Chambre’s father, a younger son of a Shropshire family which traced its ancestry back to the thirteenth century, became a merchant of the Staple and by marriage acquired the manor of Williamscote, three miles from Banbury, in 1559. Three of his sons were named Calcot, and when the eldest died in 1592 Chambre became the heir of Williamscote and other property in Banbury, Cropredy and Bourton, all held of the Crown as of Banbury castle, under the terms of a settlement of 1572.
In 1611 Chambre married his second wife Lucy Gobert, whose father had declared that he would give her £3,000 on marriage, ‘with a good addition at his death’. In the following year Gobert bought a share in a lease of the lordship of Shillelagh in county Wexford, and offered the greater part of it to Chambre towards the dowry. Chambre reluctantly accepted, went to Ireland in the autumn of 1612, and, after buying out the more ‘ill-conditioned and needy’ of his partners, transported his family to Carnew in County Wicklow three years later.
Chambre was clearly on good terms with the great puritan families who dominated Banbury as he was elected to represent the borough in 1626. Once in Parliament he was named to only three committees. The first, for a bill against scandalous and unworthy ministers (15 Feb.), was a measure of some personal concern to him, for he was to bequeath £100 to his friend the noted puritan John Dod ‘to be by his discretion bestowed upon poor ministers’.
In 1629 the Court of Wards ruled that Chambre must pay the £3,000 due on the mortgage to the Gobert heirs, although it accepted that he had received less than £1,000 towards his wife’s portion.