Edward Chamberlayne (13 December 1616 – May 1703) was an English writer, known as the author of The Present State of England. Life The grandson of Sir Thomas Chamberlayne, knight, at one time English ambassador in the Low Countries, and son of Thomas Chamberlayne, Edward Chamberlayne was born at Oddington, Gloucestershire, England, on 13 December 1616. He was first educated at Gloucester, then entered St Edmund Hall, Oxford, at Michaelmas 1634. He subsequently proceeded with a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) on 20 April 1638, and a Master of Arts (M.A.) on 6 March 1641. During a part of 1641 he held the office of rhetoric reader at Oxford. When the First English Civil War broke out he began a long continental tour, visiting France, Spain, Italy, Hungary, Bohemia, Sweden, and the Low Countries. At the Restoration he returned to England. In 1669 he became secretary to Charles Howard, 1st Earl of Carlisle, and went to Stockholm to invest Charles XI of Sweden with the Order of the Garter. He was granted the degrees of Doctor of Laws (LL.D.) at Cambridge (January 1670 – 1671) and of Doctor of Civil Law (D.C.L.) at Oxford (22 June 1672). About 1679 he became tutor to Charles II's illegitimate son, Henry Fitzroy, 1st Duke of Grafton, and he was subsequently English tutor to Prince George of Denmark. He was one of the original Fellows of the Royal Society. In later life he lived at Chelsea, and he died there in May 1703. He was buried on 27 May in a vault in Chelsea churchyard. His friend Walter Harris wrote a long Latin epitaph. Works His best-known work is a handbook to the social and political condition of England, with lists of public officers and statistics, entitled Angliæ Notitia, or The Present State of England; the publication was an adaptation of L'Estat Nouveau de la France (Paris, 1661). The first edition appeared anonymously in 1669, and was dedicated to the Earl of Carlisle. Two other editions, with the author's name, were issued later in the same year. With the fifth edition of 1671 is bound up the first edition of a second part, containing additional information; in the seventh edition of 1673 a portrait of Charles II, by William Faithorne, makes its first appearance; in the ninth edition of 1676 is a new dedication to the Earl of Danby; with the eighteenth edition of 1694