He was knighted in 1958 (becoming Sir Edmund Davies) when the Lord Chancellor, Lord Kilmuir appointed him a High Court Judge of the Queen's Bench Division (as Mr Justice Edmund Davies), a post he held until 1966. Davies's name almost immediately attracted public attention when it fell to him to try a German named Guenther Podola, who had shot and killed a police sergeant; Podola was convicted of capital murder and hanged in November 1959. In 1964 he was sent to Aylesbury to try the notorious Great Train Robbery (1963) case. The severity of the sentences he passed became and has remained controversial.