especially successful, and his Sir Giles Overreach and Brutus were also greatly admired. He died at Canton, Pennsylvania, on the 1st of September 1877. In 1849 he had married Fanny Vining (Mrs Charles Gill) (d. 1891), an English actress also in Mrs Mowatt’s company. Their daughter Fanny (Lily Gipsy) Davenport (1850–1898) appeared in America at the age of twelve as the king of Spain in Faint Heart Never Won Fair Lady. Later (1869) she was a member of Daly’s company; and afterwards, with a company of her own, acted with especial success in Sardou’s Fédora (1883), Cleopatra (1890), and similar plays. Her last appearance was on the 25th of March 1898, shortly before her death.
DAVENPORT, ROBERT (fl. 1623–1639), English dramatist, is mentioned as the author of a play licensed in 1624 under the title of Henry I. In 1653 Henry I. and
Henry II. was entered at Stationers’ Hall by Humphrey Moseley with a second part said to be the work of Davenport and Shakespeare. Of this play or plays nothing has been discovered, but King John and Matilda (printed 1655), which probably dates from about the same time, has survived. Throughout the play, as in its closing scene quoted by Charles Lamb in his Dramatic Specimens, there is much “passion and poetry” which saves the piece from being classed as pure melodrama. The City-Night-Cap was licensed in 1624, but not printed until 1661. The underplot of this unsavoury play was borrowed from Cervantes and Boccaccio, and Mrs Aphra Behn’s Amorous Prince (1671) is an adaptation from it. A New Tricke to Cheat the Divell (printed 1639) is a farcical comedy, which contains among other things the idea of the popular supper story which reappears in Hans Andersen’s Little Claus and Big Claus. As told by Davenport the story closely resembles the Scottish Freires of Berwick, which was printed in 1603. Three other plays entered in the Stationers’ Register as Davenport’s are lost, and he collaborated in two plays with Thomas Drue.
Davenport’s plays were reprinted by A. H. Bullen in Old English Plays (new series, 1890). The volume includes two didactic poems, which first saw the light in 1623.
DAVENPORT, a city and the county seat of Scott county, Iowa, U.S.A., on the Mississippi river, opposite Rock Island, Illinois, with which it is connected by two fine bridges and by a ferry. It is the third largest city in the state. Pop. (1890) 26,872; (1900) 35,254, including 8479 foreign-born (6111 German), and 19,230 of foreign parentage (13,294 German); (1905, state census) 39,797; (1910) 43,028. Davenport is served by the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, the Chicago, Milwaukee & St Paul, the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific, the Iowa & Illinois (interurban), and the Davenport, Rock Island & North Western railways; opposite the city is the western terminus of the Illinois and Mississippi, or Hennepin, Canal (which connects the Mississippi and Illinois rivers). Davenport lies on the slope of a bluff affording extensive views of landscape and river scenery. In the city are an excellent public library, an Academy of Sciences, several turn-halls and other German social organizations, the Iowa soldiers’ orphans’ home, Brown business college, and several minor Roman Catholic institutions. Davenport is an episcopal see of the Roman Catholic and the Protestant Episcopal churches. The city has a large commerce, and trade by water and rail in coal and grain, which are produced in the vicinity, is of special importance. With Rock Island and Moline it forms one great commercial unit. Among Davenport’s manufactures are the products of foundries and machine shops, and of flouring, grist and planing mills; glucose syrup and products; locomotives, steel cars and car parts, washing machines, waggons, carriages, agricultural implements, buttons, macaroni, crackers and brooms. The value of the total factory product for 1905 was $13,695,978, an increase of 38.7% over that of 1900. Davenport was founded in 1835, under the leadership of Colonel George Davenport; it was incorporated as a town in 1838, and was chartered as a city in 1851.
DAVENTRY, a market town and municipal borough in the Southern parliamentary division of Northamptonshire, England, 74 m. N.W. from London by the London & North Western railway. Pop. (1901) 3780. It is picturesquely situated on a sloping site in a rich undulating country. On the adjacent Borough Hill are extensive earthworks, and the discovery of remains here and at Burnt Walls, immediately south, proves the existence of a considerable Roman station. The chief industry of the town is the manufacture of boots and shoes. The borough is under a mayor, four aldermen and twelve councillors. Area, 3633 acres.
In spite of the Roman remains on Borough Hill, nothing is known of the town itself until the time of the Domesday Survey, when the manor consisting of eight hides belonged to the countess Judith, the Conqueror’s niece. According to tradition, Daventry was created a borough by King John, but there is no extant charter before that of Elizabeth in 1576, by which the town was incorporated under the name of the bailiff, burgesses and commonalty of the borough of Daventry. The bailiff was to be chosen every year in the Moot Hall and to be assisted by fourteen principal burgesses and a recorder. James I. confirmed this charter in 1605–1606, and Charles II. in 1674–1675 granted a new charter. The “quo warranto” rolls show that a market every Wednesday and a fair on St Augustine’s day were granted to Simon son of Walter by King John. The charter of 1576 confirms this market and fair to the burgesses, and grants them two new fairs each continuing for two days, on Tuesday after Easter and on the feast of St Matthew the Apostle. Wednesday is still the market day. The town was an important coaching centre, and there was a large local industry in the manufacture of whips. During the civil wars Daventry was the headquarters of Charles I. in the summer of 1645, immediately before the battle of Naseby, at which he was defeated. A Cluniac priory founded here shortly after the Conquest has left no remains.
DAVEY OF FERNHURST, HORACE DAVEY, Baron (1833–1907), English judge, son of Peter Davey, of Horton, Bucks, was born on the 30th of August 1833, and educated at Rugby and University College, Oxford. He took a double first-class in classics and mathematics, was senior mathematical scholar and Eldon law scholar, and was elected a fellow of his college. In 1861 he was called to the Bar at Lincoln’s Inn, and read in the chambers of Mr (afterwards Vice-Chancellor) Wickens. Devoting himself to the Chancery side, he soon acquired a large practice, and in 1875 became a Q.C. In 1880 he was returned to parliament as a Liberal for Christchurch, Hants, but lost his seat in 1885. On Gladstone’s return to power in 1886 he was appointed solicitor-general and was knighted, but had no seat in the House, being defeated at both Ipswich and Stockport in 1886; in 1888 he found a seat at Stockton-on-Tees, but was rejected by that constituency in 1892. As an equity lawyer Sir Horace Davey ranked among the finest intellects and the most subtle pleaders ever known at the English bar. He was standing counsel to the university of Oxford, and senior counsel to the Charity Commissioners, and was engaged in all the important Chancery suits of his time. Among the chief leading cases in which he took a prominent part were those of
The Mogul Steamship Company v. M‘Gregor, 1892, Boswell v. Coaks, 1884, Erlanger v.
New Sombrero Company, 1878, and the
Ooregum Gold Mines Company v. Roper, 1892; he was counsel for the promoters in the trial of the bishop of Lincoln, and leading counsel in the Berkeley peerage case. In 1862 he married Miss Louisa Donkin, who, with two sons and four daughters, survived him. In 1893 he was raised to the bench as a lord justice of appeal, and in the next year was made a lord of appeal in ordinary and a life peer. He died in London on the 20th of February 1907. Lord Davey’s great legal knowledge was displayed in his judgments no less than at the bar. In legislation he took no conspicuous part, but he was a keen promoter of the act passed in 1906 for the checking of gambling.
DAVID (a Hebrew name meaning probably beloved [1]), in the Bible, the son of Jesse, king of Judah and Israel, and founder of the royal Judaean dynasty at Jerusalem. The chronology of his period is uncertain: the usual date, 1055–1015 B.C., is probably
- ↑ See further the third edition of Schrader’s Keilinschr. u. das Alte Test. pp. 225, 483.
