When Richard Layton, the agent of Henry VIII in the dissolution of the monasteries, accompanied by Richard, the nephew of Thomas Cromwell, was at Ramsey Abbey, and had marked down Peterborough as his next target, Chambers contacted Sir William Parr, hoping by bribery to save his abbey.
King Henry also erected a monument to Catherine of Aragon, who had been buried in the abbey church in January 1536.
Chambers now became the first bishop of the new see, with a residence on the site, and the prior of St Andrew's at Northampton became the dean.
According to Thomas Fuller, Chambers was appointed by the convocation of 1542, in conjunction with John Wakeman of Gloucester, to revise the translation of the Apocalypse for the proposed new edition of the Great Bible.
Chambers has been erroneously identified with John Chambre, a doctor of physic, of Merton College, Oxford, who became dean of St Stephen's, Westminster, and died in 1549.