Edmund Chilmead
Edmund Chilmead, wrongly called Edward in various sources, was an English writer and translator active in Oxford during the Civil War and early Commonwealth periods. He is remembered mainly for his scholarly works, including those relating to Byzantine history and to music, and also as a practical musician, a few of his songs surviving in notation. Anthony à Wood described him as "a choice mathematician, a noted critic, and one that understood several tongues, especially the Greek, very well." He was a "Critic" in the academic sense, one who was skilled in the study or analysis of texts. His edition of the Chronographia of John Malalas was his most lasting contribution to scholarship.
Life
Chilmead of Stow on the Wold
Edmund Chilmead was born the first son of Henry Chillmead, at the parsonage house of Stow-on-the-Wold, Gloucestershire, between 4 and 5 o'clock in the morning of 15 March 1609/10, and was baptized at St Edward's church, Stow on 25 March 1610: the extended entry stands out in this otherwise formulaic register. A brother, John, and Grace Chilmead, were baptized there soon afterwards. If Henry Chillmead was ever a clergyman there, the Liber cleri is silent; but Stow historians have called him "rector". William Busted was presented to Stow rectory in 1603 by the lay patron Edmund Chamberlain , who in that year purchased the reputed manor of Stow-on-the Wold, and had the advowson. Busted's incumbency was interrupted at least once: he was re-instituted under Crown patronage as vicar or rector of Stow in 1613. Other Chilmead baptisms at Stow include Henry and Sara, while Geoffry Chilmead, son of Henry, born at Maugersbury c. 1631, attended Stow school and entered Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge a sizar in 1653, aged 22, later becoming vicar of South Benfleet and curate of Bowers Gifford in Essex.More likely, Henry Chilmead was a bailiff to Edmund Chamberlaine. His children's names, Edmund, John and Grace, mirror Chamberlaine's children and wife. He acted with Simon Egerton in a Chancery action concerning a bond. The manorial rights to the markets and rents at Stow, disputed by the town bailiffs and burgesses in 1606-07, remained with Chamberlain: through succeeding inquiries, Chilmead gave evidence in 1621 when Chamberlaine challenged the townsmen. Between 1613 and 1621 Chamberlain himself was in debtor's prison in London, having been surety for the debts of his brother, Sir John, to some £14,000.
In November 1623 Henry Chilmead, yeoman of Stow-on-the-Wold, brought suit in Star Chamber against Richard Hill of Stow, yeoman, and Charles Townsend, a King's Bench attorney, for having procured Chilmead's arrest by making a false return to a warrant issued "on a bond given by him on behalf of his master, Edward Chamberleyn, Esq". In 1631 Chamberlaine, endowing the marriage of his son John with his manors and estates, specifically excluded the messuage with two virgates of land in Maugersbury then in the tenure of Henry Chilmead, which he later sold privately. Making his will in April 1634, Chamberlaine gave ten pounds to Stow church, five pounds to the poor, and ten pounds to Henry Chilmead, who, next after John Chamberlaine, witnessed the will. In 1637 Henry Chilmeade was a bailiff to John Chamberlaine, Edmund's son and heir.
The Grammar School at Stow was re-edified adjacent to the churchyard in 1594, and further endowed in 1604, by Richard Shepham, a Warden of the Merchant Taylors in London, and received its Charter in 1612. Sir John Chamberlaine and his brother Edmund had entered Oxford University together in 1578/79, and probably their younger half-brother Thomas in 1582. Edmund's son, John Chamberlaine, matriculated from Magdalen College in 1624, and entered the Inner Temple in 1626. There lay the path of example and influence which led Edmund and John Chilmead to Magdalen soon afterwards.
Oxford career
Edmund Chilmead studied at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he graduated B.A. in February 1628-29, becoming a clerk from 1629 to 1634: He received his M.A. on 10 December 1631 as from Christ Church College, Oxford, and was ordained a deacon on 23 December 1632 : between 1632 and 1634 Magdalen College made payments to "Mro Chilmead" of £7.12s., 10s., and £2.18s. for copying music-books for the use of the choir, some of which have survived. He was a chaplain of Christ Church in 1641. His brother John followed closely in his footsteps, matriculating from Magdalen on 30 October 1629, aged 18, graduating B.A. on 12 November 1631, and receiving ordination to deacon on 23 September 1632. On the death of Edmund Chamberlaine in 1634, the advowson of Stow-on-the-Wold church was sold to Sir Robert Berkeley and Dr Samuel Fell, Dean of Christ Church College; and when William Busted died in 1642, Dr Fell, for the Dean and Chapter of Christ Church, presented Rowland Wilde to succeed him as rector.The song book compiled by the Christ Church organist and Oxford Professor of Music Edward Lowe includes Chilmead's music for settings of "A Pastoral Ode" by Thomas Randolph, with a reply and a chorus, "A Lover's Passion" by Thomas Carew, and the song Why, this is a sport, from Ben Jonson's The Gypsies Metamorphosed. His critical interest in the nature of sound is shown in his unpublished treatise De Sonis. This took the form of twenty inquiries on this theme, pertaining to the second and third centuries of experiments in Francis Bacon's Sylva Sylvarum of 1626.
During the mid-1630s he produced his catalogue of the Greek manuscripts of the Bodleian Library. A translation of Hues's Tractatus de Globis, published in 1639, has John Chilmead's name on the title-page as M.A. of Christ Church, but is usually attributed to Edmund. Edmund's translation of Ferrand's Erotomania, a work concerned with lovesickness as melancholy, was published in 1640. At Christ Church, Edmund was a friend and scholarly companion of his contemporary John Gregory, the brilliant but reclusive orientalist. After Gregory's withdrawal from Oxford, and his premature death in March 1646/47, Chilmead came into possession of his translations from Greek into Latin of the De Gentibus Indiae, et Brachmanibus attributed to Palladius of Galatia, the De Moribus Brachmanorum attributed to St Ambrosius, and the anonymous De Brachmanibus, concerning the "Brahmans", which were eventually put forth by their patron Edward Bysshe, under his own name in 1665.
Ancient music
The treatise De Sonis, mentioned by Wood, was written in Oxford days and remained in MS. Two short original works by Chilmead relating to Greek music and prosody were later discovered by Dr Edward Bernard, or by Henry Dodwell, among the papers of Archbishop Ussher in Ireland, and were published at Oxford in 1672 as an appendix to the student edition of works of Aratus of Soli and Eratosthenes, ancient Greek texts upon geographical and astronomical subjects. They included Chilmead's annotations to the Odes of Dionysius supplementary to the καταστερισμος of Eratosthenes: he also made Latin translations from those Odes, which were omitted from the edition, the publishers preferring to keep their ancient authors in Greek. His Treatise, which "contains a designation of the ancient genera agreeable to the sentiments of Boetius, with a general enumeration of the modes;...follow the Odes, with the Greek musical characters, which Chilmead has rendered in the notes of Guido's scale..."''Chronographia'' of John Malalas
Chilmead's most important labour, however, was the preparation of the editio princeps of the Byzantine Greek text, with parallel Latin translation, of the Chronological History of John Malala. Begun at Oxford before the outbreak of the Civil War, this work had to wait until 1691 for its publication. Chilmead's translation was in the possession of Edward Bysshe in 1654: Bysshe remarked, "I have that book, which for a whole year now has wanted a printer: that very learned man Edmund Chilmead translated it, whose early death is the more to be lamented, in that it will deprive us of the works so keenly looked for from such a mind".In 1674 Humphrey Prideaux wrote to John Ellis about the project:
" are likewise upon a designe of printeing Johannes Antiochenus Malela, a booke of great antiquity, and very usefull for cronologers; the copy whereof is noewhere extant but in our publick library. The B. of Armagh first tooke notice of it and perswaded the University to print it: and in order thereto Mr. Chilmead was imployed to transcribe it and make a Latin interpretation of it, but the war comeing on, the worke was interrupted and never since thought of, till of late, it being made use of by severall of our cronologers and antiquarys, we are continually pestered with letters from forrain parts to set it forth, out of a conceit that rare things ly hid therein, wereas more than halfe the booke is stuffed with ridiculous and incredible lys; and, although there be something of good use contained therein, yet they are not of such number or value as to make any recompense for the rest of his booke, which is intolerable. It was writ about 400 years after Christ by an Antiochean, in Greek. The copy is very much moth-eaten and extremely difficult to be made perfect. Some on must be forced to cast away his time in the unprofitable worke of repaireinge it."
According to Humphrey Hody and Anthony à Wood, Chilmead intended to preface his Malala with a treatise by John Gregory, "Observationes in Loca quaedam excerpta ex Ioh. Malalae Chronographia". Finally in 1691 the text was issued with the Imprimatur of Jonathan Edwards, Vice-Chancellor of the University. John Gregory's introduction was set aside, and Chilmead's texts appeared with his own annotations, with lengthy prolegomena by Humphrey Hody, and with a celebrated essay by Richard Bentley explaining his own contributions and emendations to the text. All of this apparatus, including Chilmead's annotations, was included both in Ludwig Dindorf's introduction and edition of the text for Niebuhr's 1831 Corpus of Authors of Byzantine History, and together with Dindorf's introduction and text in Migne's Patrologia Graeca published in 1863.