Davy, Martin (1810-1833)

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See detailed entry in Venn. Smaller in Foster
Adm. pens. (age 24) at CAIUS, 1787 [no date recorded] S. of William, of Ingoldisthorpe, Norfolk [‘a country gentleman of moderate estate, D.N.B.’]. B. there. School, Lynn (Dr Lloyd). [D.N.B. gives ‘educated at Norwich Grammar School. Studied Medicine at Edinburgh.’] ' Matric. Michs. 1787; Scholar, 1787-91; M.B. 1792; Med. Lic. 1794; M.D. 1797; D.D. (per Lit. Reg.) 1811. Fellow, 1791. Steward, 1793. Registrar, 1795. President, 1795-1803. Master of the College, 1803-39. Vice-Chancellor, 1803 and 1827. Obtained leave for three years' travel for medical study, Apr. 13, 1796. Adherent of the Brunonian System of medicine. Ord. deacon (Bristol, Litt. dim. from Ely) Oct. 31, 1810; priest, Dec. 8, 1810. F.R.S., 1801. F.S.A., 1812. Member of the Linnean Soc. R. of Cottenham, Cambs., 1827-39. Preb. of Chichester, 1832-9. Married, 1811, Anne Stevenson, of Hertford Street, W. Died May 18, 1839. Buried in the College chapel. A considerable benefactor to the College, leaving to it his estate at Heacham, Norfolk. Some of his despotic actions when Master of his college, and later as Vice-Chancellor, provoked much resentment. He is however credited with having thrown his college more freely open by abolishing restrictions and making academical merit the avenue to preferment and the college increased consideraly in repute during his time. An unfavourable view of his strong and uncertain temper and his self-indulgence is given by Gunning in his Reminiscences, 1854, 11. 189-202, 359-66. In 1809 he wrote an interesting pamphlet entitled Observations upon Mr Fox's Letter to Mr Grey, contained in Lord Holland's preface to C. J. Fox's History of the Early Pact of the Reign of James II, 1808, exhaustively discussing Chaucer's application of the term ‘Merry’ to the Nightingale in The Flower and the Leaf, line 99, and to negative evidence from Theocritus. (Not to be confused with a contemporary of Trinity College, Oxford; s. of Thomas, of Ingoldisthorpe, clerk. ' Matric. July 21, 1810, age 19. B.D. 1824. Fellow of Magdalen, 1815-33. Vice-President, 1831. V. of Waterperry, Oxon., 1817, till his death Aug. 20, 1833. (Al. Oxon.)). (D.N.B.; Venn, II. 114.)

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