DAVIES (DAVIDS), William

The family background and origins of William Davies or Davids remain a mystery. Although there is no suggestion of military service in the wording of his election indenture, where he is described as ‘William Davids esquire’, the clerk of the Commons consistently gave him military rank when noting him in the Journal.7C219/43/6/5/176. He can therefore with reasonable confidence be considered to have been a former soldier when he entered the House in 1646. The common Welsh surname, and the doubt as to Davies’s gentry status both compound the difficulty of identification. However, there is a robust association between one Davies, Sir John Meyrick* and the 3rd earl of Essex, which seems to provide the best insight into Davies’s career. Essex’s regiment was in Holland in 1624, when one of his captains was a Meyrick, while another was a Davies.8SP84/121, f. 277. A Captain Davies was at Breda garrison the same year, although according to a record of his pay, his forename was Thomas.9SP84/121, f. 274v. Fifteen years later, in the spring of 1639, Sir John Meyrick was lieutenant-colonel of Essex’s regiment of foot, and Captain William Davies served in the foot regiment of Thomas Arundell, 1st Baron Arundell.10E351/292. In August the following year, when the king’s army mustered at York, a Davies was sergeant-major in Meyrick’s regiment.11Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iii. 1247; Hotham Pprs. 45. He may have been the ‘William Davis’ who was admitted to the Honourable Artillery Company on 6 July 1641: it was a source of officers for Essex’s lifeguard when civil war broke out.12Ludlow, Mems. i. 39. Certainly, William Davies was a lieutenant-colonel in Essex’s regiment at the start of the war, with a number of warrants being processed for his pay and allowances.13SP28/1A/41, 153; 2A/67, 91, 122.

The weight of evidence suggests that William Davies was a professional soldier, probably from Meyrick’s home county of Pembrokeshire or possibly Carmarthenshire. According to Bulstrode Whitelocke, the lieutenant-colonel of Essex’s regiment was killed at the first battle of Newbury (20 Sept. 1643).14Whitelocke, Mems. i. 215. At some point in his civil war service, Davies was undoubtedly gravely injured, and it seems quite likely that Whitelocke was mistaken in his report. In January 1644, the Lords recommended him to the Commons as John Pym’s* successor in the lieutenancy of the ordnance, ‘in respect of the great service he has done, the great wounds and losses he has received’.15CJ iii. 357a. The Lords Journal described him as ‘maimed and very destitute and very able for that place’, and it was later recorded that he had lost a limb.16LJ vi. 363a; CJ iv. 144a. The Commons preferred Sir Walter Erle*, a critic of Essex’s conduct of the war, for the lieutenancy, and there can be no doubt that Davies, as one of Essex’s men, was the loser in a fight for office and patronage. When Erle acquired the lieutenancy, he used the office actively to control the supply of ordnance, with Meyrick appointed by the Commons probably as a pro-Essex counter-measure to manage ordnance finances.17'Sir Walter Erle', infra. This Davies can hardly have been the same Col. Davies who served at sea under the earl of Warwick, and who in November 1643 complained of his arrears in naval service.18LJ vi. 317a. It is clear also that he was not the William Davies who served on the Cheshire county committee and was a captain in the regiment of Sir William Brereton*.19CJ iii. 484b. Nor would a severely disabled officer be plausible as a director of the recovery of Tattershall castle from royalist control at the same time as an argument over his suitability for a sinecure was being conducted between the Houses.20LJ vi. 414b. Much more likely is it that in April 1644 he was proposed by Essex for governance in Pembrokeshire, a county under parliamentary control, though he seems not to have been given the post; and it was surely he who was among the core of Essexian officers, including Meyrick, on their way to the disaster at Lostwithiel, who reported in July 1644 to the Lords.21LJ vi. 504b, 617a; CJ iii. 453b.

After the humiliation of Essex in Cornwall, Davies was looking for employment, and the Commons recommended him to the Committee of the West, in the hope that some use could be made of his abilities.22CJ iv. 65b. He was again the subject of a failed attempt by the Lords to plant an officer of Essex’s into a position of command, this time in the Independents’ heartland of East Anglia. There was evidently no place found for him in Fairfax’s new field army, and so the Lords proposed him for the governorship of the Isle of Ely, citing his military experience and dedicated service to Parliament, as evidenced by his disability. The peers portrayed his rival for the post, Francis Russell*, as an inexperienced youth with only a county gentry background to commend him, while at the same time pleading for the avoidance of faction-fighting. The Commons dug their heels in, however, first sending Oliver Cromwell* as a temporary governor, and in August insisting successfully on Russell’s appointment.23CJ iv. 143b, 144a,b, 232a; 'Francis Russell', infra. In December 1645, Davies was still trying to recover arrears of pay owing to him.24CJ iv. 357a, 376b.

A region where the Essex interest could still expect to exercise authority was west Wales, made secure for Parliament by the Essex client, Rowland Laugharne†. It was surely with Laugharne’s approval that Davies was put forward for the seat of Carmarthen Boroughs in April 1646. He was consistently identified by the clerk of the House as Colonel Davies. A few months later, in August, Laugharne wrote to the Commons from Carmarthen on his plans to send troops from the west Wales counties to Ireland, and Davies, with other Commons-men including his former military colleague, Sir John Meyrick, were asked to decide which units should be despatched.25CJ iv. 634a. On 10 December, he was included in a committee with mixed Presbyterian and Independent representation, charged with finding ways and means of satisfying the arrears of the soldiery, and a week later was called to the committee to examine words to the disparagement of the City allegedly spoken by Sir John Evelyn of Wiltshire*. Davies would almost certainly have been unsympathetic towards Evelyn, an Independent.26CJ v. 9b, 17b. With other new Welsh MPs he took the Covenant on 30 December.27CJ v. 33b.

No further mention of Davies is found in the Journal until 22 March 1647, when he was named to a committee on suppressing ministers of religion hostile to Parliament, and on 2 April he was included in the committee on the future governance of the London militia. This was another committee sharply divided along factional lines, created after a division on procedure which the Presbyterians had won.28CJ v. 119b, 132b. He probably remained in the House during the period in the summer of 1647 when leading Independents fled to the protection of the army, although there is no evidence on the matter either way; and on 11 August he was among those charged with drafting an ordinance to nullify the transactions completed while Speaker Lenthall and the Independents were absent.29CJ v. 272a. On 24 December, he was one of a number of Members of the south Wales region despatched to bring in arrears of the assessment there, and during the emergency of the second civil war, on 10 May 1648 was added to a committee chaired by Sir Thomas Dacres, a Presbyterian, on the military.30CJ v. 402b, 556a. The last parliamentary appointment of his career came on 9 October that year, when he was among the committee working on a plan to maintain the guards of Parliament from levies on the estates of delinquents.31CJ vi. 47a. At that time he was also named as a trustee for a portion of the rectory of Carmarthen, made over to the town by the Committee for Compounding to augment the minister’s stipend. This arrangement was part of the fine on Sir Rice Rudd, a royalist living in the nearby parish of Aberglasney.32CCC 1827.

Almost inevitably, one with such a long and consistent association with the Presbyterian faction, albeit with a lacklustre parliamentary career, would be a target of the army’s purge on 6 December 1648. Davies was duly secluded, and that seems to have marked the end of his public, as well as his parliamentary career.33A List of the Imprisoned and Secluded Members (1648, 669. f.13.62). Identifying him after December 1648 is as difficult as tracing his family origins. Because of his military career he is hardly likely to have been the mayor of Kidwelly in 1650.34Trans. Carm. Antiq. Soc. xix, 35; NLW Muddlescombe 1718. Another flourished in Haverfordwest in the 1650s, evidently willing to co-operate with the government of the commonwealth. One died in that town in 1688, a gentleman who left a sword, a belt and a brace of pistols among his effects.35Cal. Haverfordwest Recs. 144; NLW, Maesgwynne 181; SD 1688/40. Tempting though it is to suggest that this was the former soldier-MP, there is no concrete evidence.