John Chamberlain (letter writer)

His purpose was more than social; it was to provide his friends, posted abroad in foreign embassies and out of touch with the London scene, with useful and reliable information about the events and issues of the day.

Chamberlain would walk daily to St Paul's Cathedral to gather the latest news on the London grapevine and then report it to his correspondents as accurately and objectively as possible, including public and private opinion on the value of the information.

Chamberlain is a particularly valuable source for contemporary opinion on King James I, for information about the royal family and the court, and for details of English trading activities in the earliest days of empire.

[8] Chamberlain takes care to observe without intruding his own opinions; though his disapproval of the laxity of the day is apparent, he does not waste words on moral indignation.

[9] He entertains his correspondents by leavening factual information with humour and vivid details, and includes lighter topics and anecdotes to keep the reader's interest.

In the view of scholar Maurice Lee, Jr., the letters that passed between John Chamberlain and Dudley Carleton are "the most interesting private correspondence of Jacobean England".

[10] Chamberlain's letters provide a portrait of a typical London gentleman of late Elizabethan and Jacobean times, moderate in politics and religion.

[11] Chamberlain emerges from his letters as a kind man and a considerate friend, who preferred a peaceful life and commented on the contemporary world as an onlooker.

Though he willingly sought career openings for his friends, he was uninterested in office or financial gain for himself and lived the life of a quiet, even timid bachelor.

[17] In his will, among many generous gifts to his friends, he made a sizeable bequest to Alice,[18] explaining: "This I do, in regard of the sincere goodwill and honest affection I bear her, and of the true and long-continued friendship between us, and for a testimony of that further good I had intended her, if God had given me means".

[14] Chamberlain acquired an interesting group of friends, mainly drawn from the middle ranks of society, with a background either in business or in the lesser country gentry.

[20] Other notable friends of Chamberlain were Henry Wotton, himself an important letter writer;[21] Thomas Bodley, who founded the Bodleian Library in Oxford; the bishop and scholar Lancelot Andrewes; and the historian William Camden.

[22] In the summer, he would leave London, "this misty and unsavoury town", and embark on what he called his merry "progresses", staying at various country houses, for example with the Fanshawes at Ware, the Wallops at Farleigh, or the Lyttons at Knebworth.

Other errands performed by Chamberlain on his behalf included paying his bills, taking gifts to ladies, and passing messages to his political contacts.

[32] Though Carleton's letters are not generally considered the equal of Chamberlain's in quality, his editor, Maurice Lee Jr., calls them "every bit as clear and polished".

[34] At that time, the aisles and nave of the cathedral, known as Paul's walk, were a meeting place for those wishing to keep in touch with current events,[35] and Chamberlain proved adept at pumping people there for news of politics, war, court matters and trials.

[39] Chamberlain's letters give well-informed reports on the greatest scandal of James's reign, the divorce and later conviction for murder of Frances Howard, Countess of Essex.

[40] On 14 October 1613, he noted both the divorce of the Essexes and the death of Robert Carr's friend Thomas Overbury in the Tower of London: "The foulness of his corpse gave suspicion and leaves aspersion that he should die of the pox or somewhat worse".

[44] Chamberlain affords us more glimpses of James's character than any other contemporary source; his letters provide an insight into how people of his class viewed the monarch and the court.

[47] Chamberlain also noted the officiousness of James, who liked to take a personal interest in scandals and court cases and was forever throwing people in the tower for speaking out of order.

"I should rather wish him, " wrote Chamberlain, "to contemn these barking whelps and all their bawlings than to trouble himself with them, and bring these things to scanning, for it breeds but more speech, and to see silly men so severely censured begets commiseration".

He reports, for example, that even when ill, James maintained his interest in country sports: "He is so desirous to see certain hawks fly, that he would not be stayed"; if he could not hunt, he would have his deer "brought to make a muster before him".

[51] The elements of this style are a sometimes artful, sometimes natural, blending of public and private information, of the serious and trivial, reported with care and exactitude and spiced with brisk remarks of his own.

[60] When on one occasion he forgot to give Carleton a certain item of news, he remarked, "Whether it be that continual bad tidings hath taken away my taste, or that infirmity of age grows fast upon me, and makes me not regard how the world goes, seeing I am like to have so little part in it, for about the middle of the month I began to be septuagenarius".