DAVIE, John (1589-1654), of Creedy House, Sandford, Devon

Davie belonged to a junior branch of a well-established Devon gentry family. His father, a successful merchant who served several times as mayor of Exeter, invested much of his fortune in land, including the Creedy estate at Sandford, and acquired a personal coat of arms in 1591. Davie himself received the education appropriate for a gentleman, and made a very advantageous first marriage to a daughter of Sir William Strode, one of Jacobean Devon’s leading figures. Vivian, 269; T. Moore, Hist. Devonshire, ii. 567; D. and S. Lysons, Devonshire, 115, 131, 278-9, 334, 433; C66/1617; Grantees of Arms ed. W.H. Rylands (Harl. Soc. lxvi), 71.

Davie served in the 1621 Parliament as one of Tiverton’s first two Members following the borough’s enfranchisement six years earlier. He probably owed his election to two separate factors. His mother’s family, the Southcotes, resided barely three miles from the town, and are known to have exercised electoral patronage there during this decade. Moreover, through his brother-in-law (Sir) George Chudleigh*, he enjoyed kinship with Sir Reginald Mohun*, who owned the largest share of the lordship of Tiverton. CSP Dom. 1625-6, p. 312; Vivian, 190, 719; M. Dunsford, Hist. Memoirs of Tiverton, 100. The significance of the latter connection became clear on 17 May, during the second reading debate on the bill to resolve a property dispute within the Mohun family. This seemingly innocuous measure sought to disadvantage Sir Reginald’s son John Mohun*, whose friends in the Commons opposed it accordingly. However, the bill received decisive backing from Sir Reginald’s allies, including Chudleigh and Strode, as well as from Davie, who was entitled as a Devon burgess to serve on its committee. CJ, i. 623b; Nicholas, Procs. 1621, ii. 86; HLRO, main pprs., 3 May 1621. Davie was also nominated to help scrutinize the bill to confirm the sale of Sir Edward Apsley’s lands in Fletton, Huntingdonshire, and to attend a conference with the Lords about the Sabbath observance bill (4 and 24 May). He is not known to have made any other speeches, and apparently never again stood for election. CJ, i. 606b, 626a.

Davie was assessed for subsidy that year at £20, which equated to a payment of £4. He was also required to contribute the same amount to the Benevolence of 1622. E115/115/125; A.H.A. Hamilton, ‘Devon JPs and the Benevolences of 1614 and 1622’, Reps. and Trans. Devon Assoc. ix. 406. Despite conscientious service as a magistrate, he was briefly removed from the Devon bench at the start of Charles I’s reign, then rapidly reinstated. There is no evidence that he had displeased the government, and he seems merely have fallen victim to lord keeper (Sir Thomas) Coventry’s* general purge of j.p.s. M. Wolffe, Gentry Leaders in Peace and War, 19, 267. He evidently maintained some ties with Exeter, for in 1636 he helped to win the Privy Council’s support for the creation of a new free school there. CSP Dom. 1635-6, pp. 303, 331. In 1641 Davie purchased a baronetcy from the Crown, but he wavered in his allegiance during the Civil War. Although named a commissioner of array in 1642 and briefly confirmed in his place as a magistrate by the king in the following year, he sided with Parliament until Charles recovered Devon in 1644. Thereafter, he was reportedly a ‘commissioner for the king’, whom he lent £400 and ‘assisted ... with horses’. Consequently, his estates were sequestered in August 1649, though he managed to recover them a year later. M. Stoyle, Loyalty and Locality, 138; CCAM, 1127.

Davie’s religious leanings are evident from his will, drawn up on 20 June 1639. He specifically requested a funeral sermon, delivered by a ‘godly preacher’, to put ‘those that survive in mind of their mortality and the better preparing and fitting of them for the kingdom of heaven’. Among his bequests, he left £20 to help establish a workhouse in Crediton, Devon, and £100 for maintenance of a schoolmaster there, to teach poor children to read and write, ‘and instruct them in the grounds of religion’. His two unmarried daughters were to receive £1,000 each, while his younger son Humphrey was assigned £500. Davie died in October 1654, and was buried at his own request at Sandford. PROB 11/244, ff. 401v-3; Vivian, 270. His eldest son, John, a Presbyterian, sat briefly for Tavistock in 1661. HP Commons, 1660-90, ii. 197.