House of Commons. While possessed of all the qualities of an advocate, he could never accommodate himself to any tribunal that was not purely forensic.
On 15 August 1893 he was appointed lord justice of appeal in the place of his lifelong friend, Lord Bowen, and was sworn of the privy council; in July 1894 he succeeded Lord Russell of Killowen as lord of appeal in ordinary, being created a life peer with the title of Lord Davey of Fernhurst. During his short sojourn in the court of appeal he created a most favourable impression, not only by the admirable judicial qualities which he displayed but by his patience and urbanity to all who appeared before him, whereas at the bar he had been admired rather than liked by those who were not admitted to his intimacy. In the House of Lords and on the judicial committee of the privy council, where the last thirteen years of his life were spent, Davey found himself in a position well adapted for the exercise of his highest faculties. As an old member of the equity bar he restored to that side of the profession the share of representation in the final court of appeal which it had lost since the withdrawal of Lord Selborne. Sitting with Lords Herschell, Watson, and Macnaghten he helped to give it a reputation for strength and originality which it has not always sustained, and he not unfrequently found himself in conflict with the vigorous personality and strongly conservative instincts of Lord Halsbury. His judgments in the cases relating to trades unionism, which occupied much of the time of the house during his latter years, were generally in favour of the men, but accident rendered him absent on the occasions when Allen v. Flood and the Taff Vale case were argued. In the case of the Earl and Countess Russell in 1896 he was one of the majority which held that the conduct of the latter in making vile and unfounded charges against her husband did not constitute cruelty such as the law could relieve. But he was in a minority of two who held, on a very different subject, that the 'ring' on the racecourse was 'a place within the meaning of the Act' for the suppression of betting places (16 & 17 Vict. c. 119). Davey had very decided views on the evils of gambling, and was largely responsible for the Street Betting Act of 1906 (6 Edward VII c. 43). The last reported case in which he delivered judgment was that of the Attorney-General v. the West Riding County Council, 14 Dec. 1906, when the House of Lords unanimously overruled the decision of Richard Henn Collins, master of the rolls [q. v. Suppl. II], and Lord Justice Farwell, and held that the local education authority is bound to pay what is reasonable for denominational religious education in lawful hours in non-provided schools. Davey's judgments lacked the literary finish of Bowen, but they were conspicuous for conciseness, for lucid statement and clear arrangement, and for a mastery of legal principle. As well equipped with regard to the common law as in matters of pure equity and conveyancing, he was especially at home when it was necessary to construe the complicated Income Tax Acts. His death, after a short illness, at his house in London, on 20 Feb. 1907, was an almost irreparable loss both to the House of Lords and to the judicial committee of the privy council; his presence on the committee had been acknowledged by lawyers from every part of the empire as a chief element in its strength and prestige. Davey has been not unjustly described as the most accomplished lawyer of his day.
Through life Davey was handicapped in public by cold and ungenial manners, and by more than a touch of Oxford donnishness. Among congenial friends he was a delightful companion, and he was idolised by his family. Mr. Frederic Harrison in his 'Autobiographic Memoirs' (ii. 78) speaks of the 'unerring judgment and inexhaustible culture of Horace Davey.' And in an unpublished communication to the writer of this article he adds that, 'in spite of his intensely laborious professional life for he constantly began work at five before rising, and in earlier days would light his own fire at four he always kept up a keen interest in literature, especially in French current works, of which he was an omnivorous reader. He had an almost unrivalled familiarity with modern European romances in various languages, and with classical literature, which he continued to read to the last.' He was a man of refined artistic taste and formed a small but choice collection of modern paintings which was dispersed at his death.
Davey was made an honorary fellow of his college in 1884, and received an honorary D.C.L. degree in 1894; he was standing counsel to the University of Oxford from 1877 to 1893. In 1898 he was appointed chairman of the royal commission appointed to make statutes for the reconstituted University of London, and therein showed himself a strenuous champion of a more scientific study of law.
