Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 14.djvu/148

 of the facility with which the king's pardon could be obtained in cases of robbery and murder, points out the desirability of holding quarter sessions, and condemns the base coinage. His third letter to Cecil is dated from Dublin, 7 March 1603–4. On 19 April 1604 he announced to Cecil that he had been on circuit over the greatest part of Leinster. Sessions had been held in seven shires, and no difficulty had been found in securing competent jurors. In April 1605 Davies proceeded to England with Sir Richard Cooke, chief baron, to report on the state of Ireland, taking with him a letter to the lords of the council, in which his ‘industrious pains’ and ‘toilsome travels through most part of the kingdom’ were highly commended by Sir Arthur Chichester, the lord deputy. He returned in July 1605. The lords of the council showed their appreciation of his services by urging Chichester to pay the arrears of his allowance. One object towards which Davies diligently directed his efforts was the banishment of Roman catholic priests from Ireland and the establishment of the protestant religion. During his short visit to England he seems to have thoroughly impressed his views on the English authorities, for on his return to Ireland strict measures were taken to expel the priests and enforce the attendance of people at church. On 23 Nov. 1605 he delivered a powerful speech in the court of castle chamber when the recusants were summoned to answer their contempts against the king's proclamations. He tells Cecil soon after that if the one corporation of Dublin were reformed the example would be quickly followed by the rest of the community. Believing that ‘the multitude was ever made conformable by edicts and proclamations,’ he beseeches Cecil not to despair of reducing the recusants to obedience. Another of Davies's letters to Cecil, dated 4 May 1606, gives a very valuable account of the state of Munster, where he had been holding the assizes. On the elevation of Sir Charles Calthorpe to the bench Davies succeeded to the post of attorney-general for Ireland, 29 May 1606, and he was afterwards called to the degree of serjeant-at-law. In the summer vacation of that year he made a journey through Monaghan, Fermanagh, and Cavan, and recorded his ‘observations’ in a long letter to Cecil. Grosart (Davies's Works in the Fuller Worthies Library, iii. 120) dates the letter 1604–5, and George Chalmers (Davies's Historical Tracts, 1786) gives the date 1607. But it is plain that the journey was made in the summer of 1606 by a reference to this journey in a letter of the next 12 Nov. In the summer of 1607 he went on circuit through the counties of Meath, Westmeath, Longford, King's County, and Queen's County, and reported to Cecil that it was almost a miracle to see the quiet and conformity which everywhere prevailed. A few weeks afterwards (September 1607) he sent Cecil a full relation of the flight of Tyrone and Tyrconnell. In January 1607–8 he went to Ulster to indict the fugitive earls. He sent privately to Cecil a copy of the indictment, and announced that the proceedings for outlawing the earls would be completed at the beginning of Trinity term. In July the lord deputy, with Davies and other commissioners, set out from Dublin to Ulster to view the escheated lands. A letter from Davies to Cecil, dated 5 Aug. 1608, gives a picturesque account of the journey, describing how the ‘wild inhabitants’ of the remoter districts ‘wondered as much to see the king's deputy as the ghosts in Virgil wondered to see Æneas alive in hell.’ A second commission for the plantation of Ulster was appointed in 1609, and a third in 1610. Davies, who showed great zeal in the work, was despatched in October 1608 to England with Sir James Ley, lord chief justice, in order to acquaint the lords of the council with the details of the proposed settlement. For his services in the matter of the plantation the king conferred on him (by patent dated 29 May 1609) the dignity of a serjeant, and directed that he should receive a grant of lands to the value of 40l. per annum. About March 1608–9 he married Eleanor Touchet, daughter of George, baron Audley. He returned to Ireland in June 1609, but in February 1609–10 was again in London on business connected with the commission. During his stay in London he addressed a letter to Cecil expressing a hope that he may be recalled as soon as the work of the commissioners is ended, for Irish affairs (he writes) are in so improved a condition that any English lawyer would be competent to take his place. In July and August 1610 the commissioners set themselves to carry out the scheme of plantation in Cavan. The dispossessed natives instructed counsel to impugn the legality of the commissioners' action, and Davies vindicated the justice of the proceedings in an oration wherewith the natives ‘seemed not unsatisfied in reason, though in passion they remained ill-contented, being grieved to leave their possessions to strangers, which their septs had so long after the Irish fashion enjoyed.’ In a letter to Cecil dated 29 July 1611 Davies again begged to be recalled. He had now more leisure at his disposal, and found time to write his learned and elaborate treatise, ‘A Discoverie of the Trve Cavses why Ireland was neuer entirely Subdued, nor brought vnder Obedience of the