Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 14.djvu/211

 countrymen. There, lurking in a marsh or resting in a cottage, he was surrounded and captured with his two sons and seven daughters. He was loaded with fetters and taken to Rhuddlan for safe custody. His wife also shared his fate. Edward refused his request for an interview, and on 28 June issued writs for a parliament of earls, secular barons, judges, knights of the shire, and representatives of the towns to meet at Shrewsbury for the trial of the traitor. Even the formal language of the writ is glowing with Edward's indignation at the ingratitude and treachery of the man he had so often befriended (Fœdera, i. 630; Parl. Writs, i. 15–16). The parliament met on 30 Sept. at the appointed place, and at once proceeded to its main business. A special court, of which John de Vaux was president, condemned him on 3 Oct., in the presence and with the approbation of the assembled parliament (Cont. ii. 229). The ghastly sentence was at once executed. As a traitor to the king who had made him a knight, he was dragged at a slow pace through the streets of Shrewsbury to the gallows. As the murderer of Fulk Trigald and many others he was hanged by the neck. As a sacrilegious blasphemer who had profaned the week of the Lord's passion, his entrails were torn out and burnt. For compassing the king's death his body was beheaded and quartered. The head was stuck on a pole, and placed on the Tower of London by the side of that of his brother Llewelyn. An unseemly contention between the representatives of York and Winchester for the right shoulder resulted in the triumph of the southern city. The other quarters were exposed at York, Bristol (or Chester), and Northampton. His two sons were imprisoned at Bristol (Annales Cambriæ, s. a. 1283). His daughters became nuns at Sempringham and other monasteries (Fœdera, i. 712). So great was the popular indignation of the Welsh at his fate that Peckham was compelled to throw his protection over two clerks accused of having betrayed their last prince, round whose memory a halo of poetry soon gathered that the commonplace treachery of his life did little to warrant. Bleddyn Vardd, in his elegy on the last of the native princes of Gwynedd, commemorated his daring and royal qualities, and the great victory near Aberteivi of the hero sung by a thousand bards. He also made Davydd the subject of an englyn (Myvyrian Archaiology of Wales, ed. 1801, i. 364, 365.). But the English chroniclers, never very tolerant of Welsh princes, can find no language too strong to denounce his treachery both to his overlord and his brother, his faithlessness, his factiousness, and his bloodguiltiness.



DAVYS, GEORGE (1780–1864), bishop of Peterborough, son of John Davys of Rempstone, Nottinghamshire, by Sophia, daughter of the Rev. B. Wigley of Sawley, Derbyshire, was born at Loughborough, Leicestershire, 1 Oct. 1780. In 1799 he entered as a sizar at Christ's College, Cambridge, and came out tenth wrangler in 1803. He was elected a fellow of his college 14 Jan. 1806, and in the same year proceeded M.A., and became curate, first of Littlebury, Essex, then of Chesterford to 1817, and afterwards of Swaffham Priory. In 1811 he was presented on his own petition to the small vicarage of Willoughby-on-the-Wolds, Lincolnshire, which he held until 1829. The education of the Princess Victoria having been entrusted to his care by the Duchess of Kent, he took up his residence at Kensington Palace in 1827, and very satisfactorily filled the position of principal master to the princess until the death of William IV. In April 1829 he was presented by the crown to the rectory of Allhallows-on-the-Wall, London, which he continued to hold until his elevation to the episcopal bench. He was appointed dean of Chester 10 Jan. 1831, and at the following commencement at Cambridge was created D.D. On 7 May 1839 he was advanced to the bishopric of Peterborough, and was consecrated on 16 June. Belonging himself to the evangelical section of the church, Davys was fair and liberal towards all religious creeds