Sir John Davis Senior

John Davis was a man who founded his wealth by serving as a soldier, one of typical ways of becoming wealthy in feudal system.

Davis was a distinguished mathematician who had studied at Gloucester Hall, Oxford. He became a soldier in the English Army and fought in Anglo-Spanish War (1585–1604). He was under command of Robert Devereux, the 2nd Earl of Essex, one of the wealthiest and most powerful aristocrats of his time. Davies was with the Earl in the taking of Cadiz in 1596, a battle in which he, apparently, made a fortune in Spanish booty.

In 1601 Davies became embroiled in the Earl's ill-advised Rebellion. He was handed with the task of guarding the hall of the Queen's Palace at Whitehall as soon as her attendants had been overpowered. As the plot failed, Davies was arrested and sentenced to death. However, he was pardoned upon his abandonment of both his friends and his Catholic faith.

John Davies died in 1625 and was buried beneath a fine effigial monument in Pangbourne Church which bears an inscription praising his achievements without mentioning his disgrace.