Davies, SIR JOHN, poet and statesman, was born of a good family at Tisbury, Wiltshire, in 1569. At sixteen he entered Queen's College, Oxford, whence he passed to the Middle Temple. He was called to the bar in 1595, but was disbarred three years later for breaking a stick in the dining-hall over the head of a wit whose raillery had provoked him. He returned to Oxford, and there wrote his long didactic poem on the immortality of the soul, Nosee Teipsum, dedicated to Queen Elizabeth, in 1599. Spite of the difficulties of a formal poem upon such a theme, it is a fairly successful performance, clear, vigorous, and sincere, though quite devoid of passion or imagination. The verse is that of the Annus Mirabilis and Gray's Elegy. Davies had already published in 1596 his Orchestra, or a Poeme of Dancing, 'a sudden rash half-capreol of my wit.' It is written in seven-line stanzas in imitation of Spenser, and is a graceful and harmonious poem on the conceit that all natural phenomena are subject to a regulated motion here called dancing. In 1599 Davies published also his Hymns to Astræa, a collection of clever acrostics each making the name Elizabeth Regina. He contributed also to England's Helicon and to Francis Davison's Poetical Rhapsody. In 1601, after ample apologies, Davies was readmitted to the society of the Middle Temple, and was returned to parliament for Corfe Castle. On the death of Elizabeth he accompanied Lord Hunsdon in his journey to the Scottish court, and quickly came into favour with James I., who sent him in 1603 as solicitor-general to Ireland. Three years later he was appointed Irish attorney-general and serjeant-at-law, and was raised to the honour of knighthood. He sent many statesmanlike letters and reports to Cecil, supported severe anti-Catholic and repressive measures, and took an important part in the plantation of Ulster. He sat in the Irish parliament for Fermanagh, and was for some time its speaker; but was returned to the English parliament in 1614 for Newcastle-under-Lyne, and resigned his office at Dublin in 1619, continuing to practise as king's serjeant in England. He was nominated chief-justice in November 1626, but died suddenly of a fit of apoplexy about a month after. He collected his three chief poems into one volume in 1622. His complete works were collected by Dr
Grosart in the 'Fuller Worthies Library' (3 vols. 1869-76).—His widow, Eleanor Touchet, daughter of Baron Audley, whom he had married in 1609, married again and survived till 1652. She was crazy enough to imagine herself a prophetess; but her exertions brought her nothing save fine, imprisonment, and ridicule (see ANAGRAM).—With Sir John Davies must not be confounded John Davies of Hereford (1565-1618), poet and writing-master, whose poetry is not without merit, although prolix and tedious. His chief long poems are Mirum in Modum, Microcosmus, and Summa Totalis. In his collection of three hundred poor epigrams (about 1611) is one addressed 'To our English Terence, Mr Will. Shake-speare.' His works were collected by Dr Grosart in two volumes in 1873.