# Dictionary of National Biography, 1927 supplement/Davies, John Llewelyn

​DAVIES, JOHN LLEWELYN (1826-1916), theologian, was born at Chichester 26 February 1826, the eldest son of the Rev. John Davies, D.D., an evangelical divine, rector of Gateshead from 1840 to 1861, by his wife, Mary Hopkinson. He was educated at Repton School and at Trinity College, Cambridge. In 1848 he was bracketed fifth in the classical tripos with his friend, David James Vaughan [q.v.], also of Trinity, with whom he had been elected to a Bell university scholarship in 1845; in 1850 the friends were elected fellows of their college together, and they subsequently (1852) collaborated in translating Plato’s Republic. Davies as an undergraduate was already interested in political and social questions, and he became president of the Union Society. After taking his degree he for a time taught private pupils, among whom was (Sir) Leslie Stephen. About this time he came under the influence of Frederick Denison Maurice [q.v.], whose teaching his clear mind was to make acceptable to many who found Maurice himself elusive. Taking orders in 1851 Davies first held a curacy, unpaid, at St. Anne’s, Limehouse, and was then for four years (1852-1856) incumbent of St. Mark’s, Whitechapel. He now became closely associated with Maurice’s circle, especially Thomas Hughes, Charles Kingsley, and John Malcolm Forbes Ludlow, in the work of the co-operative movement and in the establishment of the Working Men’s College in Great Ormond Street in 1854. In 1856 he was appointed to the crown living of Christ Church, Marylebone, which he held for thirty-three years. It was mainly a poor parish, but the rector’s preaching drew hearers from other parts of London.
With his clerical work Davies combined other public activities and interests. He was a warm friend of the movement for the higher education of women, in which his sister, Sarah Emily Davies [q.v.], played a prominent part. From 1873 to 1874 and again from 1878 to 1886 he was principal of Queen’s College, Harley Street, which had been founded by Maurice in 1848 for the advancement of women’s education. He supported the extension to women of university degrees and of the parliamentary franchise. He was a member of the first London School Board; he favoured unsectarian religious teaching in elementary schools, and he suggested the formula known as the ‘Cowper-Temple clause’, which was embodied in the Education Act of 1870. In politics Davies was a strong but independent liberal: he was opposed to Gladstone’s Home Rule measures, but rejoined the liberal party when free trade was threatened. He was strongly in sympathy with trade unionism, and raised his voice to vindicate the movement at a time when it was far from popular. Thus in 1872 he addressed a great meeting at Exeter Hall in support of combinations amongst agricultural labourers, and the next year at the Church Congress he vigorously combated clerical prejudice against trade unions.
It is chiefly, however, as a broad churchman that Davies will be remembered. He joined in establishing the National Church Reform Union (1870), which aimed at making the Church of England more truly national and comprehensive. His views on the relation between church and state probably stood in the way of ecclesiastical preferment, for which he seemed marked out by his practical ability, his earnestness, moderation, and fairness of mind, as well as by the position which he held in the religious and social life of London. There he was esteemed by many who held widely different opinions. His marriage brought him into close relation with the English advocates of positivism, two of whom, Henry Crompton and Edward Spencer Beesly, were his wife’s brother and brother-in-law respectively. ​Bishop Westcott spoke of his ‘quiet wisdom’, and John Stuart Mill generously acknowledged his ‘intellectual and moral fairness’ in controversy. He held strongly that Christian theology should seek instruction ‘from the progressive development of life and knowledge’ [preface to Theology and Morality]. While he gave his allegiance especially to Maurice, his standpoint was in general that of his friends Westcott, Lightfoot, and Hort, the contemporary leaders of liberal theology at Cambridge. His preaching was not rhetorical and made no parade of learning, the qualities which rendered it remarkable being depth of conviction, independence of thought, and an unfailing clearness of exposition. When Davies left London in 1889, on being presented to the Trinity College living of Kirkby Lonsdale, Westmorland, a valedictory address, to which was attached a remarkable list of signatures, recognized the combination in him of a ‘clear and firm assertion of Christian truth with a generous appreciation of all earnest thought and feeling’, and an ‘habitual sympathy with rich and poor alike’.
Davies held his Westmorland living for twenty years, adapting himself successfully to the new conditions of life and work, and throwing himself vigorously into the educational business of the town and county. In 1895 he lost his wife, Mary, the eldest daughter of Sir Charles John Crompton [q.v.], whom he married in 1859, and shortly afterwards two sons of great promise. He had six sons, three of whom were fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge, and one daughter. He retired in 1908 at the age of eighty-two, and passed the remaining eight years of his life with his daughter at Hampstead. He died there 18 May 1916.
Davies, always a great walker, was in his younger days a keen lover of mountain climbing: he was one of the original members of the Alpine Club, and made the first ascents of the Dom and the Täschhorn.
Davies’s published works, besides several volumes of sermons, include St. Paul and Modern Thought (1856), a commentary on The Epistles of St. Paul to the Ephesians, Colossians, and Philemon (1866), Theology and Morality (1873), Social Questions (1884), Order and Growth (Hulsean lectures, 1891). He wrote the article on St. Paul in Smith’s Dictionary of the Bible, that on Thomas Hughes in this Dictionary and the memoir of Charles Buxton [q.v.] prefixed to the latter’s Notes of Thought (1873). He was the author of several papers in Peaks, Passes, and Glaciers and in the Alpine Journal.
[The Times, 19 May 1916; Contemporary Review, June 1916 (article by his eldest son); Modern Churchman, July 1916; Cornhill Magazine, October 1916; Cambridge University Magazine, May 1879; private information.]
A. F. H.