Biography
John Davies was born in 1569, just five years after William Shakespeare and two years before John Donne. His life belongs as much to the Jacobean as to the Elizabethan period. He probably became interested in writing epigrams while he was attending Winchester School. This preparatory school produced a large number of important writers of epigrams, including John Owen, Thomas Bastard, and John Hoskins, as well as Davies. After spending some time at Oxford, Davies attended New Inn, an Inn of Chancery associated with the Inns of Court, before entering the Middle Temple and formally beginning his study of the law. Located near the theaters, the Inns of Court, the four important law schools in London, attracted many young men with literary as well as legal interests. Sir Francis Bacon studied at Gray’s Inn, Donne at Lincoln’s Inn, and Sir Walter Ralegh and John Marston at the Middle Temple.
In the fall of 1592, Davies visited the University of Leiden, arriving a week after William Fleetwood and Richard Martin, his fellow students at the Middle Temple. William Camden, one of the leading English antiquarians, wrote a letter introducing Davies to Paul Merula, a distinguished Dutch jurist. The trip may have been partially motivated by the need to improve Fleetwood’s image with the Middle Temple Benchers. He and Martin had been expelled on February 11, 1592, for their “misdemeanours and abuses to the Masters and Benchers.” Davies was probably involved in the Candlemas disturbances, but he and Robert Jacob, a lifelong friend, were given the milder penalty of merely being excluded from commons.
By 1594, Davies had apparently been presented at court by Charles Blount, Lord Mountjoy, who, along with Sir Thomas Egerton, is described as Davies’ patron in all the manuscript sources for his biography. Queen Elizabeth had Davies sworn her servant-in-ordinary and encouraged him in his studies at the Middle Temple. He then served as part of the embassy to Scotland for the christening of Prince Henry at Stirling Castle on October 30, 1594.
On July 4, 1595, Davies was “called to the degree of the Utter Bar with the assent of all the Masters of the Bench.” Since his admission to the Bar came after the minimum seven years of residence and since he was called with the permission of all the Masters of the Bench, not merely by a particular reader, he must have distinguished himself as a particularly brilliant student. Much of his best poetry was written during this period. By 1595, he had probably written Nosce Teipsum, which he did not publish until 1599, and most of his epigrams. In 1596, he published the first printed version of Orchestra, an encomium of dancing, to which he attached a dedicatory sonnet to Martin, addressing him as his dearest friend.
On February 9, 1598, Davies entered the Middle Temple Dining Hall while the Benchers were seated decorously at the table, preparing for the practice court and other exercises which followed dinner. Davies walked immediately to the table where Martin was seated and broke a bastinado over his head. Before leaving, he drew his rapier and brandished it above his head. For this flagrant violation of legal decorum, he was expelled on February 10 “never to return.” No entirely satisfactory explanation for this attack has been proposed.
In John Marston of the Middle Temple (1969), Philip Finkelpearl speculated that the attack was related to a satiric reference to Davies’ descent from a tanner which was made during the Christmas revels at the Middle Temple. Martin played the Prince d’Amour, the central figure in the festivities, but...
(This entire section contains 1330 words.)
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it was Matagonius, the prince’s poet, who was responsible for the satire against Davies. The incident occurred on December 27, 1597, so long before Davies’ attack on Martin that it is difficult to believe that the two events were closely related. Whatever the provocation, it must have seemed significant to Davies, so much so, that he was willing to risk his promising legal future for public revenge.
After his expulsion, Davies may have spent some time at Oxford. By 1601, he was serving in the House of Commons as a representative from Corfe Castle, Dorset. During the debate over monopolies, a raging controversy in this parliament, he advocated that the House of Commons proceed to pass a bill canceling the monopolies or patents. The queen’s loyal supporters vigorously recommended that the House humbly petition her to redress their grievances, since granting monopolies was part of her royal prerogative. Sir Robert Cecil singled Davies out for a special reprimand. Martin also served in the parliament of 1601 and also opposed monopolies; his active support of Davies’ position suggests that the reconciliation between the two men may have been genuine. Davies’ own outspoken demeanor is the more surprising because he had been readmitted to the Middle Temple only about a month before the debate.
After James came to the throne of England, Davies was appointed first solicitor general and then attorney general of Ireland. After receiving a knighthood in 1603, the first concrete evidence of his progress up the social ladder occurred in 1609 when he married Lady Eleanor Audeley, the daughter of George Touchet, Lord Audeley, later the earl of Castlehaven. By 1612, Davies had been created a sergeant-at-law, and by 1613, he was well enough off financially to be listed as one of the chief adventurers in a list of investors in the Virginia Company. In 1612, he published his major prose work, a history of Ireland titled A Discoverie of the True Causes Why Ireland Was Never Entirely Subdued, nor Brought Under Obedience of the Crowne of England, Until the Beginning of His Majesties Happie Raigne.
However socially advantageous Davies’ marriage was, it cannot have been very pleasant. Lady Eleanor’s brother, Mervyn Touchet, the second earl of Castlehaven, was criminally insane. He was sentenced to death for unnatural offenses after a notorious trial in the House of Lords; Charles I temporarily improved the moral image of the aristocracy by allowing the execution to take place. Lady Eleanor herself was a religious fanatic who believed that she was the prophet Daniel reincarnated. The truth was supposedly revealed to her in anagrams which she explicated in incoherent prophecies. By her own report, three years before the end, she foresaw Davies’ death and donned her mourning garments from that moment: “when about three days before his sudden death, before all his servants and his friends at the table, gave him pass to take his long sleep, by him thus put off, ’I pray weep not while I am alive, and I will give you leave to laugh when I am dead’” (The Lady Eleanor Her Appeal, 1646). Lady Eleanor did not mourn, but she had little reason to laugh after Davies’ death. She remarried Sir Archibald Douglas in three months, but he neglected and finally deserted her. He also burned her manuscripts, and she prophesied that he, like Davies, would suffer for it. According to her reports, while taking communion, he was struck dumb so that he could only make sounds like a beast. He apparently left England.
These facts are significant for a critical analysis of the surviving biographical materials and manuscript verse of Davies. His daughter Lucy married Ferdinando Hastings and became the countess of Huntingdon. Since her uncle was criminally insane and her mother’s self-righteous fanaticism verged on madness, she would naturally want to present her father as morally upright and be sure that he was remembered for his solemn philosophical poetry and weighty prose. If the “licentious” sonnets first printed in the Clare Howard edition of Davies’ Poems (1941) had been left among Davies’ papers instead of in the library at Trinity College, Dublin, it is unlikely that either Lucy or her son Theophilus would have printed them. In his biographical notes on Davies, which survive in manuscript in the Hastings Collection at the Henry E. Huntington Library, Theophilus describes each of Davies’ political appointments in detail, alludes to royal favors, and devotes several paragraphs to a description of Lucy Davies’ dowry: Sir John’s poetry is never mentioned.
