Davies, Sir John 1569-1626
English poet and statesman

Born in Tisbury, Wiltshire, he was educated at Winchester School, Queen's College, Oxford, and the Middle Temple, and was called to the Bar in 1595. He was returned to parliament for Corfe Castle and after the death of Elizabeth I found favour with James I (see James VI and I), who sent him to Ireland as Solicitor-General. Three years later he was made Irish Attorney-General and knighted. In Ireland he supported severe repressive measures and took part in the plantation of Ulster. He returned to the English parliament in 1614, representing Newcastle under Lyme, and practised as King's Sergeant in England. He had been nominated chief justice a month before his death of apoplexy. In 1622 he collected in one volume his three chief poems - Orchestra, or a Poeme of Dancing (1596), Nosce Te Ipsum (1599), a long didactic piece on the soul's immortality, and Hymns to Astraea (1599), a collection of clever acrostics on the name Elizabeth Regina.

Bibliography: M Seeman, Sir John Davies, sein Leben und seine Werke (1813)