DAVIES, John (d. 1667), of Davies’s Castle, Carrickfergus, co. Antrim.

The Davies family had come to Carrickfergus from north Wales in the early years of James I’s reign, and John Davies’s father, Ezekiel, was sufficiently well established in the town to serve as its sheriff in 1612. John Davies followed his father into the corporation, becoming alderman in 1630, sheriff in 1633.15Carrickfergus ed. McSkimmin, 413-4, 472. Davies first showed his entrepreneurial skill in the mid-1630s, when he was supplying provisions to Viscount Conway’s co. Antrim estate, and later in the decade he speculated in the land market, using £1,300 borrowed from the corporation (which, according to one later source, was never repaid).16CSP Dom. 1635, p. 471; Carrickfergus ed. McSkimmin, 34n, 159. Yet Davies’s alleged sharp practice did not diminish his standing in the town, and he was elected as the borough’s mayor in 1640 and 1641, and as its MP in the Irish Parliament of 1640 (despite questions as to his suitability).17DIB. With the outbreak of rebellion in Ulster in October 1641, Davies found an excellent opportunity for further speculation. In January 1642 he received his first contract, worth £1,000, to furnish foodstuffs to the government troops at Carrickfergus; by early February he had been appointed commissary of the victuals for Ulster; and later in the same month he signed articles with Parliament for provisioning the English and Scottish forces in the whole of Ireland.18CSP Ire. 1633-47, p. 781; SP28/1, f. 358; SP28/139/13; CSP Dom. 1625-49, p. 638. During 1642-3, Davies collected further lucrative contracts to supply the Ulster forces.19SP28/139/13-14; CSP Dom. 1625-49, pp. 644, 646, 686. In 1644 he sent proposals to the Committee of Both Kingdoms* to allow him to supply arms, stores and provisions to the Munster as well as the Ulster ports in Parliament’s hands.20CSP Dom. 1644-5, pp. 105-6; 1625-49, p. 669. These resulted in a lucrative deal which allowed Davies to spend the Irish assessment, and in due course, to become involved in its collection.21R. Armstrong, Protestant War (Manchester, 2005), 129-30, 149. His collaboration with the Committee of Both Kingdoms continued throughout 1645, and in September he was awarded further contracts worth £24,000 to supply clothing and food to Ulster.22CSP Dom. 1644-5, pp. 164, 250, 257, 413, 566, 604; A. and O. i. 776-83. The deals struck at Whitehall apparently ignored growing concern in other quarters about Davies’s corruption. As early as December 1644, Davies was accused of embezzlement of clothing due to the Ulster forces, and during 1645-6 he was the subject of extensive investigations by the Committee for taking the Accounts of the Kingdom.23SP28/252/1, ff. 111-1115v, 122-4, 131, 137, 142-9. The London adventurers, whose own involvement in supplying Ireland had been sidelined by Davies’s activities, began a concerted campaign to remove him during 1645.24CSP Dom. 1625-49, pp. 686-7. Their refusal to raise more money for the Irish war in December was in part based on their suspicion of Davies, and in January 1646 he was publicly accused of corruption by a leading adventurer, William Hawkins, in his pamphlet, The State of the Irish Affairs.25CJ iv. 368a-b; W. Hawkins, The State of the Irish Affairs (1646), 3 (E.314.7).

Davies evaded his critics by siding with whichever faction was on top at Westminster. At first he was associated with the Antrim planter MP, Sir John Clotworthy*. In March 1642 Clotworthy offered security to the deputy treasurer-at-war for Ireland, for money paid to Davies on account; and by October 1644 Clotworthy and other Ulster officers were certifying victuals delivered by Davies.26SP28/1, f. 359; SP28/255, unfol. As a prominent parliamentarian, associated with such luminaries as John Pym* and Robert Rich, 2nd earl of Warwick, Clotworthy was in an excellent position to direct business towards his neighbour, and he was encouraged in this by Davies’s attachment to Ulster Presbyterianism. This cosy situation was all too apparent to the adventurers, whose attacks on Davies from 1644-6 were also aimed at Clotworthy.27State of the Irish Affairs, passim. The papers of the Committee of Accounts include a volume devoted to evidence of abuse by Davies and Clotworthy.28SP28/253B. Yet, despite his links with Clotworthy, Davies had also been careful to maintain friendly relations with the Independent faction, which dominated the Committee of Both Kingdoms. It is telling that the appointment of Viscount Lisle (Philip Sidney*) as lord lieutenant of Ireland in April 1646 did not damage Davies’s business interests. As the London-based Irish Protestant, Sir Philip Percivalle*, wryly commented, once Lisle’s patent had passed, ‘Mr Davies and his new partners are in hand wholly to furnish him (the citizens and adventurers being backward) which makes me often think of… [the] conceit that he would (on terms of profit) undertake to build such another City as this’.29HMC Egmont, i. 286. From July 1646 Davies negotiated his most ambitious contract to date, to provide £55,000-worth of supplies to Lisle’s new regiments, including the troops under Lord Broghill (Roger Boyle*).30CSP Ire. 1633-47, pp. 467, 502, 511, 527; SP28/49, f. 179; SP63/262, f. 128.

This was never more than a case of expediency, however. By the end of the year, Davies was again in contact with the political Presbyterians and their Irish allies in London, courting Percivalle, Arthur Annesley*, Sir Paul Davies*, Sir Robert King* and others, while privately denouncing the conduct of Lisle’s allies, Broghill, Sir William Parsons, Sir Adam Loftus and Sir John Temple*.31HMC Egmont, i. 336-7, 352-3, 365-6, 371. During the period of Presbyterian resurgence in March and April 1647, Davies was also working with such English Presbyterians as Denzil Holles*, Sir Philip Stapilton* and his old ally, Sir John Clotworthy.32HMC Egmont, i. 392-3; CSP Ire. 1633-47, pp. 609-10, 625. During the summer he was also named in the charges levelled against Clotworthy, one of the ‘Eleven Members’.33Fairfax Corresp. ed. Bell, iv. 375-6. After the Independent triumph of early August, Davies again turned coat, deftly making his peace with the new rulers. He signed new contracts with Colonel Michael Jones in Dublin in January 1648, and continued to receive money from Westminster at least until October of that year.34TCD, MS 844, f. 17; CSP Dom. 1625-49, p. 718. It was not until the Cromwellian invasion of Ireland in the summer of 1649 that Davies finally fell out of favour. In May 1649 the council of state revived its investigation of Davies and Clotworthy, and concluded (in October) that Davies was not to be employed in Irish affairs again.35CSP Dom. 1649-50, pp. 144, 360.

The commonwealth’s decision to drop Davies removed any prospect of his making money from supplying the army; worse still, it reduced his chances of recouping moneys owed to him by the parliamentarians during the 1640s. Far from making a fortune from the war, it soon became apparent that Davies had extended himself far beyond his means. He was awarded a small sum in compensation by the council of state in 1652, but by the mid-1650s he was said to be ‘buried under an invincible debt’.36CSP Dom. 1651, p. 49; 1651-2, p. 599; TSP v. 398. Nor did Davies avoid controversy. In London in 1651 he was stabbed in the face by the Ulster landowner, Lord Folliot, ‘upon some words past, joined to former injuries’; and in 1652-3 he was investigated, and briefly imprisoned by the council of state, on suspicion of distributing royalist propaganda.37HMC de L’Isle and Dudley, vi. 487; CSP Dom. 1652-3, pp. 16, 102, 273. He later claimed to have written a narrative of the three kingdoms on the marquess of Ormond’s request in 1655, and that he was fined £5,000 by Cromwell as a result, but the veracity of this is uncertain.38CSP Dom. 1661-2, p. 605; CSP Ire. 1663-4, pp. 313-4. Davies may have been brought into contact with the royalists through his links with the Presbyterian church in Ulster. In June and July 1656, for example, he agreed with the Antrim Presbytery to appoint James Shaw to Carmony Parish, and to pay his salary from his own pocket.39PRONI, D.1759/1A/1, pp. 122, 126-7. Davies’s suspected royalism and his Presbyterian loyalties explain the government’s unease at his election as MP for Belfast and Carrickfergus in 1656. In August, Colonel Thomas Cooper II* warned the acting governor of Ireland, Henry Cromwell*, that Davies had been chosen ‘for the boroughs’, and described him to Secretary John Thurloe* as one ‘well known to yourself as to me’.40TSP v. 336, 343. Thurloe’s nervy letter to Henry Cromwell, of 9 September, complained of Davies’s election, as ‘it is certain he is and hath been as great an intelligencer to the royal party as any man; and therefore he is no means fit to serve in Parliament’, adding that ‘I have papers by me that can convict him of being guilty of treason in the highest manner’.41TSP v. 398. Thurloe intervened to ensure that Davies was kept in Ireland, and that his seat at Westminster remained vacant. In 1657 Davies remained suspect, with Cooper questioning his recent purchase of Sir John Clotworthy’s fortified house in Carrickfergus, as ‘I think it’s not fit he should live in a garrison, especially in such a house, that overlooks our guards, as that doth’.42TSP vi. 29.

Nor was Davies a universally popular figure among the gentry of Ulster. In the early months of 1657 he was in financial difficulties, owing money to George Rawdon* (who criticised his ‘meddling tongue’) among others; and he conducted a bitter legal dispute with one Mr St Leger, whose servant ‘bastinadoed him and stopped his mouth with horse dung’.43SP63/287, f. 39v. Nevertheless, Davies was briefly restored to the Antrim commission of the peace, and was once again elected mayor of Carrickfergus in 1659.44SP63/287, ff. 6v, 39v; CSP Ire. 1647-60, p. 594; Carrickfergus ed. McSkimmin, 416. In December of that year he played a part in securing the town, as part of the Old Protestant coup that wrested the government from the hands of the army, and in the General Convention that met in March 1660, his eldest son, Hercules, represented the borough.45Clarke, Prelude to Restoration, 115, 170, 172. Although Davies reportedly waited on Charles II at Breda in May – probably as a Presbyterian agent - there were soon serious doubts about his loyalty among royalist circles.46Carrickfergus ed. McSkimmin, 472. Royalist suspicions intensified after the Restoration of the king. Although Davies was appointed to local commissions in 1660-1, and he elected as MP for co. Antrim in the Irish Parliament of 1661, the return of the marquess (now duke) of Ormond as lord lieutenant was an unwelcome development.47Irish Census, 1659, 629, 645-6; CJI i. 588; Rawdon Pprs. ed. E. Berwick (1819), 200.

Davies moved to England shortly after Ormond’s arrival in Ireland, took up residence in Old Palace Yard, Westminster, and also purchased a house at Acton, Middlesex.48Bodl. Carte 33, f. 261; CSP Dom. 1661-2, p. 597. There he became involved in a conspiracy against the crown – probably in conjunction with the Presbyterian malcontents, clustered around Sir John Clotworthy (now Viscount Massereene), who felt cheated by the religious settlement in Ireland. Davies was arrested in November 1662 and sent to the Tower of London.49CCSP v. 281, 286; CSP Dom. 1661-2, p. 597. When interviewed in July 1663, Davies refused to petition the king for clemency on religious grounds, saying that he would serve the king ‘only if he dispensed with the cross and surplice and such fooleries’.50CCSP v. 320. On 4 January 1664 Davies was removed from the Tower, and sent to Tangiers, to be kept a close prisoner by the governor there.51HMC Ormonde, n.s. iii. 135. He wrote his will on board the Essex, bound for Tangiers, on 17 January 1664, complaining that ‘I being sent out of the Tower contrary to my expectation could not settle my estate in an orderly way by advice’, and therefore had to make a short will ‘not knowing what may become of me’. He left his estates in Carrickfergus, co. Antrim and co. Down to his three sons.52PROB11/325/613. Davies died in prison in Tangiers in 1667. His eldest son, Hercules Davies, was MP for Carrickfergus in the Irish Parliaments of 1661 and 1695, and married Lettice, daughter of Charles Moore, Viscount Drogheda.53Carrickfergus ed. McSkimmin, 472-3.