- Davies, Sir John
- (1569-1626)Born at Tisbury, Wiltshire, educated at Winchester College and the Queen's College Oxford (or possibly New College, Oxford), he graduated in 1590 and was called to the bar in 1595. He was disbarred in 1598 for hitting Richard Martin over the head with a cudgel because he had criticized his poem "Orchestra." He was reinstated to the bar in 1601 and became member of Parliament for Corfe Castle, Dorset. His poem "Nosce Teipsum" endeared him to King James I, who knighted him and appointed him solicitor general for Ireland in 1603 and attorney general for Ireland in 1606. He died before he could take up his appointment of lord chief justice of England. His main publications: Orchestra. or, A Poem[e] of Da[u]ncing, 1596. Astraea (acrostic poems, all of which spelled out "Elizabetha Regina"), 1599. Yet Other Twelve Wonders of the World, a Lottery, 1608 (set to music by John Maynard in 1611). A Contention Betwixt a Wife, a Widow and a Maid, 1608. Some of his other poems: "A Poem of Dancing," "Epigrams," "Meditations of a Gull," "Of Tobacco," "Sonnets to Philomel," "The Gulling; Sonnets."Sources: Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. Elizabethan Sonnets. Maurice Evans, ed. J.M. Dent, 1977. Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite DVD, 2006. English Poetry: Author Search. Chadwyck-Healey Ltd., 1995 (http://www.lib.utexas.edu:8080/search/epoetry/author. html). The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The New Oxford Book of Sixteenth Century Verse. Emrys Jones, ed. Oxford University Press, 1991. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000.
British and Irish poets. A biographical dictionary. William Stewart. 2015.