Davall
99
Davenant
- Campaign in Flanders, 1691;’ printed 1692.
- ‘Relation of the Last Campaign of the Confederate Army, 1692,’ London, 1693.
- ‘History of the Last Campaign, 1693,’ London, 1693.
- ‘A History of the Campaign in the Spanish Netherlands in 1694. With a Journal of the Siege of Huy,’ London, 1695.
- ‘A History of the Campaign in Flanders for 1695. With an Account of the Siege of Namur,’ London, 1695.
- ‘A History of the Campaign in Flanders in 1696,’ London, 1696.
- ‘A History of the Campaign in Flanders in 1697,’ London, 1698; and, it is believed, other works.
A sermon, delivered by him and printed in 1705, is in Lambeth Palace Library.
[Payne's Armorial of Jersey, p. 55; Wood's Athenæ Oxon. (ed. 1721), ii. 1111; Morant's Essex, vol. ii., under ‘Great Hallingbury.’ In Brit. Mus. Add. MSS. 28880, pp. 186, 190, 28904, p. 48, are three unimportant letters from D'Auvergne to J. Ellis, written about 1697, when the troops were returning home from Flanders.]
DAVALL, EDMUND (1763–1798), botanist, was born in 1763 in England, but his mother being Swiss he returned with her to Switzerland on the death of his father in 1788, and took up his residence at Orbe, Canton de Berne. About this time he first became interested in botany, making the acquaintance of Edward Forster and of James Edward Smith, and becoming one of the original fellows of the Linnean Society. In November 1789 he married a Swiss lady named De Cottens, by whom he had a daughter, who died in infancy, and a son, born 25 March 1793. Davall himself died on 26 Sept. 1798, leaving an unfinished work on the Swiss Flora, and his name was perpetuated in the genus of ferns, Davallia, by his constant correspondent, Sir J. E. Smith.
[Memoir and Correspondence of Sir James Edward Smith, ii.; Rees's Cyclopædia, under ‘Davallia.’]
DAVENANT, CHARLES, LL.D. (1656–1714), political economist, eldest son of Sir William D'Avenant, the poet [q. v.], was born in London in 1656. He was educated at the grammar school, Cheam, Surrey, and entered Balliol College in 1671. He left the university without graduating, but some years afterwards, having obtained the degree of LL.D. by ‘favour and money’ (where is not quite certain; Wood says Cambridge or Dublin, but Davenant's name does not appear in the list of graduates of either university), he practised at Doctors' Commons. He had already, when only nineteen, written a play, ‘Circe, a tragedy acted at his Royal Highness the Duke of York's Theatre, 1677.’ Davenant inherited some interest in the theatre from his father, and the play, though poor, went through three editions.
Davenant sat for St. Ives, Cornwall, in the first parliament of James II, and was appointed, along with the master of the revels, to license plays. He was also commissioner of the excise (1678–89), which had formerly been farmed, but was now directly managed by government. The manner in which the changes thus rendered necessary were carried out he explains in his ‘Discourses on the Publick Revenues and of the Trade of England,’ 1698 (part i.; to this was added Xenophon's ‘Discourse upon Improving the Revenue of the State of Athens,’ translated by Walter Moyle. Part ii. of the Discourses, ‘which more immediately treat of the Foreign Traffick of this Kingdom,’ was published the same year). He also took occasion in these remarks to animadvert upon the conduct of his successors. His strictures were answered in ‘Remarks upon some wrong Confutations and Conclusions contained in a late tract entitled Discourses, &c.,’ 1698. In the parliaments of King William he sat for Great Bedwin in 1698 and also in 1700. Though sufficiently loyal to the new government he was not employed by it. He wrote a large number of political tracts, in which he attacked with some bitterness various ministerial abuses. Much of what he said was in sympathy with popular feeling, and excited considerable notice. In 1701 he published a work entitled ‘Essays upon the Ballance of Power; the Right of Making War, Peace, and Alliances; Universal Monarchy. To which is added an Appendix, containing the Records referred to in the second Essay.’ On page 40 he thus attacked the clergy: ‘Are not a great many of us able to point out to several persons, whom nothing has recommended to places of the highest trust, and often to rich benefices and dignities, but the open enmity which they have almost from their cradle professed to the divinity of Christ?’ This passage was discussed in the upper house of convocation, and a paper was ordered to be affixed to ‘several doors in Westminster Abbey,’ in which it was desired ‘that the author himself, whoever he may be, or any one of the great many to whom he refers, would point out to the particular persons whom he or they know to be liable to that charge, that they may be proceeded against in a judicial way, which will be esteemed a great service to the church; otherwise the above-mentioned passage must be looked upon as a publick scandal.’ Davenant seems to have taken no notice of this, and the passage was left untouched in the collected edition