VOLUME VII SLICE X David, St to Demidov

Articles in This Slice

DAVID, ST DEERFIELD

DAVID I. DEER PARK

DAVID II. DEFAMATION

DAVID (Welsh princes) DEFAULT

DAVID, FÉLICIEN DEFEASANCE

DAVID, GERARD DEFENCE

DAVID, JACQUES LOUIS DEFENDANT

DAVID, PIERRE JEAN DEFENDER OF THE FAITH

DAVIDISTS DEFERENT

DAVIDSON, ANDREW BRUCE DEFFAND, MARIE ANNE DE VICHY-CHAMROND

DAVIDSON, JOHN DEFIANCE

DAVIDSON, RANDALL THOMAS DEFILE

DAVIDSON, SAMUEL DEFINITION

DAVIDSON, THOMAS DEFOE, DANIEL

DAVIES, DAVID CHARLES DEGAS, HILAIRE GERMAIN EDGARD

DAVIES, SIR JOHN DE GEER, LOUIS GERHARD

DAVIES, JOHN DEGGENDORF

DAVIES, SIR LOUIS HENRY DE HAAS, MAURITZ FREDERICK HENDRICK

DAVIES, RICHARD DEHRA

DAVILA, ENRICO CATERINO DEHRA DUN

DAVIS, ANDREW JACKSON DEIOCES

DAVIS, CHARLES HOWARD DEÏOTARUS

DAVIS, CUSHMAN KELLOGG DEIR

DAVIS, HENRY WILLIAM BANKS DEIRA

DAVIS, HENRY WINTER DEISM

DAVIS, JEFFERSON DEISTER

DAVIS, JOHN DÉJAZET, PAULINE VIRGINIE

DAVIS, THOMAS OSBORNE DE KALB

DAVISON, WILLIAM DE KEYSER, THOMAS

DAVIS STRAIT DEKKER, EDWARD DOUWES

DAVITT, MICHAEL DEKKER, JEREMIAS DE

DAVOS DEKKER, THOMAS

DAVOUT, LOUIS NICOLAS DE LA BECHE, SIR HENRY THOMAS

DAVY, SIR HUMPHRY DELABORDE, HENRI FRANÇOIS

DAWARI DELACROIX, FERDINAND VICTOR EUGÈNE

DAWES, HENRY LAURENS DE LA GARDIE, MAGNUS GABRIEL

DAWES, RICHARD DELAGOA BAY

DAWISON, BOGUMIL DELAMBRE, JEAN BAPTISTE JOSEPH

DAWKINS, WILLIAM BOYD DELAMERE, GEORGE BOOTH

DAWLISH DE LAND

DAWN DELANE, JOHN THADEUS

DAWSON, GEORGE DELANY, MARY GRANVILLE

DAWSON, SIR JOHN WILLIAM DE LA REY, JACOBUS HERCULES

DAWSON CITY DE LA RIVE, AUGUSTE ARTHUR

DAX DELAROCHE, HIPPOLYTE

DAY, JOHN DELARUE, GERVAIS

DAY, THOMAS DE LA RUE, WARREN

DAY DELATOR

DAYLESFORD DELAUNAY, ELIE

DAYTON (Kentucky, U.S.A.) DELAUNAY, LOUIS ARSÈNE

DAYTON (Ohio, U.S.A.) DELAVIGNE, JEAN FRANÇOIS CASIMIR

DEACON DELAWARE (state of the U.S.)

DEACONESS DELAWARE (city)

DEAD SEA DELAWARE INDIANS

DEADWOOD DELAWARE RIVER

DEAF AND DUMB DELAWARE WATER-GAP

DEÁK, FRANCIS DE LA WARR

DEAL (municipal borough) DELBRÜCK, HANS

DEAL (part or portion) DELBRÜCK, MARTIN FRIEDRICH RUDOLF VON

DEAN DELCASSÉ, THÉOPHILE

DEAN, FOREST OF DEL CREDERE

DEANE, RICHARD DELESCLUZE, LOUIS CHARLES

DEANE, SILAS DELESSE, ACHILLE ERNEST OSCAR JOSEPH

DEATH DELESSERT, JULES PAUL BENJAMIN

DEATH-WARNING DELFICO, MELCHIORRE

DEATH-WATCH DELFT

DE BARY, HEINRICH ANTON DELHI

DEBENTURES and DEBENTURE STOCK DELIA

DEBORAH DELIAN LEAGUE

DEBRECZEN DELIBES, CLÉMENT PHILIBERT LÉO

DEBT DELILAH

DEBUSSY, CLAUDE ACHILLE DELILLE, JACQUES

DECADE DELIRIUM

DECAEN, CHARLES MATHIEU ISIDORE DELISLE, JOSEPH NICOLAS

DECALOGUE DELISLE, LÉOPOLD VICTOR

DE CAMP, JOSEPH DELITZSCH, FRANZ

DECAMPS, ALEXANDRE GABRIEL DELITZSCH

DECAPOLIS DELIUS, NIKOLAUS

DECASTYLE DELLA BELLA, STEFANO

DECATUR, STEPHEN DELLA CASA, GIOVANNI

DECATUR DELLA COLLE, RAFFAELLINO

DECAZES, ÉLIE DELLA GHERARDESCA, UGOLINO

DECAZEVILLE DELLA PORTA, GIOVANNI BATTISTA

DECCAN DELLA QUERCIA, JACOPO

DECELEA DELLA ROBBIA

DECEMBER DELMEDIGO

DECEMVIRI DELMENHORST

DECHEN, ERNST HEINRICH KARL VON DELOLME, JEAN LOUIS

DECIDUOUS DELONEY, THOMAS

DECIMAL COINAGE DE LONG, GEORGE WASHINGTON

DECIUS, GAIUS MESSIUS QUINTUS TRAJANUS DELORME, MARION

DECIZE DE L’ORME, PHILIBERT

DECKER, SIR MATTHEW DELOS

DECKER, PIERRE DE DE LOUTHERBOURG, PHILIP JAMES

DECLARATION DELPHI

DECLARATION OF PARIS DELPHINIA

DECLARATOR DELPHINUS

DECLINATION DELTA

DECOLOURIZING DELUC, JEAN ANDRÉ

DECORATED PERIOD DELUGE, THE

DE COSTA, BENJAMIN FRANKLIN DELYANNI, THEODOROS

DE COSTER, CHARLES THÉODORE HENRI DEMADES

DECOY DEMAGOGUE

DECREE DEMANTOID

DECRETALS DEMARATUS

DECURIO DEMERARA

DÉDÉAGATCH DEMESNE

DEDHAM DEMETER

DEDICATION DEMETRIA

DE DONIS CONDITIONALIBUS DEMETRIUS (king of Bactria)

DEDUCTION DEMETRIUS (kings of Macedonia)

DEE, JOHN DEMETRIUS (kings of Syria)

DEE (river of Wales) DEMETRIUS (Greek sculptor)

DEE (river of Scotland) DEMETRIUS (Cynic philosopher)

DEED DEMETRIUS DONSKOI

DEEMS, CHARLES (ALEXANDER) FORCE DEMETRIUS PHALEREUS

DEER DEMETRIUS, PSEUDO-

DEMIDOV

DAVID, ST (Dewi, Sant), the national and tutelar saint of Wales, whose annual festival, known as “St David’s Day,” falls on the 1st of March. Few historical facts are known regarding the saint’s life and actions, and the dates both of his birth and death are purely conjectural, although there is reason to suppose he was born about the year 500 and died at a great age towards the close of the 6th century. According to his various biographers he was the son of Sandde, a prince of the line of Cunedda, his mother being Non, who ranks as a Cymric saint. He seems to have taken a prominent part in the celebrated synod of Llanddewi-Brefi (see Cardiganshire), and to have presided at the so-called “Synod of Victory,” held some years later at Caerleon-on-Usk. At some date unknown, St David, as penescoli or primate of South Wales, moved the seat of ecclesiastical government from Caerleon to the remote headland of Mynyw, or Menevia, which has ever since, under the name of St David’s (Ty-Dewi), remained the cathedral city of the western see. St David founded numerous churches throughout all parts of South Wales, of which fifty-three still recall his name, but apparently he never penetrated farther north than the region of Powys, although he seems to have visited Cornwall. With the passing of time the saint’s fame increased, and his shrine at St David’s became a notable place of pilgrimage, so that by the time of the Norman conquest his importance and sanctity were fully recognized, and at Henry I.’s request he was formally canonized by Pope Calixtus II. about 1120.

Of the many biographies of St David, the earliest known is that of Rhyddmarch, or Ricemarchus (c. 1090), one of the last British bishops of St David’s, from whose work Giraldus Cambrensis (q.v.) chiefly compiled his extravagant life of the saint.

DAVID I. (1084-1153), king of Scotland, the youngest son of Malcolm Canmore and (Saint) Margaret, sister of Edgar Ætheling, was born in 1084. He married in 1113 Matilda, daughter and heiress of Waltheof, earl of Northumbria, and thus became possessed of the earldom of Huntingdon. On the death of Edgar, king of Scotland, in 1107, the territories of the Scottish crown were divided in accordance with the terms of his will between his two brothers, Alexander and David. Alexander, together with the crown, received Scotland north of the Forth and Clyde, David the southern district with the title of earl of Cumbria. The death of Alexander I. in 1124 gave David possession of the whole. In 1127, in the character of an English baron, he swore fealty to Matilda as heiress to her father Henry I., and when the usurper Stephen ousted her in 1135 David vindicated her cause in arms and invaded England. But Stephen marched north with a great army, whereupon David made peace. The peace, however, was not kept. After threatening an invasion in 1137, David marched into England in 1138, but sustained a crushing defeat on Cutton Moor in the engagement known as the battle of the Standard. He returned to Carlisle, and soon afterwards concluded peace. In 1141 he joined Matilda in London and accompanied her to Winchester, but after a narrow escape from capture he returned to Scotland. Henceforth he remained in his own kingdom and devoted himself to its political and ecclesiastical reorganization. A devoted son of the church, he founded five bishoprics and many monasteries. In secular politics he energetically forwarded the process of feudalization which had been initiated by his immediate predecessors. He died at Carlisle on the 24th of May 1153.

DAVID II. (1324-1371), king of Scotland, son of King Robert the Bruce by his second wife, Elizabeth de Burgh (d. 1327), was born at Dunfermline on the 5th of March 1324. In accordance with the terms of the treaty of Northampton he was married in July 1328 to Joanna (d. 1362), daughter of the English king, Edward II., and became king of Scotland on his father’s death in June 1329, being crowned at Scone in November 1331. Owing to the victory of Edward III. of England and his protégé, Edward Baliol, at Halidon Hill in July 1333, David and his queen were sent for safety into France, reaching Boulogne in May 1334, and being received very graciously by the French king, Philip VI. Little is known about the life of the Scottish king in France, except that Château Gaillard was given to him for a residence, and that he was present at the bloodless meeting of the English and French armies at Vironfosse in October 1339. Meanwhile his representatives had obtained the upper hand in Scotland, and David was thus enabled to return to his kingdom in June 1341, when he took the reins of government into his own hands. In 1346 he invaded England in the interests of France, but was defeated and taken prisoner at the battle of Neville’s Cross in October of this year, and remained in England for eleven years, living principally in London and at Odiham in Hampshire. His imprisonment was not a rigorous one, and negotiations for his release were soon begun. Eventually, in October 1357, after several interruptions, a treaty was signed at Berwick by which the Scottish estates undertook to pay 100,000 marks as a ransom for their king. David, who had probably recognized Edward III. as his feudal superior, returned at once to Scotland; but owing to the poverty of the kingdom it was found impossible to raise the ransom. A few instalments were paid, but the king sought to get rid of the liability by offering to make Edward III., or one of his sons, his successor in Scotland. In 1364 the Scottish parliament indignantly rejected a proposal to make Lionel, duke of Clarence, the next king; but David treated secretly with Edward III. over this matter, after he had suppressed a rising of some of his unruly nobles. The king died in Edinburgh Castle on the 22nd of February 1371. His second wife was Margaret, widow of Sir John Logie, whom he divorced in 1369; but he left no children, and was succeeded by his nephew, Robert II. David was a weak and incapable ruler, without a spark of his father’s patriotic spirit.

See Andrew of Wyntoun, The orygynale cronykil of Scotland, edited by D. Laing (Edinburgh, 1872-1879); John of Fordun, Chronica gentis Scotorum, edited by W. F. Skene (Edinburgh, 1871-1872); J. H. Burton, History of Scotland, vol. ii. (Edinburgh, 1905); and A. Lang, History of Scotland, vol. i. (Edinburgh, 1900).

DAVID, the name of three Welsh princes.

David I. (d. 1203), a son of Prince Owen Gwynedd (d. 1169), came into prominence as a leader of the Welsh during the expedition of Henry II. in 1157. In 1170 he became lord of Gwynedd (i.e. the district around Snowdon), but some regarded him as a bastard, and Gwynedd was also claimed by other members of his family. After fighting with varying fortunes he sought an ally in the English king, whom he supported during the baronial rising in 1173; then after this event he married Henry’s half-sister Emma. But his enemies increased in power, and about 1194 he was driven from Wales by the partisans of his half-brother Llewelyn ab Iorwerth. The chronicler Benedictus Abbas calls David rex, and Rhuddlan castle was probably the centre of his vague authority.

David II. (c. 1208-1246) was a son of the great Welsh prince, Llewelyn ab Iorwerth, and through his mother Joanna was a grandson of King John. He married an English lady, Isabella de Braose, and, having been recognized as his father’s heir both by Henry III. and by the Welsh lords, he had to face the hostility of his half-brother Gruffydd, whom he seized and imprisoned in 1239. When Llewelyn died in April 1240, David, who had already taken some part in the duties of government, was acknowledged as a prince of North Wales, doing homage to Henry III. at Gloucester. However, he was soon at variance with the English king, who appears to have espoused the cause of the captive Gruffydd. Henry’s Welsh campaign in 1241 was bloodless but decisive. Gruffydd was surrendered to him; David went to London and made a full submission, but two or three years later he was warring against some English barons on the borders. To check the English king he opened negotiations with Innocent IV., doubtless hoping that the pope would recognize Wales as an independent state, but here, as on the field of battle, Henry III. was too strong for him. Just after Henry’s second campaign in Wales the prince died in March 1246.

David III. (d. 1283) was a son of Gruffydd and thus a nephew of David II. His life was mainly spent in fighting against his brother, the reigning prince, Llewelyn ab Gruffydd. His first revolt took place in 1254 or 1255, and after a second about eight years later he took refuge in England, returning to Wales when Henry III. made peace with Llewelyn in 1267. Then about 1274 the same process was repeated. David attended Edward I. during the Welsh expedition of 1277, receiving from the English king lands in North Wales; but in 1282 he made peace with Llewelyn and suddenly attacked the English garrisons, a proceeding which led to Edward’s final conquest of Wales. After Llewelyn’s death in December 1282 David maintained the last struggle of the Welsh for independence. All his efforts, however, were vain; in June 1283 he was betrayed to Edward, was tried by a special court and sentenced to death, and was executed with great barbarity at Shrewsbury in October 1283. As the last native prince of Wales, David’s praises have been sung by the Welsh bards, but his character was not attractive, and a Welsh historian says “his life was the bane of Wales.”

DAVID, FÉLICIEN (1810-1876), French composer, was born on the 13th of April 1810 at Cadenet, in the department of Vaucluse. As a child he showed unusual musical precocity, and being early left an orphan he was admitted into the choir of Saint Sauveur at Aix. He was for a time employed in an attorney’s office, but quitted his service to become chef d’orchestre in the theatre at Aix, and chapel-master at Saint Sauveur. Then he went to Paris, being provided with £100 a year by a rich uncle. After having studied for a while at the Paris Conservatoire, he joined the sect of Saint Simonians, and in 1833 travelled in the East in order to preach the new doctrine. After three years’ absence, during which Constantinople and Smyrna were visited and some time was spent in Egypt, he returned to France and published a collection of Oriental Melodies. For several years he worked in retirement, and wrote two symphonies, some chamber music and songs. On the 8th of December 1844 he suddenly leapt into fame through the extraordinary success obtained by his symphonic ode Le Désert, which was produced at the Conservatoire. In this work David had struck out a new line. He had attempted in simple strains to evoke the majestic stillness of the desert. Notwithstanding its title of “symphonic ode,” Le Désert has little in common with the symphonic style. What distinguishes it is a certain naïveté of expression and an effective oriental colouring. In this last respect David may be looked upon as the precursor of a whole army of composers. His succeeding works, Moïse au Sinai (1846), Christophe Colomb (1847), L’Éden (1848), scarcely bore out the promise shown in Le Désert, although the second of these compositions was successful at the time of its production. David now turned his attention to the theatre, and produced the following operas in succession: La Perle du Brésil (1851), Herculanum (1859), Lalla-Roukh (1862), Le Saphir (1865). Of these, Lalla-Roukh is the one which has obtained the greatest success. In 1868 he gained the award of the French Institute for the biennial prize given by the emperor; and in 1869 he was made librarian at the Conservatoire instead of Berlioz, whom subsequently he succeeded as a member of the Institute. He died at Saint-Germain-en-Laye on the 29th of August 1876. If David can scarcely be placed in the first rank of French composers, he nevertheless deserves the consideration due to a sincere artist, who was undoubtedly inspired by lofty ideals. At a time when the works of Berlioz were still unappreciated by the majority of people, David succeeded in making the public take interest in music of a picturesque and descriptive kind. Thus he may be considered as one of the pioneers of modern French musical art.

DAVID, GERARD [Gheeraert Davit], (?-1523), Netherlands painter, born at Oudewater in Holland between 1450 and 1460, was the last great master of the Bruges school. He was only rescued from complete oblivion in 1860-1863 by Mr W. J. H. Weale, whose researches in the archives of Bruges brought to the light the main facts of the master’s life. We have now documentary evidence that David came to Bruges in 1483, presumably from Haarlem, where he had formed his early style under the tuition of Ouwater; that he joined the gild of St Luke at Bruges in 1484 and became dean of the gild in 1501; that he married in 1496 Cornelia Cnoop, daughter of the dean of the Goldsmiths’ gild; became one of the leading citizens of the town; died on the 13th of August 1523; and was buried in the Church of Our Lady at Bruges. In his early work he had followed the Haarlem tradition as represented by Dirck Bouts, Ouwater and Geertgen of Haarlem, but already gave evidence of his superior power as colourist. To this early period belong the “St John” of the Kaufmann collection in Berlin, and Mr Salting’s “St Jerome.” In Bruges he applied himself to the study and the copying of the masterpieces by the Van Eycks, Van der Weyden, and Van der Goes, and came under the direct influence of the master whom he followed most closely, Hans Memlinc. From him he acquired the soulful intensity of expression, the increased realism in the rendering of the human form and the orderly architectonic arrangement of the figures. Yet another master was to influence him later in life when, in 1515, he visited Antwerp and became impressed with the life and movement of Quentin Matsys, who had introduced a more intimate and more human conception of sacred themes. David’s “Pietà” in the National Gallery, and the “Descent from the Cross,” in the Cavallo collection, Paris (Guildhall, 1906), were painted under this influence and are remarkable for their dramatic movement. But the works on which David’s fame will ever rest most securely are the great altar-pieces executed by him before his visit to Antwerp—the “Marriage of St Catherine,” at the National Gallery; the triptych of the “Madonna Enthroned and Saints” of the Brignole-Sale collection in Genoa; the “Annunciation” of the Sigmaringen collection; and, above all, the “Madonna with Angels and Saints” which he painted gratuitously for the Carmelite Nuns of Sion at Bruges, and which is now in the Rouen museum. Only a few of his works have remained in Bruges—“The Judgment of Cambyses,” “The Flaying of Sisamnes” and the “Baptism of Christ” in the Town museum, and the “Transfiguration” in the Church of Our Lady. The rest were scattered all over the world, and to this may be due the oblivion into which his very name had fallen—partly to this, and partly to the fact that with all the beauty and soulfulness of his work he had no new page to add to the history of the progressive development of art, and even in his best work only gave new variations of the tunes sung by his great precursors and contemporaries. That he is worthy to rank among the masters was only revealed to the world when a considerable number of his paintings were assembled at Bruges on the occasion of the exhibition of early Flemish masters in 1902. At the time of his death the glory of Bruges, and also of the Bruges school, was on the wane, and Antwerp had taken the leadership in art as in political and commercial importance. Of David’s pupils in Bruges, only Isenbrandt, A. Cornelis and Ambrosius Benson achieved importance. Among other Flemish painters Joachim Patinir and Mabuse were to some degree influenced by him.

Eberhard Freiherr von Bodenhausen published in 1905 a very comprehensive monograph on Gerard David and his School (Munich, F. Bruckmann), together with a catalogue raisonné of his works, which, after careful sifting, are reduced to the number of forty-three.

(P. G. K.)

DAVID, JACQUES LOUIS (1748-1825), French painter, was born in Paris on the 30th of April 1748. His father was killed in a duel, when the boy was but nine years old. His education was begun at the Collège des Quatre Nations, where he obtained a smattering of the classics; but, his artistic talent being already obvious, he was soon placed by his guardian in the studio of François Boucher. Boucher speedily realized that his own erotic style did not suit the lad’s genius, and recommended him to J. M. Vien, the pioneer of the classical reaction in painting. Under him David studied for some years, and, after several attempts to win the prix de Rome, at last succeeded in 1775, with his “Loves of Antiochus and Stratonice.” Vien, who had just been appointed director of the French Academy at Rome, carried the youth with him to that city. The classical reaction was now in full tide; Winckelmann was writing, Raphael Mengs painting; and the treasures of the Vatican galleries helped to confirm David in a taste already moulded by so many kindred influences. This severely classical spirit inspired his first important painting, “Date obolum Belisario,” exhibited at Paris in 1780. The picture exactly suited the temper of the times, and was an immense success. It was followed by others, painted on the same principles, but with greater perfection of art: “The Grief of Andromache” (1783), “The Oath of the Horatii” (Salon, 1785), “The Death of Socrates,” “Love of Paris and Helen” (1788), “Brutus” (1789). In the French drama an unimaginative imitation of ancient models had long prevailed; even in art Poussin and Le Sueur were successful by expressing a bias in the same direction; and in the first years of the revolutionary movement the fashion of imitating the ancients even in dress and manners went to the most extravagant length. At this very time David returned to Paris; he was now painter to the king, Louis XVI., who had been the purchaser of his principal works, and his popularity was soon immense. At the outbreak of the Revolution in 1789, David was carried away by the flood of enthusiasm that made all the intellect of France believe in a new era of equality and emancipation from all the ills of life.

The success of his sketch for the picture of the “Oath of the Tennis Court,” and his pronounced republicanism, secured David’s election to the Convention in September 1792, by the Section du Muséum, and he quickly distinguished himself by the defence of two French artists in Rome who had fallen into the merciless hands of the Inquisition. As, in this matter, the behaviour of the authorities of the French Academy in Rome had been dictated by the tradition of subservience to authority, he used his influence to get it suppressed. In the January following his election into the Convention his vote was given for the king’s death. Thus the man who was so greatly indebted to the Roman academy and to Louis XVI. assisted in the destruction of both, no doubt in obedience to a principle, like the act of Brutus in condemning his sons—a subject he painted with all his powers. Cato and stoicism were the order of the day. Hitherto the actor had walked the stage in modern dress. Brutus had been applauded in red-heeled shoes and culottes jarretées; but Talma, advised by David, appeared in toga and sandals before an enthusiastic audience. At this period of his life Mademoiselle de Noailles persuaded him to paint a sacred subject, with Christ as the hero. When the picture was done, the Saviour was found to be another Cato. “I told you so,” he replied to the expostulations of the lady, “there is no inspiration in Christianity now!” David’s revolutionary ideas, which led to his election to the presidency of the Convention and to the committee of general security, inspired his pictures “Last Moments of Lepelletier de Saint-Fargeau” and “Marat Assassinated.” He also arranged the programme of the principal republican festivals. When Napoleon rose to power David became his enthusiastic admirer. His picture of Napoleon on horseback pointing the way to Italy is now in Berlin. During this period he also painted the “Rape of the Sabines” and “Leonidas at Thermopylae.” Appointed painter to the emperor, David produced the two notable pictures “The Coronation” (of Josephine) and the “Distribution of the Eagles.”

On the return of the Bourbons the painter was exiled with the other remaining regicides, and retired to Brussels, where he again returned to classical subjects: “Amor quitting Psyche,” “Mars disarmed by Venus,” &c. He rejected the offer, made through Baron Humboldt, of the office of minister of fine arts at Berlin, and remained at Brussels till his death on the 29th of December 1825. His end was true to his whole career and to his nationality. While dying, a print of the Leonidas, one of his favourite subjects, was submitted to him. After vaguely looking at it a long time, “Il n’y a que moi qui pouvais concevoir la tête de Léonidas,” he whispered, and died. His friends and his party thought to carry the body back to his beloved Paris for burial, but the government of the day arrested the procession at the frontier, an act which caused some scandal, and furnished the occasion of a terrible song of Béranger’s.

It is difficult for a generation which has witnessed another complete revolution in the standards of artistic taste to realize the secret of David’s immense popularity in his own day. His style is severely academic, his colour lacking in richness and warmth, his execution hard and uninteresting in its very perfection. Subjects and treatment alike are inspired by the passing fashion of an age which had deceived itself into believing that it was living and moving in the spirit of classical antiquity. The inevitable reaction of the romantic movement made the masterpieces, which had filled the men of the Revolution with enthusiasm, seem cold and lifeless to those who had been taught to expect in art that atmosphere of mystery which in nature is everywhere present. Yet David was a great artist, and exercised in his day and generation a great influence. His pictures are magnificent in their composition and their draughtsmanship; and his keen observation and insight into character are evident, especially in his portraits, notably of Madame Récamier, of the Conventional Gérard and of Boissy d’Anglas.

See E. J. Delécluze, Louis David, son école et son temps (Paris, 1855), and Le Peintre Louis David. Souvenirs et documents inédits, by J. L. Jules David, the painter’s grandson (Paris, 1880).

DAVID, PIERRE JEAN (1789-1856), usually called David d’Angers, French sculptor, was born at Angers on the 12th of March 1789. His father was a sculptor, or rather a carver, but he had thrown aside the mallet and taken the musket, fighting against the Chouans of La Vendée. He returned to his trade at the end of the civil war, to find his customers gone, so that young David was born into poverty. As the boy grew up his father wished to force him into some more lucrative and certain way of life. At last he succeeded in surmounting the opposition to his becoming a sculptor, and in his eighteenth year left for Paris to study the art upon a capital of eleven francs. After struggling against want for a year and a half, he succeeded in taking the prize at the École des Beaux-Arts. An annuity of 600 francs (£24) was granted by the municipality of his native town in 1809, and in 1811 David’s “Epaminondas” gained the prix de Rome. He spent five years in Rome, during which his enthusiasm for the works of Canova was often excessive.

Returning from Rome about the time of the restoration of the Bourbons, he would not remain in the neighbourhood of the Tuileries, which swarmed with foreign conquerors and returned royalists, and accordingly went to London. Here Flaxman and others visited upon him the sins of David the painter, to whom he was erroneously supposed to be related. With great difficulty he made his way to Paris again, where a comparatively prosperous career opened upon him. His medallions and busts were in much request, and orders for monumental works also came to him. One of the best of these was that of Gutenberg at Strassburg; but those he himself valued most were the statue of Barra, a drummer boy who continued to beat his drum till the moment of death in the war in La Vendée, and the monument to the Greek liberator Bozzaris, consisting in a young female figure called “Reviving Greece,” of which Victor Hugo said: “It is difficult to see anything more beautiful in the world; this statue joins the grandeur of Pheidias to the expressive manner of Puget.” David’s busts and medallions were very numerous, and among his sitters may be found not only the illustrious men and women of France, but many others both of England and Germany—countries which he visited professionally in 1827 and 1829. His medallions, it is affirmed, number 500. He died on the 4th of January 1856. David’s fame rests firmly on his pediment of the Panthéon, his monument to General Gobert in Père Lachaise and his marble “Philopoemen” in the Louvre. In the Musée David at Angers is an almost complete collection of his works either in the form of copies or in the original moulds. As an example of his benevolence of character may be mentioned his rushing off to the sickbed of Rouget de Lisle, the author of the “Marseillaise Hymn,” modelling and carving him in marble without delay, making a lottery of the work, and sending to the poet in the extremity of need the seventy-two pounds which resulted from the sale.

See H. Jouin, David d’Angers et ses relations littéraires (1890); Lettres de P. J. David d’Angers à Louis Dupré (Paris, 1891); Collection de portraits des contemporains d’après les médaillons de P. J. David (Paris, 1838).

DAVIDISTS, a fancy name rather than a recognized designation for three religious sects. It has been applied (1) to the followers (if he had any) of David of Dinant, in Belgium, the teacher or pupil of Amalric (Amaury) of Bena, both of whom taught apparently a species of pantheism. David’s Quaterni, or Quaternuli, condemned and burnt at Paris (1209), is a lost book, known only by references in Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas. Its author would have been burnt had he not fled. The name has been given (2) to the followers of David George or Joris (q.v.), and (3) to the followers of Francis Dávid (1510-1579), the apostle of Transylvanian unitarianism. (See Socinus, Unitarianism.)

DAVIDSON, ANDREW BRUCE (1831-1902), Scottish divine, was born in 1831 at Kirkhill in Aberdeenshire, where his father Andrew Davidson had a farm. The Davidsons belonged to the congregation of James Robertson (1803-1860) of Ellon, one of the ministers of Strathbogie Presbytery, which in the controversy which led to the disruption, resisted the “dangerous claims of the established church to self-government.” When the disruption came the principles at stake were keenly canvassed in Ellon, and eventually Andrew Davidson, senior, went with the Free Church. In 1845 the boy, who had been a “herd” on the farm, went for six months to the grammar school at Aberdeen and was there prepared for a university bursary, which was sufficient to pay his fees, but no more. During his four years at the university his mother supplied him fortnightly with provisions from the farm; sometimes she walked the whole twenty miles from Kirkhill and handed the coach fee to her son. He graduated in 1849. At the university he had acquired a distrust of philosophy, and found it difficult to choose between mathematical and linguistic studies. A Free Church school having been opened in Ellon, he became master there for three years. Here he developed special aptitude for linguistic and philological studies. Besides Hebrew he taught himself French, German, Dutch, Italian and Spanish. In November 1852 he entered New College, Edinburgh. There he took the four years’ theological course, and was licensed in 1856. For two years he preached occasionally and took vacancies. In 1858 the New College authorities appointed him assistant to the professor of Hebrew. He taught during the winter, and in the long vacation continued his preparation for his life work. One year he worked in Germany under Ewald, another year he went to Syria to study Arabic. In 1862 he published the first part of a commentary on Job. It was never finished and deals only with one-third of the book, but it is recognized as the first really scientific commentary on the Old Testament in the English language. In 1863 he was appointed by the general assembly professor of oriental languages at New College. He was junior colleague of Dr John Duncan (Rabbi Duncan) till 1870, and then for thirty years sole professor. He was a member of the Old Testament revision committee, and his work was recognized by several honorary distinctions, LL.D. (Aberdeen), D.D. (Edinburgh), Litt.D. (Cambridge). Among his students were Professors Elmslie, Skinner, Harper of Melbourne, Walker of Belfast, George Adam Smith of Glasgow and W. Robertson Smith. He understood it to be the first duty of an exegete to ascertain the meaning of the writer, and he showed that this could be done by the use of grammar and history and the historical imagination. He supplied guidance when it was much needed as to the methods and results of the higher criticism. Being a master of its methods, but very cautious in accepting assertions about its results, he secured attention early in the Free Church for scientific criticism, and yet threw the whole weight of his learning and his caustic wit into the argument against critical extravagance. He had thought himself into the ideas and points of view of the Hebrews, and his work in Old Testament theology is unrivalled. He excels as an expositor of the governing Hebrew ideas such as holiness, righteousness, Spirit of God, Messianism. In 1897 he was chosen moderator of the general assembly, but his health prevented his accepting the post. He died, unmarried, on the 26th of January 1902.

Besides the commentary on Job he published a book on the Hebrew Accents, the only Scottish performance of the kind since the days of Thomas Boston. His Introductory Hebrew Grammar has been widely adopted as a class-book in theological colleges. His Hebrew Syntax has the same admirable clearness, precision and teaching quality. His Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews is one of a series of handbooks for Bible classes. These were followed by commentaries on Job, Ezekiel, Nahum, Habakkuk and Zephaniah, in the Cambridge series; and a Bible-class primer on The Exile and Restoration. His lectures on Old Testament Prophecy were published after his death by Professor J. A. Paterson. The Theology of the Old Testament in the “International Theological Library” is a posthumous volume edited by Professor Salmond. “Isaiah” in the Temple Bible was finished, but not revised, when he died; and he also had in hand the volume on Isaiah for the International Critical Commentary; to which must be added a mass of articles contributed to The Imperial Bible Dictionary, The Encyclopaedia Britannica, and the chief religious reviews. Various articles in Dr Hastings’ Bible Dictionary were by Davidson, especially the article “God.” Two volumes of sermons, The Called of God, and Waiting upon God, were published from MS. after Davidson’s death.

DAVIDSON, JOHN (1857-1909), British poet, playwright and novelist, son of the Rev. Alexander Davidson, a minister of the Evangelical Union, was born at Barrhead, Renfrewshire, Scotland, on the 11th of April 1857. After a schooling at the Highlanders’ Academy, Greenock, at the age of thirteen he was set to work in that town, by helping in a sugar factory laboratory and then in the town analyst’s office; and at fifteen he went back to his old school as a pupil-teacher. In 1876 he studied for a session at Edinburgh University, and then went as a master to various Scotch schools till 1890, varying his experiences in 1884 by being a clerk in a Glasgow thread firm. He had married in 1885, and meanwhile his literary inclinations had shown themselves, without attracting any public success, in the publication of his poetical and fantastic plays, Bruce (1886), Smith; a tragic farce (1888) and Scaramouch in Naxos (1889). Determining at all costs to follow his literary vocation, he went to London in 1890, but at first had a hard struggle. There his prose-romance Perfervid (1890) was published, one of the most original and fascinating stories of “young blood” and child adventure ever written, but for some reason it did not catch the public; and a sort of sequel in The Great Men (1891) met no better fate. He contributed, however, to newspapers and became known among literary journalists, and his volume of verse In a Music-Hall (1891) prepared the way for the genuine success two years later of his Fleet Street Eclogues (1893), which sounded a new and vigorous note and at once established his position among the younger generation of poets. He subsequently produced several more books in prose, romantic stories like Baptist Lake (1894) and Earl Lavender (1895), and an admirable piece of descriptive landscape writing in A Random Itinerary (1894); but his acceptance as a poet gave a more emphatic impulse to his work in verse, and most attention was given to the increasing proof of his powers shown in his Ballads and Songs (1894), Second Series of Fleet Street Eclogues (1895), New Ballads (1896), The Last Ballad, &c. (1898), all full of remarkably fresh and unconventional beauty. In spite of the strangely neglected genius of this early Perfervid, it is accordingly as a writer of verse rather than of prose-fiction that he occupies a leading place, with a decided character of his own, in recent English literature, his revival of a modernized ballad form being a considerable achievement in itself, and his poems being packed with fine thought, robust and masterful in expression and imagery. Meanwhile in 1896 he produced an English verse adaptation, in For the Crown (acted by Forbes Robertson and Mrs Patrick Campbell), of François Coppée’s drama Pour la couronne, which had considerable success and was revived in 1905; and he wrote several other literary plays, remarkable none the less for dramatic qualities,—Godfrida (1898), Self’s the Man (1901), The Knight of the Maypole (1902) and The Theatrocrat (1905), in the last of which a tendency to be extraordinary is rather too manifest. This tendency was not absent from his volume of Holiday and Other Poems (1906), containing many fine things, together with an “essay on blank verse” illustrated from his own compositions, the outspoken criticisms of a writer of admitted originality and insight, but not devoid of eccentric volubility. But if the identification of “eccentricity” and “greatness” by Cosmo Mortimer in Mr Davidson’s own Perfervid sometimes obtrudes itself on the memory in considering his more peculiarly “robust” and somewhat volcanic deliverances, no such objection can detract from the genuine inspiration of his best work, in which the true poetic afflatus is unmistakable. This is to be found in his poems published from 1893 to 1898, five years during which his reputation steadily and deservedly grew,—the Fleet Street Eclogues, with their passionate modern criticism of life combined with their breath of rural beauty, and such intense ballads as those “Of a Nun,” and “Of Heaven and Hell.” In his ethical and didactic utterances, The Testament of a Vivisector and The Testament of a Man Forbid (1901), The Testament of an Empire Builder (1902), Mammon and his Message (1908), &c., the fine quality of the verse is wedded with a certain fervid satirical journalism of subject, less admirable than the detachment of thought in the earlier volumes. In later years he lived at Penzance, provided with a small Civil List pension, but otherwise badly off, for his writings brought in very little money. On March 23rd, 1909, he disappeared, in circumstances pointing to suicide, and six months later his body was found in the sea.

See an article by Filson Young on “The New Poetry,” in the Fortnightly Review, January 1909.

DAVIDSON, RANDALL THOMAS (1848- ), archbishop of Canterbury, son of Henry Davidson, of Muirhouse, Edinburgh, was born in Edinburgh and educated at Harrow and Trinity College, Oxford. He took orders in 1874 and held a curacy at Dartford, in Kent, till 1877, when he became resident chaplain and private secretary to Dr Tait, archbishop of Canterbury, a position which he occupied till Dr Tait’s death, and retained for a short time (1882-1883) under his successor Dr Benson. He married in 1878 Edith, the second daughter of Archbishop Tait, whose Life he eventually wrote (1891). In 1882 he became honorary chaplain and sub-almoner to Queen Victoria, and in the following year was appointed dean of Windsor, and domestic chaplain to the queen. His advice upon state matters was constantly sought by the queen and greatly valued. From 1891 to 1903 he was clerk of the closet, first to Queen Victoria and afterwards to King Edward VII. He was made bishop of Rochester in 1891, and was translated to Winchester in 1895. In 1903 he succeeded Temple as archbishop of Canterbury. The new archbishop, without being one of the English divines who have made notable contributions to theological learning, already had a great reputation for ecclesiastical statesmanship; and in subsequent years his diplomatic abilities found ample scope in dealing not only with the difficulties caused in the church by doctrinal questions, but pre-eminently with the education crisis, and with the new problems arising in the enlarged Anglican Communion. As the chief representative of the Church of England in the House of Lords, his firmness, combined with broadmindedness, in regard to the attitude of the nonconformists towards denominational education, made his influence widely felt. In 1904 he visited Canada and the United States, and was present at the triennial general convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States and Canada. In 1908 he presided at the Pan-Anglican congress held in London, and at the Lambeth conference which followed. He had edited in 1889 The Lambeth Conferences, an historical account of the conferences of 1867, 1878 and 1888, giving the official reports and resolutions, and the sermons preached on these occasions.

DAVIDSON, SAMUEL (1807-1898), Irish biblical scholar, was born near Ballymena in Ireland. He was educated at the Royal College of Belfast, entered the Presbyterian ministry in 1835, and was appointed professor of biblical criticism at his own college. Becoming a Congregationalist, he accepted in 1842 the chair of biblical criticism, literature and oriental languages at the Lancashire Independent College at Manchester; but he was obliged to resign in 1857, being brought into collision with the college authorities by the publication of an introduction to the Old Testament entitled The Text of the Old Testament, and the Interpretation of the Bible, written for a new edition of Horne’s Introduction to the Sacred Scripture. Its liberal tendencies caused him to be accused of unsound views, and a most exhaustive report prepared by the Lancashire College committee was followed by numerous pamphlets for and against. After his resignation a fund of £3000 was subscribed as a testimonial by his friends. In 1862 he removed to London to become scripture examiner in London University, and he spent the rest of his life in literary work. He died on the 1st of April 1898. Davidson was a member of the Old Testament Revision Committee. Among his principal works are:—Sacred Hermeneutics Developed and Applied (1843), rewritten and republished as A Treatise on Biblical Criticism (1852), Lectures on Ecclesiastical Polity (1848), An Introduction to the New Testament (1848-1851), The Hebrew Text of the Old Testament Revised (1855), Introduction to the Old Testament (1862), On a Fresh Revision of the Old Testament (1873), The Canon of the Bible (1877), The Doctrine of Last Things in the New Testament (1883), besides translations of the New Testament from Von Tischendorf’s text, Gieseler’s Ecclesiastical History (1846) and Fürst’s Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon.

DAVIDSON, THOMAS (1817-1885), British palaeontologist, was born in Edinburgh on the 17th of May 1817. His parents possessed considerable landed property in Midlothian. Educated partly in the university at Edinburgh and partly in France, Italy and Switzerland, and early acquiring an interest in natural history, he benefited greatly by acquaintance with foreign languages and literature, and with men of science in different countries. He was induced in 1837, through the influence of Leopold von Buch, to devote his special attention to the brachiopoda, and in course of time he became the highest authority on this group. The great task of his life was the Monograph of British Fossil Brachiopoda, published by the Palaeontographical Society (1850-1886). This work, with supplements, comprises six quarto volumes with more than 200 plates drawn on stone by the author. He also prepared an exhaustive memoir on “Recent Brachiopoda,” published by the Linnean Society. He was elected F.R.S. in 1857. He was awarded in 1865 the Wollaston medal by the Geological Society of London, and in 1870 a Royal medal by the Royal Society; and in 1882 the degree of LL.D. was conferred upon him by the university of St Andrews. He died at Brighton on the 14th of October 1885, bequeathing his fine collection of recent and fossil brachiopoda to the British Museum.

See biography with portrait and list of papers in Geol. Mag. for 1871, p. 145.

DAVIES, DAVID CHARLES (1826-1891), Welsh nonconformist divine, was born at Aberystwyth on the 11th of May 1826, his father being a merchant and a pioneer of Welsh Methodism, his mother a niece of Thomas Charles (q.v.) of Bala. He was educated in his native town by a noted schoolmaster, John Evans, at Bala College, and at University College, London, where he graduated B.A. in 1847 and M.A. (in mathematics) in 1849. He had already begun to preach, and after an evangelistic tour in South Wales supplied the pulpit of the English presbyterian church at Newtown for six months, and settled as pastor of the bilingual church at Builth in 1851. He returned to this charge after a pastorate at Liverpool (1853-1856), left it again in 1858 for Newtown, and went in May 1859 to the Welsh church at Jewin Crescent, London. Here he remained until 1876, and from that date till 1882, although living at Bangor for reasons of health, had the chief oversight of the church. In 1888 he accepted the principalship of the Calvinistic Methodist College at Trevecca in Brecknockshire. His work here was successful, but short; he died at Bangor on the 26th of September 1891, and was buried at Aberystwyth.

Though Davies stood somewhat apart from the main currents of thought both without and within his church, and was largely unknown to English audiences or readers, he exercised a strong influence on Welsh life and thought in the 19th century. He was a serious student, especially of anti-theistic positions, a good speaker, and a frequent contributor to Welsh theological journals. Several of his articles have been collected and published, the most noteworthy being expositions on The First Epistle of John (1889), Ephesians (2 vols., 1896, 1901), Psalms (1897), Romans (1902); and The Atonement and Intercession of Christ (1899, English trans. by D. E. Jenkins, 1901).

DAVIES, SIR JOHN (1569-1626), English philosophical poet, was baptized on the 16th of April 1569, at Tisbury, Wiltshire, where his parents lived at the manor-house of Chicksgrove. He was educated at Winchester College, and became a commoner of Queen’s College, Oxford, in 1585. In 1588 he entered the Middle Temple, and was called to the bar in 1595. In his general onslaught on literature in 1599 the archbishop of Canterbury ordered to be burnt the notorious and now excessively rare volume, All Ovid’s Elegies, 3 Bookes, by C. M. Epigrams by J. D. (Middleburgh, 1598?), which contained posthumous work by Marlowe. The epigrams by Davies, although not devoid of wit, were coarse enough to deserve their fate. It is probable that they were earlier in date of composition than the charming fragment entitled Orchestra (1596), written in praise of dancing. The poet, in the person of Antinoüs, tries to induce Penelope to dance by arguing that all harmonious natural processes partake of the nature of a conscious and well-ordered dance. He closes his argument by foreshadowing in a magic mirror the revels of the court of Cynthia (Elizabeth). Orchestra was dedicated to the author’s “very friend, Master Richard Martin,” but in the next year the friends quarrelled, and Davies was expelled from the society for having struck Martin with a cudgel in the hall of the Middle Temple. He spent the year after his expulsion at Oxford in the composition of his philosophical poem on the nature of the soul and its immortality—Nosce teipsum (1599). The style of the work was entirely novel; and the stanza in which it was written—the decasyllabic quatrain with alternate rhymes—had never been so effectively handled. Its force, eloquence and ingenuity, the orderly and lucid arrangement of its matter, place it among the finest of English didactic poems. In 1599 he also published a volume of twenty-six graceful acrostics on the words Elisabetha Regina, entitled Hymns to Astraea. He produced no more poetry except his contributions to Francis Davison’s Poetical Rhapsody (1608). These were two dialogues which had been written as entertainments for the queen, and “Yet other Twelve Wonders of the World,” satirical epigrams on the courtier, the divine, the maid, &c., and “A Hymn in praise of Music.” Ten sonnets to Philomel are signed J. D., and are assigned to Davies (Poetical Rhapsody, ed. A. H. Bullen, 1890). In 1601 Davies was restored to his position at the bar, after making his apologies to Martin, and in the same year he sat for Corfe Castle in parliament. James I. received the author of Nosce teipsum with great favour, and sent him (1603) to Ireland as solicitor-general, conferring the honour of knighthood upon him in the same year. In 1606 he was promoted to be attorney-general for Ireland, and created serjeant-at-arms. Of the difficulties in the way of the prosecution of his work, and his untiring industry in overcoming them, there is abundant evidence in his letters to Cecil preserved in the State Papers on Ireland. One of his chief aims was to establish the Protestant religion firmly in Ireland, and he took strict measures to enforce the law for attendance at church. With the same end in view he took an active part in the “plantation” of Ulster. In 1612 he published his prose Discoverie of the true causes why Ireland was never entirely subdued untill the beginning of his Majestie’s happie raigne.1 In the same year he entered the Irish parliament as member for Fermanagh, and was elected speaker after a scene of disorder in which the Catholic nominee, Sir John Everard, who had been installed, was forcibly ejected. In the capacity of speaker he delivered an excellent address reviewing previous Irish parliaments. He resigned his Irish offices in 1619, and sat in the English parliament of 1621 for Newcastle-under-Lyme. With Sir Robert Cotton he was one of the founders of the Society of Antiquaries. He was appointed lord chief justice in 1626, but died suddenly (December 8th) before he could enter on the office. He had married (1609) Eleanor Touchet, daughter of George, Baron Audley. She developed eccentricity, verging on madness, and wrote several fanatical books on prophecy.

In 1615 Davies published at Dublin Le Primer Discours des Cases et Matters in Ley resolues et adjudges en les Courts del Roy en cest Realme (reprinted 1628). He issued an edition of his poems in 1622. His prose publications were mainly posthumous. The Question concerning Impositions, Tonnage, Poundage ... was printed in 1656, and four of the tracts relating to Ireland, with an account of Davies and his services to that country, were edited by G. Chalmers in 1786. His works were edited by Dr A. B. Grosart (3 vols. 1869-1876), with a full biography, for the Fuller Worthies Library.

He is not to be confounded with another poet, John Davies of Hereford (1565?-1618), among whose numerous volumes of verse may be mentioned Mirum in modum (1602), Microcosmus (1603), The Holy Roode (1609), Wittes Pilgrimage (c. 1610), The Scourge of Folly (c. 1611), The Muses Sacrifice (1612) and Wittes Bedlam (1607); his Scourge of Folly contains verses addressed to many of his contemporaries, to Shakespeare among others; he also wrote A Select Second Husband for Sir Thomas Overbury’s Wife (1616), and The Writing Schoolmaster (earliest known edition, 1633); his works were collected by Dr A. B. Grosart (2 vols., 1873) for the Chertsey Worthies Library.

1 Edited by Henry Morley in his Ireland under Elizabeth and James I. (1890).

DAVIES (Davisius), JOHN (1679-1732), English classical scholar and critic, was born in London on the 22nd of April 1679. He was educated at Charterhouse and Queens’ College, Cambridge, of which society he was elected fellow (July 7th, 1701). He subsequently became rector of Fen Ditton, prebendary of Ely, and president of his college. He died on the 7th of March 1731-1732, and was buried in the college chapel. Davies was considered one of the best commentators on Cicero, his attention being chiefly devoted to the philosophical works of that author. Amongst these he edited the Tusculanae disputationes (1709), De natura deorum (1718), De divinatione and De fato (1725), Academica (1725), De legibus (1727), De finibus (1728). His nearly finished notes on the De officiis he bequeathed to Dr Richard Mead, with a view to their publication. Mead, finding himself unable to carry out the undertaking, transferred the notes to Thomas Bentley (nephew of the famous Richard Bentley), by whose carelessness they were burnt. Davies’s editions, which were intended to supplement those of Graevius, show great learning and an extensive knowledge of the history and systems of philosophy, but he allows himself too much licence in the matter of emendation. He also edited Maximus of Tyre’s Dissertationes (1703); the works of Caesar (1706); the Octavius of Minucius Felix (1707); the Epitome divinarum institutionum of Lactantius (1718). Although on intimate terms with Richard Bentley, he found himself unable to agree with the great scholar in regard to his dispute with Trinity College.

DAVIES, SIR LOUIS HENRY (1845- ), Canadian politician and jurist, was born in Prince Edward Island in 1845, of Huguenot descent. From 1869 to 1879 he took part in local politics, and was premier from 1876-1879; in 1882 he entered the Canadian parliament as a Liberal, and from 1896 to 1901 was minister of marine and fisheries. In the latter year he became one of the judges of the supreme court of Canada. In 1877 he was counsel for Great Britain before the Anglo-American fisheries arbitration at Halifax; in 1897 he was a joint delegate to Washington with Sir Wilfrid Laurier on the Bering Sea seal question; and in 1898-1899 a member of the Anglo-American joint high commission at Quebec.

DAVIES, RICHARD (c. 1505-1581), Welsh bishop and scholar, was born in North Wales, and was educated at New Inn Hall, Oxford, becoming vicar of Burnham, Buckinghamshire, in 1550. Being a reformer he took refuge at Geneva during the reign of Mary, returning to England and to parochial work after the accession of Elizabeth in 1558. His connexion with Wales was renewed almost at once; for, after serving on a commission which visited the Welsh dioceses, he was, in January 1560, consecrated bishop of St Asaph, whence he was translated, early in 1561, to the bishopric of St Davids. As a bishop Davies was an earnest reformer, very industrious, active and liberal, but not very scrupulous with regard to the property of the church. He was a member of the council of Wales, was very friendly with Matthew Parker, archbishop of Canterbury, and was regarded both by Parker and by William Cecil, Lord Burghley, as a trustworthy adviser on Welsh concerns. Another of the bishop’s friends was Walter Devereux, first earl of Essex. Assisting William Salisbury, Davies took part in translating the New Testament into Welsh, and also did some work on the Welsh translation of the Book of Common Prayer. He helped to revise the “Bishops’ Bible” of 1568, being himself responsible for the book of Deuteronomy, and the second book of Samuel. He died on the 7th of November 1581, and was buried in Abergwili church.

DAVILA, ENRICO CATERINO (1576-1631), Italian historian, was descended from a Spanish noble family. His immediate ancestors had been constables of the kingdom of Cyprus for the Venetian republic since 1464. But in 1570 the island was taken by the Turks; and Antonio Davila, the father of the historian, had to leave it, despoiled of all he possessed. He travelled into Spain and France, and finally returned to Padua, and at Sacco on the 30th of October 1576 his youngest son, Enrico Caterino, was born. About 1583 Antonio took this son to France, where he became a page in the service of Catherine de’ Medici, wife of King Henry II. In due time he entered the military service, and fought through the civil wars until the peace in 1598. He then returned to Padua, where, and subsequently at Parma, he led a studious life until, when war broke out, he entered the service of the republic of Venice and served with distinction in the field. But during the whole of this active life, many details of which are very interesting as illustrative of the life and manners of the time, he never lost sight of a design which he had formed at a very early period, of writing the history of those civil wars in France in which he had borne a part, and during which he had had so many opportunities of closely observing the leading personages and events. This work was completed about 1630, and was offered in vain by the author to all the publishers in Venice. At last one Tommaso Baglíoni, who had no work for his presses, undertook to print the manuscript, on condition that he should be free to leave off if more promising work offered itself. The printing of the Istoria delle guerre civili di Francia was, however, completed, and the success and sale of the work were immediate and enormous. Over two hundred editions followed, of which perhaps the best is the one published in Paris in 1644. Davila was murdered, while on his way to take possession of the government of Cremona for Venice in July 1631, by a ruffian, with whom some dispute seems to have arisen concerning the furnishing of the relays of horses ordered for his use by the Venetian government.

The Istoria was translated into French by G. Baudouin (Paris, 1642); into Spanish by Varen de Soto (Madrid, 1651, and Antwerp, 1686); into English by W. Aylesbury (London, 1647), and by Charles Cotterel (London, 1666), and into Latin by Pietro Francesco Cornazzano (Rome, 1745). The best account of the life of Davila is that by Apostolo Zeno, prefixed to an edition of the history printed at Venice in 2 vols. in 1733. Peter Bayle is severe on certain historical inaccuracies of Davila, and it is true that Davila must be read with due remembrance of the fact that he was not only a Catholic but the especial protégé of Catherine de’ Medici, but it is not to be forgotten that Bayle was as strongly Protestant.

DAVIS, ANDREW JACKSON (1826-1910), American spiritualist, was born at Blooming Grove, Orange county, New York, on the 11th of August 1826. He had little education, though probably much more than he and his friends pretended. In 1843 he heard lectures in Poughkeepsie on “animal magnetism,” as the phenomena of hypnotism was then termed, and found that he had remarkable clairvoyant powers; and in the following year he had, he said, spiritual messages telling him of his life work. For the next three years (1844-1847) he practised magnetic healing with much success; and in 1847 he published The Principles of Nature, Her Divine Revelations, and a Voice to Mankind, which in 1845 he had dictated while in a trance to his “scribe,” William Fishbough. He lectured with little success and returned to writing (or “dictating”) books, publishing about thirty in all, including The Great Harmonia (1850-1861), an “encyclopaedia” in six volumes; The Philosophy of Special Providences (1850), which with its evident rehash of old arguments against special providences and miracles would seem to show that Davis’s inspiration was literary; The Magic Staff: an Autobiography (1857), which was supplemented by Arabula: or the Divine Guest, Containing a New Collection of New Gospels (1867), the gospels being those “according to” St Confucius, St John (G. Whittier), St Gabriel (Derzhavin), St Octavius (Frothingham), St Gerrit (Smith), St Emma (Hardinge), St Ralph (W. Emerson), St Seiden (J. Finney), St Theodore (Parker), &c.; and A Stellar Key to the Summer Land (1868) and Views of Our Heavenly Home (1878), each with illustrative diagrams. Davis was much influenced by Swedenborg and by the Shakers, who reprinted his panegyric of Ann Lee in an official Sketch of Shakers and Shakerism (1884).

DAVIS, CHARLES HOWARD (1857- ), American landscape painter, was born at East Cambridge, Massachusetts, on the 2nd of February 1857. A pupil of the schools of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, he was sent to Paris in 1880. Having studied at the Academy Julian under Lefebvre and Boulanger, he went to Barbizon and painted much in the forest of Fontainebleau under the traditions of the “men of thirty.” He became a full member of the National Academy of Design in 1906, and received many awards, including a silver medal at the Paris Exhibition of 1889. He is represented by important works in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Corcoran Art Gallery, Washington; the Pennsylvania Academy, Philadelphia, and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

DAVIS, CUSHMAN KELLOGG (1838-1900), American political leader and lawyer, was born in Henderson, New York, on the 16th of June 1838. He was taken by his parents to Wisconsin Territory in the year of his birth, and was educated at Carroll College, Waukesha, Wisconsin, and at the university of Michigan, from which he graduated in 1857. After studying law in the office of Alexander W. Randall, he was admitted to the bar in 1860. During the Civil War, as a first lieutenant of Federal volunteers, he served in the western campaigns of 1862 and 1863, and in 1864 was an aide to General Willis A. Gorman (1814-1876). Resigning his commission (1864) on account of ill-health, he soon settled in St Paul, Minnesota, where he practised law in partnership with General Gorman, and soon became prominent both at the bar and, as a Republican, in politics. He served in the state House of Representatives in 1867, 1868-1873 was United States district attorney for Minnesota. In 1874-1876 he was governor of the state, and from 1887 until his death was a member of the United States Senate. In the Senate he was one of the acknowledged leaders of his party, an able and frequent speaker and a committee worker of great industry. In March 1897 he became chairman of the committee on foreign relations at a time when its work was peculiarly influential in shaping American foreign policy. His extensive knowledge of international law, and his tact and diplomacy, enabled him to render services of the utmost importance in connexion with the Spanish-American War, and he was one of the peace commissioners who negotiated and signed the treaty of Paris by which the war was terminated. He died at St Paul on the 27th of November 1900. Few public men in the United States since the Civil War have combined skill in diplomacy, constructive statesmanship, talent for political organization, oratorical ability and broad culture to such a degree as Senator Davis. In addition to various speeches and public addresses, he published an essay entitled The Law of Shakespeare (1899).

DAVIS, HENRY WILLIAM BANKS (1833- ), English painter, received his art training in the Royal Academy schools, where he was awarded two silver medals. He was elected an associate of the Academy in 1873, and academician in 1877. He made a considerable reputation as an accomplished painter of quiet pastoral subjects and carefully elaborated landscapes with cattle. His pictures, “Returning to the Fold” (1880), and “Approaching Night” (1899), bought for the Chantrey Fund Collection, are now in the National Gallery of British Art (Tate Gallery).

DAVIS, HENRY WINTER (1817-1865), American political leader, was born at Annapolis, Maryland, on the 16th of August 1817. His father, Rev Henry Lyon Davis (1775-1836), was a prominent Protestant Episcopal clergyman of Maryland, and for some years president of St John’s College at Annapolis. The son graduated at Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio, in 1837, and from the law department of the university of Virginia in 1841, and began the practice of law in Alexandria, Virginia, but in 1850 removed to Baltimore, Maryland, where he won a high position at the bar. Early becoming imbued with strong anti-slavery views, though by inheritance he was himself a slave holder, he began political life as a Whig, but when the Whig party disintegrated, he became an “American” or “Know-Nothing,” and as such served in the national House of Representatives from 1855 to 1861. By his independent course in Congress he won the respect and esteem of all political groups. In the contest over the speakership at the opening of the Thirty-Sixth Congress (1859) he voted with the Republicans, thereby incurring a vote of censure from the Maryland legislature, which called upon him to resign. In 1860, not being quite ready to ally himself wholly with the Republican party, he declined to be a candidate for the Republican nomination for the vice-presidency, and supported the Bell and Everett ticket. He was himself defeated in this year for re-election to Congress. In the winter of 1860-1861 he was active on behalf of compromise measures. Finally, after President Lincoln’s election, he became a Republican, and as such was re-elected in 1862 to the national House of Representatives, in which he at once became one of the most radical and aggressive members, his views commanding especial attention owing to his being one of the few representatives from a slave state. From December 1863 to March 1865 he was chairman of the committee on foreign affairs; as such, in 1864, he was unwilling to leave the delicate questions concerning the French occupation of Mexico entirely in the hands of the president and his secretary of state, and brought in a report very hostile to France, which was adopted in the House, but fortunately, as it proved later, was not adopted by the Senate. With other radical Republicans Davis was a bitter opponent of Lincoln’s plan for the reconstruction of the Southern States, and on the 15th of February 1864 he reported from committee a bill placing the process of reconstruction under the control of Congress, and stipulating that the Confederate States, before resuming their former status in the Union, must disfranchise all important civil and military officers of the Confederacy, abolish slavery, and repudiate all debts incurred by or with the sanction of the Confederate government. In his speech supporting this measure Davis declared that until Congress should “recognize a government established under its auspices, there is no government in the rebel states save the authority of Congress.” The bill—the first formal expression by Congress with regard to Reconstruction—did not pass both Houses until the closing hours of the session, and failed to receive the approval of the president, who on the 8th of July issued a proclamation defining his position. Soon afterwards, on the 5th of August 1864, Davis joined Benjamin F. Wade of Ohio, who had piloted the bill through the Senate, in issuing the so-called “Wade-Davis Manifesto,” which violently denounced President Lincoln for encroaching on the domain of Congress and insinuated that the presidential policy would leave slavery unimpaired in the reconstructed states. In a debate in Congress some months later he declared, “When I came into Congress ten years ago this was a government of law. I have lived to see it a government of personal will.” He was one of the radical leaders who preferred Frémont to Lincoln in 1864, but subsequently withdrew his opposition and supported the President for re-election. He early favoured the enlistment of negroes, and in July 1865 publicly advocated the extension of the suffrage to them. He was not a candidate for re-election to Congress in 1864, and died in Baltimore, Maryland, on the 30th of December 1865. Davis was a man of scholarly tastes, an orator of unusual ability and great eloquence, tireless and fearless in fighting political battles, but impulsive to the verge of rashness, impractical, tactless and autocratic. He wrote an elaborate political work entitled The War of Ormuzd and Ahriman in the Nineteenth Century (1853), in which he combated the Southern contention that slavery was a divine institution.

See The Speeches of Henry Winter Davis (New York, 1867), to which is prefixed an oration on his life and character delivered in the House of Representatives by Senator J. A. J. Creswell of Maryland.

DAVIS, JEFFERSON (1808-1889), American soldier and statesman, president of the Confederate states in the American Civil War, was born on the 3rd of June 1808 at what is now the village of Fairview, in that part of Christian county, Kentucky, which was later organized as Todd county. His father, Samuel Davis (1756-1824), who served in the War of Independence, was of Welsh, and his mother, Jane Cook, of Scotch-Irish descent; during his infancy the family moved to Wilkinson county, Mississippi. Jefferson Davis was educated at Transylvania University (Lexington, Kentucky) and at the United States Military Academy at West Point. From the latter he graduated in July 1828, and became by brevet a second lieutenant of infantry. He was assigned for duty to Jefferson Barracks at St Louis, and on reaching this post was ordered to Fort Crawford, near Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin. In 1833 he took part in the closing scenes of the Black Hawk War, was present at the capture of Black Hawk, and was sent to Dixon, Illinois, to muster into service some volunteers from that state. Their captain was Abraham Lincoln, and Lieutenant Davis is said to have administered to him his first oath of allegiance. In June 1835 he resigned from the army, married Miss Knox Taylor, daughter of Colonel (later General) Zachary Taylor, and became a cotton planter in Warren county, Miss. In September of the same year, while visiting in Louisiana to escape the fever, his wife died of it and Davis himself was dangerously ill. For the next few months he travelled to regain his health; and in the spring of 1836 returned to his cotton plantation, where for several years he devoted his time largely to reading political philosophy, political economy, public law and the English classics, and by careful management of his estate he acquired considerable wealth. In 1843 Davis entered the field of politics as a Democrat, and exhibited great power as a public speaker. In 1844 he was chosen as a presidential elector on the Polk and Dallas ticket; in February 1845 he married Miss Varina Howell (1826-1906) of Mississippi (a granddaughter of Governor Richard Howell of New Jersey), and in the same year became a Democratic representative in Congress. From the beginning of his political career he advocated a strict construction of the Federal constitution. He was an ardent admirer of John C. Calhoun, and eventually became his successor as the leader of the South. In his rare speeches in the House of Representatives he clearly defined his position in regard to states rights, which he consistently held ever afterwards. During his first session, war with Mexico was declared, and he resigned his seat in June 1846 to take command of the first regiment raised in his state—the Mississippi Rifles. He served in the Northern Campaign under his father-in-law, General Taylor, and was greatly distinguished for gallantry and soldierly conduct at Monterey and particularly at Buena Vista, where he was severely wounded early in the engagement, but continued in command of his regiment until victory crowned the American arms. While still in the field he was appointed (May 1847) by President Polk to be brigadier-general of volunteers; but this appointment Davis declined, on the ground, as he afterwards said, “that volunteers are militia and the Constitution reserves to the state the appointment of all militia officers.” Afterwards, Davis himself, as president of the Confederate States, was to appoint many volunteer officers.

Upon his return to his home late in 1847 he was appointed to fill a vacancy in the United States Senate, and in 1850 he was elected for a full term of six years. He resigned in 1851, but was again elected in 1857, and continued as a member from that year until the secession of his State in 1861. As a senator he stood in the front rank in a body distinguished for ability; his purity of character and courteous manner, together with his intellectual gifts, won him the esteem of all parties; and he became more and more the leader of the Southern Democrats. He was, however, possessed of a logical rather than an intuitive mind. In his famous speech in the Senate on the 12th of July 1848, on the question of establishing a government for Oregon Territory, he held that a slave should be treated by the Federal government on the same basis as any other property, and therefore that it was the duty of Congress to protect the owner’s right to his slave in whatever state or territory of the Union that slave might be. In the debates on the Compromise Measures of 1850 he took an active part, strongly opposing these measures, while Henry Stuart Foote (1800-1880), the other Mississippi senator, was one of their leading advocates. But although still holding to the theory expounded in his July speech of 1848, he was now ready with the proposal that slavery might be prohibited north of latitude 36° 30′ N. provided it should not be interfered with in any territory south of that line. He resigned from the Senate in 1851 to become a candidate of the Democratic States-Rights party for the governorship of his state against Foote, the candidate of the Union Democrats. In the campaign he held, in opposition to the wishes of the more radical members of his party, that although secession might be resorted to as a last alternative the circumstances were not yet such as to justify it. A temporary loss of eyesight interfered with his canvass, and he was defeated by a small majority (1009), the campaign having been watched with the greatest interest throughout the country. In 1853 he accepted the position of secretary of war in the cabinet of President Pierce, and for four years performed the duties of the office with great distinction and with lasting benefit to the nation. He organized the engineer companies which explored and reported on the several proposed routes for a railway connecting the Mississippi valley with the Pacific Ocean; he effected the enlargement of the army, and made material changes in its equipment of arms and ammunition, utilizing the latest improvements; he made his appointments of subordinates on their merits, regardless of party considerations; he revised the system of tactics, perfected the signal corps service, and enlarged the coast and frontier defences of the country. During all this time he was on terms of intimate friendship with the president, over whom he undoubtedly exerted a powerful, but probably not, as is often said, a dominating influence; for instance he is generally supposed to have won the president’s support for the Kansas-Nebraska Bill of 1854. After the passage of this bill, Davis, who as secretary of war had control of the United States troops in Kansas, sympathized strongly with the pro-slavery party there. At the end of his service in the cabinet, he was returned to the Senate. To his insistence in 1860 that the Democratic party should support his claim to the protection of slavery in the territories by the Federal government, the disruption of that party was in large measure due. At the same time he practically told the Senate that the South would secede in the event of the election of a radical Republican to the presidency; and on the 10th of January 1861, not long after the election of Lincoln, he argued before that body the constitutional right of secession and declared that the treatment of the South had become such that it could no longer remain in the Union without being degraded. When his state had passed the ordinance of secession he resigned his seat, and his speech on the 21st of January was a clear and able statement of the position taken by his state, and a most pathetic farewell to his associates.

On the 25th of January 1861 Davis was commissioned major-general of the forces Mississippi was raising in view of the threatened conflict. On the 9th of February he received the unanimous vote of the Provisional Congress of the seceded states as president of the “Confederate States of America.” He was inaugurated on the 18th of February, was subsequently, after the adoption of the permanent constitution, regularly elected by popular vote, for a term of six years, and on the 22nd of February 1862 was again inaugurated. He had not sought the office, preferring service in the field. His brilliant career, both as a civilian and as a soldier, drew all eyes to him as best fitted to guide the fortunes of the new Confederacy, and with a deep sense of the responsibility he obeyed the call. He heartily approved of the peace conference, which attempted to draw up a plan of reconciliation between the two sections, but whose failure made war inevitable. Montgomery, in Alabama, was the first Confederate capital, but after Virginia joined her sister states, the seat of government was removed to Richmond, on the 29th of May 1861. How Davis—of whom W. E. Gladstone, in the early days of English sympathy with the South, said that he had “made a nation”—bore himself in his most responsible position during the gigantic conflict which ensued, cannot here be related in detail. (See Confederate States; and American Civil War.) In the shortest time he organized and put into the field one of the finest bodies of soldiers of which history has record. Factories sprang up in the South in a few months, supplying the army with arms and munitions of war, and the energy of the president was everywhere apparent. That he committed serious errors, his warmest admirers will hardly deny. Unfortunately his firmness developed into obstinacy, and exhibited itself in continued confidence in officers who had proved to be failures, and in dislike of some of his ablest generals. He committed the great mistake, too, of directing the movements of distant armies from the seat of government, though those armies were under able generals. This naturally caused great dissatisfaction, and more than once resulted in irreparable disaster. Moreover, he was not, like Lincoln, a great manager of men; he often acted without tact; he was charged with being domineering and autocratic, and at various times he was seriously hampered by the meddling of the Confederate Congress and the opposition of such men as the vice-president, A. H. Stephens, Governor Joseph E. Brown of Georgia, and Governor Zebulon Vance of North Carolina.

During the winter of 1864-1865 the resources of the government showed such exhaustion that it was apparent that the end would come with the opening of the spring campaign. This was clearly stated in the reports of the heads of departments and of General Lee. President Davis, however, acted as if he was assured of ultimate success. He sent Duncan F. Kenner as special commissioner to the courts of England and France to obtain recognition of the Confederacy on condition of the abolition of slavery. When a conference was held in Hampton Roads on the 3rd of February 1865 between President Lincoln and Secretary Seward on the one side, and A. H. Stephens, R. M. T. Hunter, and Judge James A. Campbell, representing President Davis, on the other, he instructed his representatives to insist on the recognition of the Confederacy as a condition to any arrangement for the termination of the war. This defeated the object of the conference, and deprived the South of terms which would have been more beneficial than those imposed by the conqueror when the end came a few weeks later. The last days of the Confederate Congress were spent in recriminations between that body and President Davis, and the popularity with which he commenced his administration had almost entirely vanished. In January 1865 the Congress proposed to supersede the president and make General Lee dictator,—a suggestion, however, to which the Confederate commander refused to listen.

After the surrender of the armies of Lee and Johnston in April 1865, President Davis attempted to make his way, through Georgia, across the Mississippi, in the vain hope of continuing the war with the forces of Generals Smith and Magruder. He was taken prisoner on the 10th of May by Federal troops near Irwinville, Irwin county, Georgia, and was brought back to Old Point, Virginia, in order to be confined in prison at Fortress Monroe. In prison he was chained and treated with great severity. He was indicted for treason by a Virginia grand jury, persistent efforts were made to connect him with the assassination of President Lincoln, he was unjustly charged with having deliberately and wilfully caused the sufferings and deaths of Union prisoners at Andersonville and for two years he was denied trial or bail. Such treatment aroused the sympathy of the Southern people, who regarded him as a martyr to their cause, and in a great measure restored him to that place in their esteem which by the close of the war he had lost. It also aroused a general feeling in the North, and when finally he was admitted to bail (in May 1867), Horace Greeley, Gerrit Smith, and others in that section who had been his political opponents, became his sureties. Charles O’Conor, a leader of the New York bar, volunteered to act as his counsel. With him was associated Robert Ould of Richmond, a lawyer of great ability. They moved to quash the indictment on which he was brought to trial. Chief Justice Chase and Judge John C. Underwood constituted the United States circuit court sitting for Virginia before which the case was brought in December 1868; the court was divided, the chief justice voting to sustain the motion and Underwood to overrule it. The matter was thereupon certified to the Supreme Court of the United States, but as the general amnesty of the 25th of December 1868 included Davis, an order of nolle prosequi was entered in February 1869, and Davis and his bondsmen were thereupon released. After his release he visited Europe, and spent the last years of his life in retirement, during which he wrote his Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government (2 vols., 1881). In these volumes he attempted to vindicate his administration, and in so doing he attacked the records of those generals he disliked. He also wrote a Short History of the Confederate States of America (1890). He died on the 6th of December 1889, at New Orleans, leaving a widow and two daughters—Margaret, who married J. A. Hayes in 1877, and Varina Anne (1864-1898), better known as “Winnie” Davis, the “daughter of the Confederacy,” who was the author of several books, including A Sketch of the Life of Robert Emmet (1888), a novel, The Veiled Doctor (1895), and A Romance of Summer Seas (1898). A monument to her, designed by George J. Zolnay, and erected by the Daughters of the Confederacy, was unveiled in Hollywood cemetery, Richmond, Va., on the 9th of November 1899. Mrs Davis, who exerted a marked influence over her husband, survived him many years, passed the last years of her life in New York City, and died there on the 16th of October 1906.

Authorities.—Several biographies and memoirs of Davis have been published, of which the best are: Jefferson Davis, Ex-President of the Confederate States (2 vols., New York, 1890), by his widow; F. H. Alfriend’s Life of Jefferson Davis (Cincinnati, 1868), which defended him from the charges of incompetence and despotism brought against him; E. A. Pollard’s Life of Jefferson Davis, with a Secret History of the Southern Confederacy (Philadelphia, 1869), a somewhat partisan arraignment by a prominent Southern journalist; and W. E. Dodd’s Jefferson Davis (Philadelphia, 1907), which embodies the results of recent historical research. The Prison Life of Jefferson Davis (New York, 1866) by John J. Craven (d. 1893), a Federal army surgeon who was Davis’s physician at Fortress Monroe, was long popular; it gives a vivid and sympathetic picture of Mr Davis as a prisoner, but its authenticity and accuracy have been questioned.

(W. W. H.*; N. D. M.)

DAVIS (or Davys), JOHN (1550?-1605), one of the chief English navigators and explorers under Elizabeth, especially in Polar regions, was born at Sandridge near Dartmouth about 1550. From a boy he was a sailor, and early made several voyages with Adrian Gilbert; both the Gilbert and Raleigh families were Devonians of his own neighbourhood, and through life he seems to have profited by their friendship. In January 1583 he appears to have broached his design of a north-west passage to Walsingham and John Dee; various consultations followed; and in 1585 he started on his first north-western expedition. On this he began by striking the ice-bound east shore of Greenland, which he followed south to Cape Farewell; thence he turned north once more and coasted the west Greenland littoral some way, till, finding the sea free from ice, he shaped a “course for China” by the north-west. In 66° N., however, he fell in with Baffin Land, and though he pushed some way up Cumberland Sound, and professed to recognize in this the “hoped strait,” he now turned back (end of August). He tried again in 1586 and 1587; in the last voyage he pushed through the straits still named after him into Baffin’s Bay, coasting west Greenland to 73° N., almost to Upernavik, and thence making a last effort to find a passage westward along the north of America. Many points in Arctic latitudes (Cumberland Sound, Cape Walsingham, Exeter Sound, &c.) retain names given them by Davis, who ranks with Baffin and Hudson as the greatest of early Arctic explorers and, like Frobisher, narrowly missed the discovery of Hudson’s Bay via Hudson’s Straits (the “Furious Overfall” of Davis). In 1588 he seems to have commanded the “Black Dog” against the Spanish Armada; in 1589 he joined the earl of Cumberland off the Azores; and in 1591 he accompanied Thomas Cavendish on his last voyage, with the special purpose, as he tells us, of searching “that north-west discovery upon the back parts of America.” After the rest of Cavendish’s expedition returned unsuccessful, he continued to attempt on his own account the passage of the Strait of Magellan; though defeated here by foul weather, he discovered the Falkland Islands. The passage home was extremely disastrous, and he brought back only fourteen of his seventy-six men. After his return in 1593 he published a valuable treatise on practical navigation in The Seaman’s Secrets (1594), and a more theoretical work in The World’s Hydrographical Description (1595). His invention of back-staff and double quadrant (called a “Davis Quadrant” after him) held the field among English seamen till long after Hadley’s reflecting quadrant had been introduced. In 1596-1597 Davis seems to have sailed with Raleigh (as master of Sir Walter’s own ship) to Cadiz and the Azores; and in 1598-1600 he accompanied a Dutch expedition to the East Indies as pilot, sailing from Flushing, returning to Middleburg, and narrowly escaping destruction from treachery at Achin in Sumatra. In 1601-1603 he accompanied Sir James Lancaster as first pilot on his voyage in the service of the East India Company; and in December 1604 he sailed again for the same destination as pilot to Sir Edward Michelborne (or Michelbourn). On this journey he was killed by Japanese pirates off Bintang near Sumatra.

A Traverse Book made by John Davis in 1587, an Account of his Second Voyage in 1586, and a Report of Master John Davis of his three voyages made for the Discovery of the North West Passage were printed in Hakluyt’s collection. Davis himself published The Seaman’s Secrets, divided into two Parts (London, 1594), The World’s Hydrographical Description ... whereby appears that there is a short and speedy Passage into the South Seas, to China, Molucca, Philippina, and India, by Northerly Navigation (London, 1595). Various references to Davis are in the Calendars of State Papers, Domestic (1591-1594), and East Indies (1513-1616). See also Voyages and Works of John Davis, edited by A. H. Markham (London, Hakluyt Society, 1880), and the article “John Davys” by Sir J. K. Laughton in the Dictionary of National Biography.

(C. R. B.)

DAVIS, THOMAS OSBORNE (1814-1845), Irish poet and journalist, was born at Mallow, Co. Cork, on the 14th of October 1814. His father, James Thomas Davis, a surgeon in the royal artillery, who died in the month of his son’s birth, belonged to an English family of Welsh extraction, and his mother, Mary Atkins, belonged to a Protestant Anglo-Irish family. Davis graduated B.A. at Trinity College, Dublin, in 1836, and was called to the bar two years later. Brought up in an English and Tory circle, he was led to adopt nationalist views by the study of Irish history, a complicated subject in which text-books and the ordinary guides to knowledge were then lacking. In 1840 he made a speech appealing to Irish sentiment before the college historical society, which had been reorganized in 1839. With a view to indoctrinating the Irish people with the idea of nationality he joined John Blake Dillon in editing the Dublin Morning Register. The proprietor very soon dismissed him, and Davis saw that his propaganda would be ineffective if he continued to stand outside the national organization. He therefore announced himself a follower of Daniel O’Connell, and became an energetic worker (1841) on the committee of the repeal association. He helped Dillon and Charles Gavan Duffy to found the weekly newspaper, The Nation, the first number of which appeared on the 15th of October 1842. The paper was chiefly written by these three promoters, and its concentrated purpose and vigorous writing soon attracted attention. Davis, who had never written verse, was induced to attempt it for the new undertaking. The “Lament of Owen Roe O’Neill” was printed in the sixth number, and was followed by a series of lyrics that take a high place in Irish national poetry—“The Battle of Fontenoy,” “The Geraldines,” “Máire Bhán a Stoír” and many others. Davis contemplated a history of Ireland, an edition of the speeches of Irish orators, one volume of which appeared, and a life of Wolfe Tone. These projects remained incomplete, but Davis’s determination and continuous zeal made their mark on his party. Differences arose between O’Connell and the young writers of The Nation, and as time went on became more pronounced. Davis was accused of being anti-Catholic, and was systematically attacked by O’Connell’s followers. But he differed, said Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, from earlier and later Irish tribunes, “by a perfectly genuine desire to remain unknown, and reap neither recognition nor reward for his work.” His early death from scarlet fever (September 15th, 1845) deprived “Young Ireland” of its most striking personality.

His Poems and his Literary and Historical Essays were collected in 1846. There is an edition of his prose writings (1889) in the Camelot Classics. See the monograph on Thomas Davis by Sir Charles Gavan Duffy (1890, abridged ed. 1896), and the same writer’s Young Ireland (revised edition, 1896).

DAVISON, WILLIAM (c. 1541-1608), secretary to Queen Elizabeth, was of Scottish descent, and in 1566 acted as secretary to Henry Killigrew (d. 1603), when he was sent into Scotland by Elizabeth on a mission to Mary, queen of Scots. Remaining in that country for about ten years, Davison then went twice to the Netherlands on diplomatic business, returning to England in 1586 to defend the hasty conduct of his friend, Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester. In the same year he became member of parliament for Knaresborough, a privy councillor, and assistant to Elizabeth’s secretary, Thomas Walsingham; but he soon appears to have acted rather as the colleague than the subordinate of Walsingham. He was a member of the commission appointed to try Mary, queen of Scots, although he took no part in its proceedings. When sentence was passed upon Mary the warrant for her execution was entrusted to Davison, who, after some delay, obtained the queen’s signature. On this occasion, and also in subsequent interviews with her secretary, Elizabeth suggested that Mary should be executed in some more secret fashion, and her conversation afforded ample proof that she disliked to take upon herself any responsibility for the death of her rival. Meanwhile, the privy council having been summoned by Lord Burghley, it was decided to carry out the sentence at once, and Mary was beheaded on the 8th of February 1587. When the news of the execution reached Elizabeth she was extremely indignant, and her wrath was chiefly directed against Davison, who, she asserted, had disobeyed her instructions not to part with the warrant. The secretary was arrested and thrown into prison, but, although he defended himself vigorously, he did not say anything about the queen’s wish to get rid of Mary by assassination. Charged before the Star Chamber with misprision and contempt, he was acquitted of evil intention, but was sentenced to pay a fine of 10,000 marks, and to imprisonment during the queen’s pleasure; but owing to the exertions of several influential men he was released in 1589. The queen, however, refused to employ him again in her service, and he retired to Stepney, where he died in December 1608. Davison appears to have been an industrious and outspoken man, and was undoubtedly made the scapegoat for the queen’s pusillanimous conduct. By his wife, Catherine Spelman, he had a family of four sons and two daughters. Two of his sons, Francis and Walter, obtained some celebrity as poets.

Many state papers written by him, and many of his letters, are extant in various collections of manuscripts. See Sir N. H. Nicolas, Life of W. Davison (London, 1823); J. A. Froude, History of England (London, 1881 fol.); Calendar of State Papers 1580-1609; and Correspondence of Leicester during his Government of the Low Countries, edited by J. Bruce (London, 1844).

DAVIS STRAIT, the broad strait which separates Greenland from North America, and connects Baffin Bay with the open Atlantic. At its narrowest point, which occurs just where the Arctic Circle crosses it, it is nearly 200 m. wide. This part is also the shallowest, a sounding of 112 fathoms being found in the centre, whereas the depth increases rapidly both to north and to south. Along the western shore (Baffin Land) a cold current passes southward; but along the east there is a warm northward stream, and there are a few Danish settlements on the Greenland coast. The strait takes its name from the explorer John Davis.

DAVITT, MICHAEL (1846-1906), Irish Nationalist politician, son of a peasant farmer in Co. Mayo, was born on the 25th of March 1846. His father was evicted for non-payment of rent in 1851, and migrated to Lancashire, where at the age of ten the boy began work in a cotton mill at Haslingden. In 1857 he lost his right arm by a machinery accident, and he had to get employment as a newsboy and printer’s “devil.” He drifted into the ranks of the Fenian brotherhood in 1865, and in 1870 he was arrested for treason-felony in arranging for sending fire-arms into Ireland, and was sentenced to fifteen years’ penal servitude. After seven years he was released on ticket of leave. He at once rejoined the “Irish Republican Brotherhood,” and went to the United States, where his mother, herself of American birth, had settled with the rest of the family, in order to concert plans with the Fenian leaders there. Returning to Ireland he helped C. S. Parnell to start the Land League in 1879, and his violent speeches resulted in his re-arrest and consignment to Portland by Sir William Harcourt, then home secretary. He was released in 1882, but was again prosecuted for seditious speeches in 1883, and suffered three months’ imprisonment. He had been elected to parliament for Meath as a Nationalist in 1882, but being a convict was disqualified to sit. He was included as one of the respondents before the Parnell Commission (1888-1890) and spoke for five days in his own defence, but his prominent association with the revolutionary Irish schemes was fully established. (See Parnell.) He took the anti-Parnellite side in 1890, and in 1892 was elected to parliament for North Meath, but was unseated on petition. He was then returned for North-East Cork, but had to vacate his seat through bankruptcy, caused by the costs in the North Meath petition. In 1895 he was elected for West Mayo, but retired before the dissolution in 1900. He died on the 31st of May 1906, in Dublin. A sincere but embittered Nationalist, anti-English to the backbone, anti-clerical, and sceptical as to the value of the purely parliamentary agitation for Home Rule, Davitt was a notable representative of the survival of the Irish “physical force” party, and a strong link with the extremists in America. In later years his Socialistic Radicalism connected him closely with the Labour party. He wrote constantly in American and colonial journals, and published some books, always with the strongest bias against English methods; but his force of character earned him at least the respect of those who could make calm allowance for an open enemy of the established order, and a higher meed of admiration from those who sympathized with his objects or were not in a position to be threatened by them.