the Use of Masons' Marks in Scotland’ (xxxiv. 33), and ‘An Account of the Seal of the Chapter of the Holy Trinity at Brechin’ (xxxv. 487). He was also a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, to the ‘Transactions’ of which he made various contributions. He joined the British Archæological Association in 1849, and wrote for its ‘Journal’ (vi. 323–9) a paper on the ‘Resignation of the Kingdom of Man to the Pope, A.D. 1219.’
In the spring of 1854 Chalmers left Scotland for a tour on the continent, but an attack of small-pox, from which he suffered on his arrival in Italy, was followed by a renewal of his spinal complaint, and he died at Rome on 23 June 1854. His body was taken home to Scotland and buried in the ancient church at Auldbar, the rebuilding of which he had just completed. Besides occupying himself in antiquarian research, Chalmers ‘spent time and money in improving the dwellings and gardens of the labourers on his estate,’ and wrote various ‘pamphlets on the improvement of statute labour, roads, and other county matters.’ He married the daughter of Herbert Foley of Rudgway, Pembrokeshire, widow of Thomas Taylor Vernon.
[Journal of the British Archæological Association, xi. (1855) 164–70; Archæological Journal, index to vols. i–xxv.; Proceedings of the Soc. of Antiq. iii. (1853–6), 182; Annual Register, vol. xcvi. (1854), 23 June.]
CHALMERS, THOMAS, D.D. (1780–1847), theologian, preacher, and philanthropist, was born at Anstruther in Fife 17 March 1780. His father, John Chalmers, whose family had been connected with Fife for several generations, was a general merchant, possessed of good abilities and high character. Thomas was the sixth of fourteen children, and the family being so large, and both parents busy, the instruction of their children was committed chiefly to other hands. At the parish school he was ‘one of the idlest, strongest, merriest, and most generous-hearted boys.’ At the university of St. Andrews, during his first two sessions, he had the same character. His excess of vitality displayed itself in frolic and adventure. When he entered the mathematical classes, however, his intellect awoke and the vigour of his nature found a new outlet. Pure geometry had a strong attraction for him and exercised a great influence in moulding his mind. From his childhood he had for some reason desired to be a minister of the gospel, and this wish he carried out, though his worthy father could not but deplore his want of adequate seriousness. Mathematics and other branches of science had such a hold of his mind that he did not enter into the study of divinity con amore. Even after he was settled as minister of Kilmeny in Fife (May 1803) he continued to give courses of lectures on chemistry at St. Andrews, and before he was twenty-five he had been a candidate for the chair of natural philosophy at St. Andrews, and for that of mathematics at Edinburgh. In his parish the question of pauperism, and of social economy generally, engaged his attention from the first. His pulpit work at Kilmeny was also remarkable from the beginning. His ability as a preacher, original, independent, profoundly convinced of all he said, and striving with immense enthusiasm to inspire his audience with his views, soon carried his fame far and wide. His own mind had already been the scene of great religious conflicts. For some time, when a student, he had been attracted by materialism, but having emerged from that view of things, the French ‘system of nature’ had cast its spell on him, and he had long hovered on the confines of atheism. His misery under that state of mind, and the ‘sort of mental elysium’ in which he spent the first year of his emancipation from it, were ever afterwards vivid remembrances. But in his thirtieth year he underwent a more profound religious change. Partly through his being employed to write the article ‘Christianity’ for the ‘Edinburgh Encyclopædia,’ then coming out under the editorship of Mr. (afterwards Sir David) Brewster; partly from his reading Wilberforce's ‘View of Practical Religion;’ and partly from the effects of a severe illness and family trials, he accepted with great earnestness the evangelical view of the gospel, and from this time (1810), being now in his thirty-first year, he became a pronounced, though still independent, evangelical preacher. The tone of his pulpit ministrations was elevated greatly, and his fame was such that in November 1814 he was nominated by the town council of Glasgow minister of the Tron parish there, removing to it in 1815.
Before leaving Kilmeny, besides a controversial pamphlet, he had published a book entitled ‘An Inquiry into the Extent and Stability of National Resources,’ of which the object was to show that even if Napoleon succeeded in his endeavour to shut all European ports against British merchandise, the effect would not be, as many mercantile men dreaded, to ruin British trade, but only to cut off certain superfluities, and turn to other and perhaps better purposes the fund out of which these luxuries had been supplied. His article on ‘Christianity’ appeared in the
