according to Mr. Knox doctrine, the castell of Edinbruche was besiged, takin, and the Captan, with an or two with him, hangit in effigie.'[1]
This was in intelligent anticipation of events. Edinburgh Castle was held by Kirkcaldy of Grange for Mary in 1571. On 28 May 1573 it was taken by the English on behalf of the party of James VI, and Kirkcaldy was hanged.
Melville also records plays at the 'Bachelor Act' of 1573 at St. Andrews.
SIR JOHN DAVIES (1569-1626).
Davies was a Winchester and Queen's College, Oxford, man, who entered the Middle Temple on 3 Feb. 1588, served successively as Solicitor-General (1603-6) and Attorney-General (1606-19) in Ireland, and was Speaker of the Irish Parliament in 1613. His principal poems
are Orchestra (1594) and Nosce Teipsum (1599). He was invited by the Earl of Cumberland (q.v.) to write verses for 'barriers' in 1601, and contributed to the entertainments of Elizabeth by Sir Thomas Egerton (cf. ch. xxiv) and Sir Robert Cecil (q.v.) in 1602.
Collections
Works by A. B. Grosart (1869-76, Fuller Worthies Library. 3 vols.).
Poems by A. B. Grosart (1876, Early English Poets. 2 vols.).
Dissertation: M. Seemann, Sir J. D., sein Leben und seine Werke (1913, Wiener Beiträge, xli).
R. DAVIES (c. 1610).
Contributor to Chester's Triumph (cf. ch. xxiv, C).
FRANCIS DAVISON (c. 1575-c. 1619).
He was son of William Davison, Secretary of State, and compiler of A Poetical Rapsody (1602), of which the best edition is that of A. H. Bullen (1890-1). He entered Gray's Inn in 1593: for his contribution to the Gray's Inn mask of 1595, see s.v. Anon. Gesta Grayorum.
JOHN DAY (c. 1574-c. 1640).
Day was described as son of Walter Dey, husbandman, of Cawston, Norfolk, when at the age of eighteen he became a sizar of Gonville and Caius, Cambridge, on 24 Oct. 1592; on 4 May 1593 he was expelled for stealing a book (Venn, Caius, i. 146). He next appears in Henslowe's diary, first as selling an old play for the Admiral's in July 1598, and then as writing busily for that company in 1599-1603 and for Worcester's in 1602-3. Most of this work was in collaboration, occasionally with Dekker, frequently with Chettle, Hathway, Haughton, or Smith. From this period little or nothing survives except The Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green. Greg, Henslowe Papers, 126, doubts whether an acrostic on Thomas Downton signed 'John Daye', contributed by J. F. Herbert to Sh. Soc. Papers, i. 19, and now at Dulwich, is to be ascribed to the dramatist. Day's independent plays, written about
- ↑ Melville's Diary (Bannatyne Club), 22.
