BARON

See also:

• HORACE [QuINTus HORATIUS FLACCUS] (65-8 B.C.)

HORACE DAVEY DAVEY OF FERNHURST (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 loth 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 .