George Chalmers (antiquarian)

[2] Two uncles on the father's side had settled in British North America, and Chalmers visited Maryland in 1763, apparently to assist in recovering a tract of land about which a dispute had arisen.

The books present, in a condensed form, with an account of the people, the language and the civil and ecclesiastical history, as well as the agricultural and commercial state of Scotland during the first thirteen centuries of the Common Era.

[2] The second volume, published in 1810, gives an account of the seven southeastern counties of Scotland – Roxburgh, Berwick, East Lothian ("Haddington"), Edinburgh/Midlothian (all as "Edinburgh"), West Lothian ("Linlithgow"), Peebles and Selkirk – each covered by name, situation and extent, natural objects, antiquities, establishment as shires, civil history, agriculture, manufactures and trade, and ecclesiastical history.

[2] In 1824 the third volume appeared, giving, under the same headings, a description of the seven south-western counties – Dumfries, Kirkcudbright, Wigtown, Ayr, Lanark, Renfrew and Dumbarton.

[2] Before his Privy Council appointment, Chalmers applied himself to investigating the history and establishment of the English colonies in North America, based on his access to the state papers and other documents of what were then termed the plantation records.

The British government also paid Chalmers £500 to write a hostile biography of Thomas Paine;[3] he published it under the assumed name of Francis Oldys, A.M., of the University of Pennsylvania.

In 1824 he published The Poetical Remains of some of the Scottish Kings, now first collected; and in the same year he edited, for the Bannatyne Club, Robene and Makyne and the Testament of Cresseid, by Robert Henryson.