John David Chambers, (1805–1893) was an English legal and liturgical writer.
John David Chambers, eldest son of Captain David Chambers Esq., Royal Navy, of Harrow Weald, Middlesex, was born in London in 1805. He was educated at Oriel College, Oxford, graduating with honours in 1827 (MA 1831). He was called to the Bar by the Inner Temple in 1831. In 1842 he published an elaborate treatise on the Jurisdiction of the Court of Chancery over the persons and property of Infants (On the Equitable Jurisdiction of the Court of Chancery over Infants, Law and Practice of Elections), and was appointed Recorder of New Sarum (Salisbury) the same year.[1] [2]
At Salisbury his attention was specially attracted to the Liturgical and other Ecclesiastical lore appertaining to the Cathedral, and to Saint Osmund, its Bishop from 1078 to 1099. Saint Osmund compiled from different sources a series of Divine Offices, and Rules for their celebration within his diocese. These Rules were in two parts, the Ordinale, and the Consuetudinary.[3]
The use of these Rules became very extensive; and although in certain parts the Uses of York, Hereford, Bangor, and Lincoln varied, yet John Brompton, the Cistercian Abbot of Jervaulx, writing within a hundred years after Saint Osmund's death, says that these Rules and Offices had been adopted throughout England, Wales, and Ireland.[4]
About 1230 (after the opening of the New Cathedral at Salisbury) these Rules were collected and rewritten in a complete volume, entitled Tractatus de Officiis Ecclesiasticus (MS. in the Cathedral Library). In the mean time the Ordinale had become partly welded into this Consuetudinary, and partly (especially that portion therein omitted from Maundy Thursday to Easter Eve) incorporated in the Breviary, Missal, and Processional, which had assumed definite shapes. From these materials, together with the aid of several manuscripts and early printed Breviaries, Chambers published a translation of:—
This was accompanied with a Preface, notes, and illustrations, together with music from a MS. folio Antiphonary or Breviary of the early part of the 14th century, (in the (Salisbury Cathedral Library) collated with a similar MS. folio,[5] both of Sarum Use. The hymns with their melodies, and the Canticles, were also collated with a MS. of the 14th century.[6]
Chambers married, on 7 August 1834, the Honourable Henrietta Laura, third daughter of John, 2nd Lord Wodehouse. He died in London on 22 August 1893 at the age of eighty-eight, having been Recorder of Salisbury for over fifty years.[7] [8]
Chambers's publications include:—
Chambers's publications and translations had no small part in stimulating the great change which took place in the mode of worship in the Church of England in the second half of the nineteenth century. According to John Julian, "His translations of Latin hymns are close, clear and poetical; they have much strength and earnestness, and the rhythm is easy and musical".