George Chalmers (December 1742 – 31 May 1825) was a Scottish antiquarian and political writer.
thumb|Chalmers, 1824 portrait by [[James Tannock]]
Biography
Chalmers was born at Fochabers, Moray, the second son of the local postmaster, James Chalmers (who was a grandson of George Chalmers of Pittensear in Lhanbryde) and his wife Isabella. After completing a course at King's College, Aberdeen, he studied law at the University of Edinburgh for several years.
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. He began practising as a lawyer at Baltimore. As a Loyalist, however, at the outbreak of the American War of Independence, he abandoned his professional prospects and returned to Great Britain. Several years then passed before he found adequate employment. he published it under the assumed name of Francis Oldys, A.M., of the University of Pennsylvania.
In 1818 Chalmers published a life of Mary, Queen of Scots, based on a manuscript left by John Whitaker, but rewritten. Mary's history occupied much of his attention, and his last work, A Detection of the Love Letters lately attributed in Hugh Campbell's work to Mary Queen of Scots, is an exposure of an attempt to represent as genuine some fictitious letters said to have passed between Mary and Bothwell. He had also prepared for the press a detailed history of the life and reign of David I of Scotland. In his later researches he was assisted by his nephew James, son of Alexander Chalmers, writer in Elgin.