Lord Horace Davey

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Horace Davey, Baron Davey (30 August 1833 – 20 February 1907) was an English judge and Liberal politician who sat in the House of Commons in two periods between 1880 and 1892.

Davey was the son of Peter Davey of Horton, Buckinghamshire. He was educated at Rugby School and University College, Oxford.[1] 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 Queen's Counsel (Q.C.) In 1880, he was returned to Parliament as a Liberal for Christchurch, Hampshire (now in Dorset), but lost his seat in 1885.[2] On Gladstone's return to power in 1886, he was appointed solicitor-general and was knighted, but had no seat in the House of Commons, 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.[3]

Davey 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, Gow & Co., 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 Edward King, bishop of Lincoln, and leading counsel in the Berkeley peerage case. 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 as Baron Davey, of Fernhurst in the County of Sussex. He died in London aged 74. 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.

In 1862, he married Louisa Donkin, who, with two sons and four daughters, survived him.[1]

As an equity lawyer, Sir Horace Davey ranked among the finest intellects and the most subtle pleaders ever known at the English bar.