John Davies
Sir John Davies was an influential English poet, lawyer, and politician born in 1569 in Wiltshire. The third son of a wealthy tanner, he began his education at Winchester School and later attended Queen's College, Oxford, before shifting his focus to law. After excelling in his legal studies, he was admitted to the bar but gained recognition for his poetry, particularly his satirical sonnets and the successful work "Orchestra: Or, A Poeme of Dauncing." His career faced setbacks due to a public feud, leading to a brief period of disgrace, but he eventually regained his position through influential writings that praised Queen Elizabeth I.
In his later career, Davies served as solicitor-general and attorney general for Ireland, where he produced significant works that analyzed governance and the application of law. He was involved in the Irish Parliament and continued to write poetry, which he published upon returning to England. Recognized for his contributions, he was appointed to the prestigious position of lord chief justice, but he passed away in 1626 before assuming the role. His legacy includes a combination of legal scholarship and poetic works that reflect the cultural and political landscape of his time.
On this Page
Subject Terms
John Davies
English poet and politician.
- Born: April 1, 1569
- Birthplace: Chisgrove, Tisbury, Wiltshire, England
- Died: December 8, 1626
- Place of death: London, England
Biography
The third son of John Davies, a wealthy tanner, and Mary Bennett Davies, Sir John Davies was born at Chicksgrove in Tisbury, Wiltshire, England, and was christened in the parish church in 1569. His father died in 1580, the same year Davies began his formal schooling at Winchester School. He matriculated at Queen’s College, Oxford University, in 1585, but a year and a half later he left Oxford to pursue the study of law, first at New Inn and then at its affiliated Inn of Court, the Middle Temple, where he excelled.
After eight years, Davies was admitted to the bar, but he was also busy writing poetry, particularly sonnets, which parodied the Petrarchism fashionable at the time, and epigrams in the manner of classical poet Martial. (Davies should not be confused with his contemporary, the poet and satirist John Davies of Hereford, c. 1565-1618). Because of Davies’s wit, his growing popularity, and the success of Orchestra: Or, A Poeme of Dauncing, a masque-like entertainment meant to be staged, he was asked to write an epithalamion, or wedding poem, to celebrate the marriage of Elizabeth Vere, daughter of the earl of Oxford, to William Stanley, earl of Derby.
Davies’s promising career was cut short in 1598, when he publicly attacked his former friend, Richard Martin, to whom he had dedicated his 1596 edition of Orchestra. Martin, however, satirized Davies when he staged the Candlemas revels in 1597 and 1598, presenting Davies as an ambitious person intent on finding acceptance but doomed to exclusion. Disbarred and disgraced for two and a half years, Davies wrote poetry designed to regain his position in society. Hymnes of Astraea, in Acrosticke Verse, consisting of acrostics in praise of Queen Elizabeth I, and Nosce teipsum, with its pattern of falling and rising and dedicated to Elizabeth I, brought about his reinstatement at the Middle Temple on October 30, 1601, the same year he served as a member of Parliament for Corfe Castle.
When James I became king in 1608, Davies’s career was in its ascendancy. After serving in Ireland under Baron Muntjoy, the lord deputy, he was knighted in Dublin in 1603 and made solicitor-general for Ireland; three years later he became attorney general. He married Eleanor Touchet, the daughter of Lord Audley and the earl of Castlehaven. In 1613, he became speaker of the Irish Parliament and acquired lands in Ireland, where he stayed until 1619. While in Ireland, he wrote A Discoverie of the True Causes Why Ireland Was Never Entirely Subdued, Untill His Majesties Raigne, an analysis of governmental administrative errors, and Le Primer report des cases et matters resolves en les courts del roy en Ireland, a plea to extend English common law to Ireland.
After returning to England from Ireland, he published a volume containing his earlier poetry, changing the Orchestra dedication from Martin to Prince Charles. He was appointed the lord chief justice, although he died of apoplexy in 1626 before he could assume the post. John Donne, noted metaphysical poet and priest, delivered Davies’s funeral sermon.
Author Works
Nonfiction:
A Letter from Sir John Davies, Knight, Attorney-General of Ireland, to Robert Earl of Salisbury, 1607
The Plantation of Ulster, 1610
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, 1612
The Irish Parliament, 1613
Le Primer Report des Cases et Matters en Ley, 1615
A Perfect Abridgement of the Eleven Bookes of Reports of the Reverend and Learned Sir Edw. Cook, 1651
The Question Concerning Impositions, Tonnage, Poundage, Prizage, Customs, 1656
Poetry:
Epigrammes and Elegies, 1590? (with Christopher Marlowe)
"The Epithalamion of the Muses", c. 1594
Gullinge Sonnets, c. 1596
Orchestra: Or, A Poeme of Dauncing, 1596, 1622
Nosce Teipsum: This Oracle Expounded in Two Elegies, 1599
Hymnes of Astraea, 1599
A Contention Betwixt a Wife, a Widdowe, and a Maide, pr. 1602
Yet Other Twelve Wonders of the World, wr. 1602 or 1603, pb. 1608 (also known as The Twelve Wonders of the World)
A Lottery, 1602
Canzonet, 1602
Ten Sonnets to Philomel, 1602
The Poems of Sir John Davies, 1941 (Clare Howard, editor)
The Poems of Sir John Davies, 1975 (Robert Krueger, editor)
Bibliography
Coates, Ben. "Sir John Davies (1569–1626)." History Today, vol. 55, no. 4, 2005. Short biography from the popular history magazine.
Eliot, T. S. "Sir John Davies." Elizabethan Poetry: Modern Essays in Criticism, edited by Paul J. Alpers, Oxford UP, 1967, pp. 321–26, http://www.luminarium.org/renlit/eliotdavies.htm. Accessed 28 June 2017. An introduction to Davies by T. S. Eliot, originally published in the Times Literary Supplement in 1926, then in Eliot's On Poetry and Poets (1957), then reprinted in the Alpers text, reproduced on the website Luminarium: Anthology of English Literature.
Ford, David Nash. "Sir John Davies (1569–1626)." Royal Berkshire History, Nash Ford Publishing, 2010, http://www.berkshirehistory.com/bios/jdavies.html. Accessed 28 June 2017. Two-thousand-word biography from a website dedicated to the history of the historic county of Berkshire, England.
Pawlisch, Hans S. Sir John Davies and the Conquest of Ireland: A Study in Legal Imperialism. Cambridge UP, 1985. A study of Davies's legal and political career in Ireland as solicitor general and then attorney general (1603–1619) through his law reports.