Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Davey, Horace
DAVEY, HORACE, Lord Davey (1833–1907), judge, born at Horton, Buckinghamshire, on 29 August 1833, was second son of Peter Davey (1792–1879) of that place by his wife Caroline Emma, daughter of William Pace, rector of Rampisham-cum-Wraxall, Dorset. He was educated at Rugby and at University College, Oxford, where he won an open scholarship in 1852, matriculating on 20 March of that year. He gained a double first class in classics and mathematics, both in moderations in 1854 and in the final schools in 1856. He was chosen a fellow of his college in 1854. In 1857 he was elected Johnson's (now the junior) mathematical scholar of the university, and senior mathematical scholar in the following year ; in 1859 he obtained the Eldon law scholarship. He graduated B.A. in 1856 and proceeded M.A. in 1859.
Davey was admitted a student of Lincoln's Inn on 19 Jan. 1857, and was called to the bar on 26 Jan. 1861, having read in the chambers of John Wickens [q. v.], then regarded as the most distinguished school of equity pleading. Lord Macnaghten, afterwards Davey's rival at the bar, but slightly his senior in standing, relates how Wickens announced to him one morning that in the person of Davey he had at last found a pupil of whose success he felt assured. From the first Davey acquired an extensive junior practice in the chancery courts, running neck and neck with Montagu Cookson, now Montagu Crackanthorpe, K.C., who had come down from Oxford with identical distinctions in the class lists. In 1865 Davey collaborated with (Sir) George Osborne Morgan [q. v. Suppl. I] in a standard work upon costs in Chancery (1865) and helped Morgan in 'The New Reports' (1863-5). On the appointment of Wickens as vice-chancellor in 1871 Davey became lu's secretary, and filled the same office under Vice-chancellor Hall, who succeeded Wickens in 1873. He took silk on 23 June 1875 'with strange misgivings,' says Lord Macnaghten, 'and much hesitation.' As a leader his success was instantaneous. He practised in the court of the master of the rolls, Sir George Jessel [q. v.], and soon divided the business there with J. W. Chitty [q. v. Suppl. I], afterwards lord justice. Davey's legal judgment was intuitive and almost infallible, and his wide acquaintance with foreign law systems gave him a marked advantage over his competitors, leading to constant employment in the privy council and in Scottish cases in the House of Lords. Before long he succeeded to the solid reputation which Wickens had held as an unrivalled 'case lawyer,' so that at last his 'opinions' came to be regarded as equivalent to judgments and from time to time were accepted as decisions by mutual consent of the parties. His argument delivered in the court of appeal in 1876 on behalf of one of the interveners in the St. Leonards will case, shortly after he had become a Q.C., created a deep impression on the court and the bar. On the elevation of Sir Edward Fry to the bench in 1877 Davey became a 'special,' and was henceforward retained largely in the superior tribunals, his chief rivals being (Sir) John Rigby [q. v. Suppl. II], Montagu Cookson, and Edward | (now Lord) Macnaghten. 'He was never dull or tedious,' writes the latter ; 'he always knew his case thoroughly, nothing I came amiss to him, nothing was too small for his attention, nothing was too great for his powers.' From his boyhood he had been remarkable for his clear-cut phrases and admirably constructed sentences. When his argument at Lambeth in the proceedings instituted against Bishop King of Lincoln in 1890 was praised for its style to Archbishop Benson, the archbishop remarked 'It was exactly in the same way that he used to construe Thucydides to me when I was school-house tutor at Rugby.'
In politics Davey was an advanced liberal, and he was returned to parliament in that interest for Christchurch in April 1880, but he lost his seat at the general election of November 1885. Following Gladstone in his home rule policy, he received the post of solicitor-general on 16 Feb. 1886, and was knighted on 8 March. His efforts to recover his place in the House of Commons involved him in a long series of electoral misfortunes. He was beaten in a bye-election at Ipswich in April, and at Stockport in the general election of July 1886, going out of office with his party a week or two later. At a bye-election in Dec. 1888 he was successful at Stockton-on-Tees, only to be defeated at the general election of July 1892. None the less Gladstone made him solicitor-general for the second time in August 1892, but Davey failed to find a seat in the House of Commons. He could not adopt an ingratiating manner or suit his oratory to the requirements of an uncultivated audience. On the platform he provoked irritation owing to his intensely judicial habit of mind forcing him to qualify and guard every statement. Nor, though listened to with respect, did he ever succeed in winning the ear of the House of Commons. While possessed of all the qualities of an advocate, he could never accommodate himself to any tribunal that was not purely forensic.
On 15 August 1893 he was appointed lord justice of appeal in the place of his lifelong friend, Lord Bowen, and was sworn of the privy council; in July 1894 he succeeded Lord Russell of Killowen as lord of appeal in ordinary, being created a life peer with the title of Lord Davey of Fernhurst. During his short sojourn in the court of appeal he created a most favourable impression, not only by the admirable judicial qualities which he displayed but by his patience and urbanity to all who appeared before him, whereas at the bar he had been admired rather than liked by those who were not admitted to his intimacy. In the House of Lords and on the judicial committee of the privy council, where the last thirteen years of his life were spent, Davey found himself in a position well adapted for the exercise of his highest faculties. As an old member of the equity bar he restored to that side of the profession the share of representation in the final court of appeal which it had lost since the withdrawal of Lord Selborne. Sitting with Lords Herschell, Watson, and Macnaghten he helped to give it a reputation for strength and originality which it has not always sustained, and he not unfrequently found himself in conflict with the vigorous personality and strongly conservative instincts of Lord Halsbury. His judgments in the cases relating to trades unionism, which occupied much of the time of the house during his latter years, were generally in favour of the men, but accident rendered him absent on the occasions when Allen v. Flood and the Taff Vale case were argued. In the case of the Earl and Countess Russell in 1896 he was one of the majority which held that the conduct of the latter in making vile and unfounded charges against her husband did not constitute cruelty such as the law could relieve. But he was in a minority of two who held, on a very different subject, that the 'ring' on the racecourse was 'a place within the meaning of the Act' for the suppression of betting places (16 & 17 Vict. c. 119). Davey had very decided views on the evils of gambling, and was largely responsible for the Street Betting Act of 1906 (6 Edward VII c. 43). The last reported case in which he delivered judgment was that of the Attorney-General v. the West Riding County Council, 14 Dec. 1906, when the House of Lords unanimously overruled the decision of Richard Henn Collins, master of the rolls [q. v. Suppl. II], and Lord Justice Farwell, and held that the local education authority is bound to pay what is reasonable for denominational religious education in lawful hours in non-provided schools. Davey's judgments lacked the literary finish of Bowen, but they were conspicuous for conciseness, for lucid statement and clear arrangement, and for a mastery of legal principle. As well equipped with regard to the common law as in matters of pure equity and conveyancing, he was especially at home when it was necessary to construe the complicated Income Tax Acts. His death, after a short illness, at his house in London, on 20 Feb. 1907, was an almost irreparable loss both to the House of Lords and to the judicial committee of the privy council; his presence on the committee had been acknowledged by lawyers from every part of the empire as a chief element in its strength and prestige. Davey has been not unjustly described as the most accomplished lawyer of his day.
Through life Davey was handicapped in public by cold and ungenial manners, and by more than a touch of Oxford donnishness. Among congenial friends he was a delightful companion, and he was idolised by his family. Mr. Frederic Harrison in his 'Autobiographic Memoirs' (ii. 78) speaks of the 'unerring judgment and inexhaustible culture of Horace Davey.' And in an unpublished communication to the writer of this article he adds that, 'in spite of his intensely laborious professional life for he constantly began work at five before rising, and in earlier days would light his own fire at four he always kept up a keen interest in literature, especially in French current works, of which he was an omnivorous reader. He had an almost unrivalled familiarity with modern European romances in various languages, and with classical literature, which he continued to read to the last.' He was a man of refined artistic taste and formed a small but choice collection of modern paintings which was dispersed at his death.
Davey was made an honorary fellow of his college in 1884, and received an honorary D.C.L. degree in 1894; he was standing counsel to the University of Oxford from 1877 to 1893. In 1898 he was appointed chairman of the royal commission appointed to make statutes for the reconstituted University of London, and therein showed himself a strenuous champion of a more scientific study of law. He was elected a fellow of the British Academy in 1905. He interested himself in the work of the Society of Comparative Legislation; and wrote on legal reforms of the past thirty years in the 'Encyclopædia Britannica' (10th edit. 1902).
Davey married on 5 Aug. 1862 Louisa Hawes, daughter of John Donkin, civil engineer, who survived him. Of his family of two sons and four daughters, the two youngest daughters, Beatrix Wickens and Margaret Bowen (twins), married respectively Major-General Sir William Gatacre [q. v. Suppl. II] and F. W. Pember, son of Edward Henry Pember, K.C. [q. v. Suppl. II].
An oil painting of Davey by G. F. Watts, R.A., is in the possession of his widow. Another portrait, by Mr. S. J. Solomon, R.A., is at University College, Oxford; a replica of the latter by the artist belongs to the benchers of Lincoln's Inn.
[The Times, 22 Feb. 1907; Journal Soc. of Comparative Legislation, n.s. viii. 10 (Lord Macnaghten); Proc. Brit. Acad. 1907-8, pp. 371 seq. (by Sir Courtenay Ilbert); Oxford Historical Reg.; the Law Reports; private information; personal knowledge.]