SIR JOHN DAVIES (1569–1626).
Davies was a Winchester and Queen’s College, Oxford, man, who entered the Middle Temple on 3 Feb. 1588, served successively as Solicitor-General (1603–6) and Attorney-General (1606–19) in Ireland, and was Speaker of the Irish Parliament in 1613. His principal poems are Orchestra (1594) and Nosce Teipsum (1599). He was invited by the Earl of Cumberland (q.v.) to write verses for ‘barriers’ in 1601, and contributed to the entertainments of Elizabeth by Sir Thomas Egerton (cf. ch. xxiv) and Sir Robert Cecil (q.v.) in 1602.
Collections
Works by A. B. Grosart (1869–76, Fuller Worthies Library. 3 vols.).
Poems by A. B. Grosart (1876, Early English Poets. 2 vols.).
Dissertation: M. Seemann, Sir J. D., sein Leben und seine Werke (1913, Wiener Beiträge, xli).
R. DAVIES (c. 1610).
Contributor to Chester’s Triumph (cf. ch. xxiv, C).
FRANCIS DAVISON (c. 1575–c. 1619).
He was son of William Davison, Secretary of State, and compiler of A Poetical Rapsody (1602), of which the best edition is that of A. H. Bullen (1890–1). He entered Gray’s Inn in 1593: for his contribution to the Gray’s Inn mask of 1595, see s.v. Anon. Gesta Grayorum.