Henry Thomas Buckle was born in the town of Lee in the county of Kent, near London, on November 2, 1821. Buckle was a delicate child and a slow learner. Even by the age of eight could hardly read.
He inherited his father's interest in a business as sea-going merchants, Buckle, Bagster & Buckle, when his father died in 1840 but just lived off its proceeds, freeing him to pursue historical research and chess. When his father died, Henry suffered a seizure and his family sent him on a tour of Europe. He visited Belgium, Germany, Holland Italy and France.
While in France he had met with Keiseritzki and St. Amant, and was able to beat them both when receiving pawn odds. This trip instilled in him a love of traveling and later, he traveled extensively, learning many languages and honing his chess skills against a more cosmopolitan field of opponents.

His first top-flight match was against Howard Staunton in 1843. Staunton gave him odds of a pawn and the move.
Out of the eight games, Staunton won the first game and Buckle won the remaining seven. In a move that would later serve Staunton in similar situations, he published his own single win but just one of the losses in his publication, The Chess Player's Chronicle.

At the Cigar Divan at the Strand in London, Buckle played regularly against Captain Hugh Alexander Kennedy, a former army officer turned author. Although Kennedy was impressed with Buckle's play and Staunton even published some of the games, the quality was not excellent. In 1848, Buckle traveled to Paris where he played Kieseritzky, the house player at the Café de la Régence. The level of play in this match was also less than spectacular. Buckle came out favorably by winning three, losing two and drawing three.
In 1849, the Cigar Divan held an in-house tournament among its regulars. It was the first chess tournament on record. Buckle won with impressive and innovated play.

There was an international tournament held in London 1851. Buckle didn't participate, but, however, he did attend and, after the tournament, played a match against Löwenthal, winning +4 -3 =1. He also played casual games against Anderssen and Kieseritzky. Anderssen, who was still an up-and-comer, displayed amazing tactical abilities. Buckle, in contrast, displayed a formidable understanding of prophylactic chess and positional play. He proved to be a formidible adversary for Anderssen. Buckle was on the Managing Committee of the 1851 London tournament, subscribing five pounds to the cost. Taking into account the further five pounds entry fee he paid (though he didn't play), this made him the equal fifth highest individual sponsor of the event, according to the table in Staunton's tournament book.

"The slowness of genius is hard to bear, but the slowness of mediocrity is intolerable" 

This was the height of his chess career.
Like Morphy after him, Buckle found victory at chess a rather minor affair, seeing chess as a pastime, not an occupation. He deplored slow play and the lack of time controls. He considered his study of civilization, history and sociology far more important and resented taking time away from his studies "and never afterwards took part in a public match" after defeating Anderssen and Löwenthal.
Buckle had a photographic memory, a working knowledge of nineteen languages and a fluency in seven. He rid himself of half his library of 22,000 books because he knew their contentand didn't require them. His knowledge of history was encyclopedic. He was a very simple man. He ate only bread and fruit "to keep clear the brain" during the days when he performed his research. His only real extravagance was good cigars and his library.
His great opus was the History of Civilization in England, later divided into two volumes: History of Civilization Volume I (1857) and Volume II (1861). In 1872, The Miscellaneous and Posthumous Works of Henry Thomas Buckle was published.
Buckle work was not well received in England. However, the rest of the world embraced it. It was more a sociololgical work than a history work. He had spent 14 years amassing data and drawing inferences. In 1856 he wrote that "he had been engaged upon his manuscript incessantly for fourteen years".
An examination of his ideas would easily explain why his own country did not accept his work with opened arms.

"Governments do no intrinsic good, at best they only correct evils previously imposed by Governments"

"The history of every civilized country is the history of its intellectual development, which kings, statesmen, and legislators are more likely to retard than to hasten….So far from being able to regulate the movements of the national mind, they themselves form the smallest part of it, and, in a general view of the progress of Man, are only to be regarded as the puppets who strut and fret their hour upon a little stage; while, beyond them, and on every side of them, are forming opinions and principles which they can scarcely perceive, but by which alone the whole course of human affairs is ultimately governed."

On March 19 1858 he gave a lecture to "an overflowing and enthusiastic audience" on "The Influence of Women on the Progress of Knowledge" - at the Royal Institution, speaking for an hour and forty minutes without once referring to his few notes. The lecture - acclaimed - was republished for Fraser's Magazine for April 1858.
His publisher, J.M. Robertson wrote:

"For a generation, most notices of his book in his own country were hostile...."

....and....

"Where Darwin definitely brought within the scope of scientific law the phenomena of biology, as previous pioneers had done those of geology and astronomy, Buckle began anew the most complicated and difficult task of all - the reduction to law of the phenomena of social evolution".

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Buckle died in Damascus on May 29, 1862 of typhoid fever that he caught while visiting Jerusalem.

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Buckle vs Kieseritzky

Divan knockout Tournament

Buckle vs Loewenthal