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 the exhibitions of the Free Society of Artists from 1762 to 1768, and the Royal Academy from 1771 to 1782. He did not, however, attain any great repute. He resided in the latter portion of his life in John Street, Tottenham Court Road; in September 1793 he was returning home one night when he was knocked down and robbed near his own door, and died after a few days on 28 Sept. He sometimes copied pictures, and a small copy made by him of Benjamin West's ‘Death of General Wolfe’ attracted attention. A portrait by him of John Arnold, watchmaker, was engraved in mezzotint by Susan Esther Reid.

[Redgrave's Dict. of Artists; Graves's Dict. of Artists, 1760–1880; Edwards's Anecdotes of Painters; Chaloner Smith's British Mezzotinto Portraits; Catalogues of the Royal Academy and Society of Artists.] 

DAVY, WILLIAM (d. 1780), lawyer, is said to have been originally a druggist or grocer at Exeter, and, having failed in business and made acquaintance with the king's bench prison, to have turned his attention to law. He entered the Middle Temple in 1741. He went the western circuit. His first cases of importance occurred in January 1753, when he defended a forger, who was found guilty, confessed, and was executed at Tyburn, and in the same year was engaged in the famous case of Elizabeth Canning [q. v.] Davy defended Squires, and afterwards conducted the prosecution of Canning. Davy was advanced to the rank of serjeant-at-law on 11 Feb. 1754. He defended in 1755 four ruffians who were indicted for compassing the commission of a highway robbery upon one of themselves by two other ruffians, whom they subsequently prosecuted to conviction in order to obtain the customary reward. Davy remarked before opening his defence that had he not been appointed by the court, he ‘could not have been prevailed upon to have been counsel for such a set of rogues.’ The indictment having been laid under statute 4 & 5 Ph. & Mary, c. 4 s., the jury were unable to say whether the prisoners were guilty of ‘commanding, hiring, or counselling’ the crime within that act, and returned a special verdict. The question was argued at Serjeants' Hall before all the judges, Davy being for the defence, which was successful. The prisoners were subsequently found guilty under an indictment drawn in another form, and sentenced to seven years' imprisonment and the pillory. One of them was stoned to death in the pillory, and another barely escaped with his life. In 1758 Davy was retained by the Duke of Marlborough in a case under what was known as the Black Act (9 Geo. I, c. 72, s. 1), since repealed. This act made it felony punishable with death to send an anonymous or pseudonymous letter demanding ‘money, venison, or other valuable thing.’ An attempt had been made to extort money from the Duke of Marlborough by threat of assassination. The case seems to have been tolerably clear, but the defendant brought a number of witnesses to his character, and the jury acquitted him. In 1762 Davy was appointed king's serjeant. He was engaged in 1771–2 in the celebrated case of the negro Sommersett to oppose the claims of the slave-owner. In the trial before Lord Mansfield, Davy replied to Dunning in a speech which seems slight when compared with the elaborate argument of Hargrave, who had previously argued upon the same side. It concluded with these words: ‘It has been asserted, and is now repeated by me, this air is too pure for a slave to breathe in. I trust I shall not quit this court without certain conviction of that assertion.’ Lord Mansfield decided the case on the simple ground that slavery ‘is so odious that nothing can be suffered to support it but positive law,’ and ordered the discharge of the negro. Davy was engaged on behalf of General Mostyn in the case of Fabrigas v. Mostyn, an authority on the extent to which English law is in force in a dependency acquired by conquest or treaty. The jury found for the plaintiff, damages 3,000l. and costs. An application for a new trial was dismissed. Subsequently the question was twice re-argued on a writ of error before Lord Mansfield, but the judgment was sustained. About the same time Davy defended Major-general Gansell, on his trial for resisting by force of arms an attempt to arrest him for debt in his own house. There was a conflict of evidence as to whether the sheriff's officers had or had not broken into the house. If they had done so, Gansell's action was justifiable, on the maxim established in Semayne's case, that an Englishman's house is his castle. The jury found for Gansell. Davy was among the counsel for the Duchess of Kingston [see ] on her trial for bigamy in 1776, but took little or no part in the proceedings. He also appeared for the defendant Smith in the Hindon bribery case tried the same year. He died after a few days' illness at Hammersmith on 13 Dec. 1780. Davy's reputation for knowledge did not stand high, but he was an acknowledged master of the art of cross-examination. He was also something of a humorist, and one or two of his anecdotes are preserved. Lord Mansfield is said once to have interrupted him in his argument with: