Bishop Westcott spoke of his ‘quiet wisdom’, and John Stuart Mill generously acknowledged his ‘intellectual and moral fairness’ in controversy. He held strongly that Christian theology should seek instruction ‘from the progressive development of life and knowledge’ [preface to Theology and Morality]. While he gave his allegiance especially to Maurice, his standpoint was in general that of his friends Westcott, Lightfoot, and Hort, the contemporary leaders of liberal theology at Cambridge. His preaching was not rhetorical and made no parade of learning, the qualities which rendered it remarkable being depth of conviction, independence of thought, and an unfailing clearness of exposition. When Davies left London in 1889, on being presented to the Trinity College living of Kirkby Lonsdale, Westmorland, a valedictory address, to which was attached a remarkable list of signatures, recognized the combination in him of a ‘clear and firm assertion of Christian truth with a generous appreciation of all earnest thought and feeling’, and an ‘habitual sympathy with rich and poor alike’.
Davies held his Westmorland living for twenty years, adapting himself successfully to the new conditions of life and work, and throwing himself vigorously into the educational business of the town and county. In 1895 he lost his wife, Mary, the eldest daughter of Sir Charles John Crompton [q.v.], whom he married in 1859, and shortly afterwards two sons of great promise. He had six sons, three of whom were fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge, and one daughter. He retired in 1908 at the age of eighty-two, and passed the remaining eight years of his life with his daughter at Hampstead. He died there 18 May 1916.
Davies, always a great walker, was in his younger days a keen lover of mountain climbing: he was one of the original members of the Alpine Club, and made the first ascents of the Dom and the Täschhorn.
Davies’s published works, besides several volumes of sermons, include St. Paul and Modern Thought (1856), a commentary on The Epistles of St. Paul to the Ephesians, Colossians, and Philemon (1866), Theology and Morality (1873), Social Questions (1884), Order and Growth (Hulsean lectures, 1891). He wrote the article on St. Paul in Smith’s Dictionary of the Bible, that on Thomas Hughes in this Dictionary and the memoir of Charles Buxton [q.v.] prefixed to the latter’s Notes of Thought (1873). He was the author of several papers in Peaks, Passes, and Glaciers and in the Alpine Journal.
[The Times, 19 May 1916; Contemporary Review, June 1916 (article by his eldest son); Modern Churchman, July 1916; Cornhill Magazine, October 1916; Cambridge University Magazine, May 1879; private information.]
DAVIES, SARAH EMILY (1830-1921), promoter of women’s education, generally known as Emily Davies, was born at Southampton 22 April 1830, the fourth child of the Rev. John Davies, D.D., who was rector of Gateshead from 1840 to 1861, by his wife, Mary Hopkinson. She was educated at home. From girlhood she felt a strong interest in the efforts made to raise the position of women by Elizabeth Garrett (afterwards Mrs. Garrett Anderson, M.D., q.v.) and Barbara Leigh Smith (afterwards Mme Bodichon, q.v.). Visits to her brother, the Rev. John Llewelyn Davies [q.v.], in London, enabled Miss Davies to do occasional work for the Englishwoman’s Journal (founded in 1858 by Mme Bodichon and Miss Bessie Rayner Parkes, afterwards Mme Louis Belloc) and for the Society for Promoting the Employment of Women (founded in 1859).
On her father’s death in 1860, Miss Davies, with her mother, moved to London and engaged actively in helping Miss Garrett to enter the medical profession. This led to the formation in 1862 of a committee, with Miss Davies as secretary (1862-1869), for obtaining the admission of women to university examinations. The committee’s efforts secured in 1865 the admission of girls to the Cambridge senior and junior local examinations. In 1866 she founded the London Schoolmistresses’ Association, of which she was honorary secretary till its dissolution in 1888. A memorial promoted by Miss Davies in 1864 caused girls’ schools to be included in the scope of the Schools Inquiry Commission (1864-1868), before which she and Miss Frances Mary Buss, principal of the North London Collegiate School for Ladies, gave evidence of great value. The local examinations and the commission led to the modernization of girls’ schools.
As nothing equivalent to university education was then available for women, Miss Davies began in 1867 to organize a college for women, with the help of Mme Bodichon, Henry Richard Tomkinson, Henry John Roby [q.v.], James (afterwards Viscount) Bryce, Sedley Taylor, Lady Stanley of Alderley [q.v.], and others.
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