in the following year he appeared for the crown, with Sir Robert Berkeley [q. v.], to argue the sufficiency of the return to the writ of habeas corpus sued out by Elliot, Selden, and other members of parliament who had been committed to prison at the close of the last parliament without any specific cause assigned in the warrant. His argument is reported at some length in the ‘State Trials.’ In 1630 he was appointed to a puisne judgeship in the common pleas, which in the following year he exchanged for the presidency of the court of exchequer. His tenure in both cases was durante beneplacito, not, as his predecessors' had been, during good behaviour. In 1633 he was placed on the high commission. In the ship-money case (1637) he gave judgment for Hampden upon a technical point, at the same time arguing elaborately in favour of the legality of the impost. For this, and for various illegal acts done on the bench, particularly the committal of one Vassal, M.P., for refusing to pay tonnage and poundage in 1627, and the sequestration of the property of one Maleverer in 1632 for refusing knighthood, he was impeached by the Long parliament in 1641, Hyde (afterwards Lord Clarendon) opening the case against him. He was ordered to give security for his attendance to stand his trial in the sum of 10,000l. The proceedings were, however, allowed to drop. Having joined the king at Oxford he resigned his office, Sir Richard Lane being appointed his successor on 25 Jan. 1644. His patent, however, was not revoked until the following year, in the course of which he died. In 1651 appeared ‘An Abridgement of Lord Coke's Commentary on Littleton, collected by an Unknown Author, yet by a late edition pretended to be Sir Humphrey Davenport's, knight,’ 8vo. Another edition of the same work was issued in the following year with the title ‘Synopsis, or an Exact Abridgement of the Lord Coke's Commentaries upon Littleton, being a Brief Explanation of the grounds of the Common Law, composed by that famous and learned lawyer, Sir Humphrey Davenport, knight,’ 8vo.
[Ormerod's Cheshire (Helsby), iii. 827; Dugdale's Orig. 296; Dugdale's Chron. Ser. 105, 106, 108; Autobiography of Sir John Bramston (Camden Soc.), 49, 77; Nichols's Progresses (James I), iii. 979, 1045; State Trials (Cobbett), iii. 250; Sir William Jones's Reports, p. 230; Rymer's Fœdera (Sanderson), xix. 133, 254; Cal. State Papers (Dom. 1633–4), p. 326; Rushworth, iv. 320, 333–8; Wood's Athenæ Oxon. (Bliss), iii. 183; Foss's Lives of the Judges.]
DAVENPORT, JOHN (1597–1670), puritan divine, was born in 1597 at Coventry in Warwickshire, where his father, also John Davenport, had been mayor. He was educated first at Merton (1613–15), whither he went with his younger brother Christopher, afterwards the well-known Franciscan [q. v.], and afterwards at Magdalen College, Oxford. Having graduated Bachelor of Arts he left the university, to which he only returned for a short time in 1625 in order to take the M.A. and B.D. degrees, and acted as chaplain at Hilton Castle, near Durham. He afterwards went to London, where his courageous visitation of the sick, in spite of the prevailing plague, soon brought him into notice, and he became vicar of St. Stephen's Church, Coleman Street, soon afterwards.
Davenport took an active interest in the famous ‘feoffment scheme’ for the purchase of lay impropriations. He was one of the twelve feoffees into whose hands the sums raised for this purpose by voluntary contributions were placed. His share in this scheme and his efforts to raise money for distressed ministers in the palatinate awakened the resentment of Laud and the jealousy of the high commission. To escape prosecution he resigned his living (December 1633); retired to Holland, and was chosen co-pastor, with John Paget, of the English church at Amsterdam. Davenport objected to the baptism of children not proved to belong to christian parents. This gave rise to an unpleasant controversy with his colleague, and ultimately (1635) led him to resign his charge and return to England. He interested himself in the attempt to obtain a charter for Massachusetts. By the advice of John Cotton, and along with other distinguished refugees, Davenport sailed for New England, and landed at Boston in June 1637. He was very well received; and attended the synod of Cambridge in August. Rejecting favourable offers of land made by the government of Massachusetts, Davenport and his friends proceeded to Quinnipiac, and there founded the colony of New Haven in April 1638. By the constitution of the new colony, which was definitely settled on 4 June 1639, church membership was made a prerequisite to the enjoyment of civil office or the exercise of electoral rights, and ‘the support of the ordinance of civil government’ was delegated to a body of seven persons, called ‘The Seven Pillars of State,’ of whom Davenport was one. In 1642 Davenport received, and refused, an invitation to join the Westminster Assembly of Divines, and in 1660 concealed in his own house the fugitive regicides William Goffe and Edward Whalley.
Davenport took an active part in the great controversy respecting baptism, which led to the adoption by the Boston synod of 1662 of
