Byron should in the following October pass a week with Davies at Kings College. At one time Byron was under heavy pecuniary obligations to his friend. Davies was a daring gambler, blessed with the power of making shrewd calculations on the play of the cards or the throw of the dice and for some years fortune was on his side. It is said that on one night, that of 10 June 1814, he won no less than £6065 when playing macao at Watier's club. At all events he was in a position before 1809 to lend his friend several thousands of pounds. When the death of Matthews brought home to Byron the uncertainty of life he provided against accident by making his will and ap- pointing Davies his executor. It embodied the necessary arrangements for the payment of his debts, but events proved that it was not necessary to wait for Byron's death for the discharge of the sums due to his creditors. He paid Davies the sum of £1500 in October 1812 and £4800 in March 1814 and expressed his satisfaction in the words "a debt of some standing, which I wished to have paid before. My mind is much relieved by the removal of that debit." It was presumably when flush with this money that Davies joined the Drury Lane committee, presented a share to Edmund Kean and subscribed to the Testimonial cup. Davies was the single friend from whom Byron seems to have borrowed.
Davies in his younger days of life in London was an inveterate drinker. One of his favourite sneers at Byron was to depreciate his powers of absorption of strong drink as good for a holiday drinker. But the draughts of Davies generally ended in tipsiness and a quarrel. It was no doubt on one of these occasions that he challenged lord Foley to a duel, when it needed all the energy of his poetic friend to reconcile their differences. One day (Sept. 1813) Byron wrote to Mrs. Leigh that between 8 and 11 on the
