MR. A. C. FOX-DAVIES
EXPERT IN PEDIGREES AND HERALDRY
Mr. Arthur Charles Fox-Davies, genealogist, barrister, and author, died on Saturday at the age of 57 at his home in Warwick-gardens, W., where he had been lying ill for some weeks. He will be chiefly remembered for his work in the genealogical field. In this he took his keenest pleasure. It was for him not merely a labour of love, but an exciting form of sport, to hunt down and kill some picturesque dragon of genealogical imposture, to overthrow some cherished idol of family pride based on nothing more substantial than the vain imaginings of a recent ancestor or the artful tale of some flatterer possessed of a smattering of heraldry.
Other scholars had laboured in the same field before Fox-Davies came, but it was he who took the campaign against armorial pretence out of the austere pages of learned publications and brought it to the notice of the public at large. Many will remember, for example, the fluttering of the dovecotes which followed his refusal to accept as armigerous a host of worthy folk who had uncritically accepted as genuine the blazons arbitrarily adopted by their sires or grandsires and wished to be recorded in his "Armorial Families."
His cheerful iconoclasm of Wardour-street "family traditions," his polite offer of an entry in italics or careful explanation of the defects in an unproved pedigree induced numbers of families which had erred in sheer ignorance or noncurance to put their heraldic houses in order. His labours thus helped to provide a field in which the talents of herald-painters, armorial craftsmen, and designers of bookplates could be exercised, and greatly helped to forward that heraldic revival, started by others, which has borne rich fruit in the restored splendour of public ceremonies and the resuscitation of the almost forgotten celebrations of the festivals of the Orders of the Garter, the Thistle, and the Bath and the institution of others.
Besides practising his heraldry, Fox-Davies also presented it in several interesting works, among them "The Complete Guide to Heraldry" and "Heraldic Badges." In the "Book of Public Arms" he recorded many of the results of his campaign for getting genuine grants for public as well as private arms substituted to the constituted armorial authorities of the three kingdoms for the unauthorized assumptions at one time so prevalent. In the " Art of Heraldry," for which he secured the collaboration of many experts, he showed how admirably heraldic forms and devices were adapted for almost every conceivable variety of decoration, and as editor of the 1914 edition of Burke's "Landed Gentry" he was able to provide decent interment for a multitude of cherished family fictions, and to confine armorial and genealogical imaginings within the sober bounds of what could reasonably be proved.
As a barrister Fox-Davies appeared in several important peerage cases, but occasionally took a holiday from his hobby by accepting an ordinary brief, or contesting, in the Conservative interest, a quite hopeless seat at an election. He sought further relaxation by serving on the Holborn Borough Council and by writing 'thrillers' in which he obtained admirable results by juggling with ingenious points of law, and so carefully described the criminal activities of a likeable baronet who sought a justifiable revenge that a burglar stole the proofs of the book before publication in hopes of improving the technique of his own iniquities. During the War, Fox-Davies served at first in the Anti-Aircraft Corps and afterwards in the Naval Law Branch at the Admiralty, where he had to deal with the remarkable collection of juristic improbabilities and international tangles which came from the Aegean and other parts of the Mediterranean.
Mr. Fox-Davies was the second son of Mr. T.E. Fox-Davies, of Coalbrookdale, Shropshire, and was born at Bristol on February 28, 1871. He married, in 1901, Mary, daughter of Captain S.W. Crookes, of The Wyke, Shifnal, and had a son and a daughter.
ARMORIAL FAMILIES
A DIRECTORY OF GENTLEMEN OF COAT-ARMOUR
COMPILED AND EDITED BY ARTHUR CHARLES FOX-DAVIES
OF LINCOLN S INN, BARRISTER-AT-LAW
"Nohtles sunt qui Arma gentilitia antecessorum
suorum proferre possunt"
SEVENTH EDITION
LONDON : HURST ftf BLACKETT, LTD.
PATERNOSTER HOUSE, E.C.4 1929
Printed by The Anchor Press, Ltd.
At Tiptree, Essex, England Reprinted by permission from The Times, May 21, 1928.
===========
Arthur Charles Fox-Davies (28 February 1871 – 19 May 1928) was a British author on heraldry. His Complete Guide to Heraldry, published in 1909, has become a standard work on heraldry in England. A barrister by profession, Fox-Davies also worked as a journalist and novelist.
Arthur Charles Davies, known to his friends as Charlie, was born in Bristol, the second son of Thomas Edmond Davies (1839-1908) and his wife Maria Jane Fox, the daughter and co-heiress of Alderman John Fox, JP. Fox-Davies was brought up at Coalbrookdale in Shropshire, where his father worked for the Coalbrookdale Iron Company; his grandfather, Charles Davies of Cardigan in Wales, had been an ironmonger. He added his mother's maiden name to his own by deed poll on his nineteenth birthday in 1890, thereby changing his surname from Davies to Fox-Davies. In 1894, his father took the same course for himself and the rest of the family.
Fox-Davies attended Ackworth School in Yorkshire, but was expelled in 1884 at the age of fourteen, after hitting one of the schoolmasters. He received no further formal education, but was admitted to Lincoln's Inn in 1901 and called to the bar in 1906. As a barrister, he practised on the South Eastern Circuit, at the Old Bailey, and at the Surrey and South London Sessions.He also prepared printed cases for peerage cases in the House of Lords.
He married in 1901 Mary Ellen Blanche Crookes (1870-1935), daughter and coheiress of Septimus Wilkinson Crookes and Anne Blanche Harriet Proctor. They had a son, Harley Edmond Fitzroy Fox-Davies (1907-1941), and a daughter, Moyra de Somery Regan. His wife worked as an heraldic artist, often for her husband's publications, under the pseudonym "C. Helard".
The badge granted to Fox-Davies in 1921.
Neither the Fox nor the Davies families were armigerous, so in 1905, when Fox-Davies was 34 and already well-advanced in his career as a writer on heraldic and genealogical subjects, he organised posthumous grants of arms to both his grandfathers. The arms granted to Charles Davies were "sable, a demi sun in splendour issuant in base or, a chief dancetée of the last", with, for crest, "a demi dragon rampant gules collared or, holding in the dexter claw a hammer proper"; those granted to John Fox were "per pale argent and gules, three foxes sejant counterchanged", with, for crest, "a demi stag winged gules collared argent". Fox-Davies bore the Davies arms with a crescent for cadency, and intended to quarter them with the Fox arms after his mother's death; but as she outlived him, dying in 1937, this was not possible. He also considered obtaining grants to his wife's families of Crookes and Proctor, which would entitled his children to additional quarterings, but at this point he no longer had the money for further grants of arms. He did obtain, in 1921, the grant of a badge, which consisted of a "crown vallary gules". His motto was Da Fydd, Welsh for "good faith" and a pun on the name Davies.
In addition to his writings on heraldry, he published a number of works of fiction, including detective stories such as The Dangerville Inheritance (1907), The Mauleverer Murders (1907) and The Duplicate Death (1910).
Politically Conservative, Fox-Davies "quite hopelessly" stood for election as a member of parliament for Merthyr Tydfil in 1910, 1923, and 1924. He was, however, successfully elected as a member of Holborn Borough Council in London.
Fox Davies lived at 65 Warwick Gardens in Kensington, London, and had chambers at 23, Old Buildings, Lincoln's Inn. He died, aged 57, of portal hypertension and cirrhosis of the liver, having lain ill in his home for several weeks. He was buried at the parish church in Coalbrookdale.
EXPERT IN PEDIGREES AND HERALDRY
Mr. Arthur Charles Fox-Davies, genealogist, barrister, and author, died on Saturday at the age of 57 at his home in Warwick-gardens, W., where he had been lying ill for some weeks. He will be chiefly remembered for his work in the genealogical field. In this he took his keenest pleasure. It was for him not merely a labour of love, but an exciting form of sport, to hunt down and kill some picturesque dragon of genealogical imposture, to overthrow some cherished idol of family pride based on nothing more substantial than the vain imaginings of a recent ancestor or the artful tale of some flatterer possessed of a smattering of heraldry.
Other scholars had laboured in the same field before Fox-Davies came, but it was he who took the campaign against armorial pretence out of the austere pages of learned publications and brought it to the notice of the public at large. Many will remember, for example, the fluttering of the dovecotes which followed his refusal to accept as armigerous a host of worthy folk who had uncritically accepted as genuine the blazons arbitrarily adopted by their sires or grandsires and wished to be recorded in his "Armorial Families."
His cheerful iconoclasm of Wardour-street "family traditions," his polite offer of an entry in italics or careful explanation of the defects in an unproved pedigree induced numbers of families which had erred in sheer ignorance or noncurance to put their heraldic houses in order. His labours thus helped to provide a field in which the talents of herald-painters, armorial craftsmen, and designers of bookplates could be exercised, and greatly helped to forward that heraldic revival, started by others, which has borne rich fruit in the restored splendour of public ceremonies and the resuscitation of the almost forgotten celebrations of the festivals of the Orders of the Garter, the Thistle, and the Bath and the institution of others.
Besides practising his heraldry, Fox-Davies also presented it in several interesting works, among them "The Complete Guide to Heraldry" and "Heraldic Badges." In the "Book of Public Arms" he recorded many of the results of his campaign for getting genuine grants for public as well as private arms substituted to the constituted armorial authorities of the three kingdoms for the unauthorized assumptions at one time so prevalent. In the " Art of Heraldry," for which he secured the collaboration of many experts, he showed how admirably heraldic forms and devices were adapted for almost every conceivable variety of decoration, and as editor of the 1914 edition of Burke's "Landed Gentry" he was able to provide decent interment for a multitude of cherished family fictions, and to confine armorial and genealogical imaginings within the sober bounds of what could reasonably be proved.
As a barrister Fox-Davies appeared in several important peerage cases, but occasionally took a holiday from his hobby by accepting an ordinary brief, or contesting, in the Conservative interest, a quite hopeless seat at an election. He sought further relaxation by serving on the Holborn Borough Council and by writing 'thrillers' in which he obtained admirable results by juggling with ingenious points of law, and so carefully described the criminal activities of a likeable baronet who sought a justifiable revenge that a burglar stole the proofs of the book before publication in hopes of improving the technique of his own iniquities. During the War, Fox-Davies served at first in the Anti-Aircraft Corps and afterwards in the Naval Law Branch at the Admiralty, where he had to deal with the remarkable collection of juristic improbabilities and international tangles which came from the Aegean and other parts of the Mediterranean.
Mr. Fox-Davies was the second son of Mr. T.E. Fox-Davies, of Coalbrookdale, Shropshire, and was born at Bristol on February 28, 1871. He married, in 1901, Mary, daughter of Captain S.W. Crookes, of The Wyke, Shifnal, and had a son and a daughter.
ARMORIAL FAMILIES
A DIRECTORY OF GENTLEMEN OF COAT-ARMOUR
COMPILED AND EDITED BY ARTHUR CHARLES FOX-DAVIES
OF LINCOLN S INN, BARRISTER-AT-LAW
"Nohtles sunt qui Arma gentilitia antecessorum
suorum proferre possunt"
SEVENTH EDITION
LONDON : HURST ftf BLACKETT, LTD.
PATERNOSTER HOUSE, E.C.4 1929
Printed by The Anchor Press, Ltd.
At Tiptree, Essex, England Reprinted by permission from The Times, May 21, 1928.
===========
Arthur Charles Fox-Davies (28 February 1871 – 19 May 1928) was a British author on heraldry. His Complete Guide to Heraldry, published in 1909, has become a standard work on heraldry in England. A barrister by profession, Fox-Davies also worked as a journalist and novelist.
Arthur Charles Davies, known to his friends as Charlie, was born in Bristol, the second son of Thomas Edmond Davies (1839-1908) and his wife Maria Jane Fox, the daughter and co-heiress of Alderman John Fox, JP. Fox-Davies was brought up at Coalbrookdale in Shropshire, where his father worked for the Coalbrookdale Iron Company; his grandfather, Charles Davies of Cardigan in Wales, had been an ironmonger. He added his mother's maiden name to his own by deed poll on his nineteenth birthday in 1890, thereby changing his surname from Davies to Fox-Davies. In 1894, his father took the same course for himself and the rest of the family.
Fox-Davies attended Ackworth School in Yorkshire, but was expelled in 1884 at the age of fourteen, after hitting one of the schoolmasters. He received no further formal education, but was admitted to Lincoln's Inn in 1901 and called to the bar in 1906. As a barrister, he practised on the South Eastern Circuit, at the Old Bailey, and at the Surrey and South London Sessions.He also prepared printed cases for peerage cases in the House of Lords.
He married in 1901 Mary Ellen Blanche Crookes (1870-1935), daughter and coheiress of Septimus Wilkinson Crookes and Anne Blanche Harriet Proctor. They had a son, Harley Edmond Fitzroy Fox-Davies (1907-1941), and a daughter, Moyra de Somery Regan. His wife worked as an heraldic artist, often for her husband's publications, under the pseudonym "C. Helard".
The badge granted to Fox-Davies in 1921.
Neither the Fox nor the Davies families were armigerous, so in 1905, when Fox-Davies was 34 and already well-advanced in his career as a writer on heraldic and genealogical subjects, he organised posthumous grants of arms to both his grandfathers. The arms granted to Charles Davies were "sable, a demi sun in splendour issuant in base or, a chief dancetée of the last", with, for crest, "a demi dragon rampant gules collared or, holding in the dexter claw a hammer proper"; those granted to John Fox were "per pale argent and gules, three foxes sejant counterchanged", with, for crest, "a demi stag winged gules collared argent". Fox-Davies bore the Davies arms with a crescent for cadency, and intended to quarter them with the Fox arms after his mother's death; but as she outlived him, dying in 1937, this was not possible. He also considered obtaining grants to his wife's families of Crookes and Proctor, which would entitled his children to additional quarterings, but at this point he no longer had the money for further grants of arms. He did obtain, in 1921, the grant of a badge, which consisted of a "crown vallary gules". His motto was Da Fydd, Welsh for "good faith" and a pun on the name Davies.
In addition to his writings on heraldry, he published a number of works of fiction, including detective stories such as The Dangerville Inheritance (1907), The Mauleverer Murders (1907) and The Duplicate Death (1910).
Politically Conservative, Fox-Davies "quite hopelessly" stood for election as a member of parliament for Merthyr Tydfil in 1910, 1923, and 1924. He was, however, successfully elected as a member of Holborn Borough Council in London.
Fox Davies lived at 65 Warwick Gardens in Kensington, London, and had chambers at 23, Old Buildings, Lincoln's Inn. He died, aged 57, of portal hypertension and cirrhosis of the liver, having lain ill in his home for several weeks. He was buried at the parish church in Coalbrookdale.
MR. A. C. FOX-DAVIES
EXPERT IN PEDIGREES AND HERALDRY
Mr. Arthur Charles Fox-Davies, genealogist, barrister, and author, died on Saturday at the age of 57 at his home in Warwick-gardens, W., where he had been lying ill for some weeks. He will be chiefly remembered for his work in the genealogical field. In this he took his keenest pleasure. It was for him not merely a labour of love, but an exciting form of sport, to hunt down and kill some picturesque dragon of genealogical imposture, to overthrow some cherished idol of family pride based on nothing more substantial than the vain imaginings of a recent ancestor or the artful tale of some flatterer possessed of a smattering of heraldry.
Other scholars had laboured in the same field before Fox-Davies came, but it was he who took the campaign against armorial pretence out of the austere pages of learned publications and brought it to the notice of the public at large. Many will remember, for example, the fluttering of the dovecotes which followed his refusal to accept as armigerous a host of worthy folk who had uncritically accepted as genuine the blazons arbitrarily adopted by their sires or grandsires and wished to be recorded in his "Armorial Families."
His cheerful iconoclasm of Wardour-street "family traditions," his polite offer of an entry in italics or careful explanation of the defects in an unproved pedigree induced numbers of families which had erred in sheer ignorance or noncurance to put their heraldic houses in order. His labours thus helped to provide a field in which the talents of herald-painters, armorial craftsmen, and designers of bookplates could be exercised, and greatly helped to forward that heraldic revival, started by others, which has borne rich fruit in the restored splendour of public ceremonies and the resuscitation of the almost forgotten celebrations of the festivals of the Orders of the Garter, the Thistle, and the Bath and the institution of others.
Besides practising his heraldry, Fox-Davies also presented it in several interesting works, among them "The Complete Guide to Heraldry" and "Heraldic Badges." In the "Book of Public Arms" he recorded many of the results of his campaign for getting genuine grants for public as well as private arms substituted to the constituted armorial authorities of the three kingdoms for the unauthorized assumptions at one time so prevalent. In the " Art of Heraldry," for which he secured the collaboration of many experts, he showed how admirably heraldic forms and devices were adapted for almost every conceivable variety of decoration, and as editor of the 1914 edition of Burke's "Landed Gentry" he was able to provide decent interment for a multitude of cherished family fictions, and to confine armorial and genealogical imaginings within the sober bounds of what could reasonably be proved.
As a barrister Fox-Davies appeared in several important peerage cases, but occasionally took a holiday from his hobby by accepting an ordinary brief, or contesting, in the Conservative interest, a quite hopeless seat at an election. He sought further relaxation by serving on the Holborn Borough Council and by writing 'thrillers' in which he obtained admirable results by juggling with ingenious points of law, and so carefully described the criminal activities of a likeable baronet who sought a justifiable revenge that a burglar stole the proofs of the book before publication in hopes of improving the technique of his own iniquities. During the War, Fox-Davies served at first in the Anti-Aircraft Corps and afterwards in the Naval Law Branch at the Admiralty, where he had to deal with the remarkable collection of juristic improbabilities and international tangles which came from the Aegean and other parts of the Mediterranean.
Mr. Fox-Davies was the second son of Mr. T.E. Fox-Davies, of Coalbrookdale, Shropshire, and was born at Bristol on February 28, 1871. He married, in 1901, Mary, daughter of Captain S.W. Crookes, of The Wyke, Shifnal, and had a son and a daughter.
ARMORIAL FAMILIES
A DIRECTORY OF GENTLEMEN OF COAT-ARMOUR
COMPILED AND EDITED BY ARTHUR CHARLES FOX-DAVIES
OF LINCOLN S INN, BARRISTER-AT-LAW
"Nohtles sunt qui Arma gentilitia antecessorum
suorum proferre possunt"
SEVENTH EDITION
LONDON : HURST ftf BLACKETT, LTD.
PATERNOSTER HOUSE, E.C.4 1929
Printed by The Anchor Press, Ltd.
At Tiptree, Essex, England Reprinted by permission from The Times, May 21, 1928.
===========
Arthur Charles Fox-Davies (28 February 1871 – 19 May 1928) was a British author on heraldry. His Complete Guide to Heraldry, published in 1909, has become a standard work on heraldry in England. A barrister by profession, Fox-Davies also worked as a journalist and novelist.
Arthur Charles Davies, known to his friends as Charlie, was born in Bristol, the second son of Thomas Edmond Davies (1839-1908) and his wife Maria Jane Fox, the daughter and co-heiress of Alderman John Fox, JP. Fox-Davies was brought up at Coalbrookdale in Shropshire, where his father worked for the Coalbrookdale Iron Company; his grandfather, Charles Davies of Cardigan in Wales, had been an ironmonger. He added his mother's maiden name to his own by deed poll on his nineteenth birthday in 1890, thereby changing his surname from Davies to Fox-Davies. In 1894, his father took the same course for himself and the rest of the family.
Fox-Davies attended Ackworth School in Yorkshire, but was expelled in 1884 at the age of fourteen, after hitting one of the schoolmasters. He received no further formal education, but was admitted to Lincoln's Inn in 1901 and called to the bar in 1906. As a barrister, he practised on the South Eastern Circuit, at the Old Bailey, and at the Surrey and South London Sessions.He also prepared printed cases for peerage cases in the House of Lords.
He married in 1901 Mary Ellen Blanche Crookes (1870-1935), daughter and coheiress of Septimus Wilkinson Crookes and Anne Blanche Harriet Proctor. They had a son, Harley Edmond Fitzroy Fox-Davies (1907-1941), and a daughter, Moyra de Somery Regan. His wife worked as an heraldic artist, often for her husband's publications, under the pseudonym "C. Helard".
The badge granted to Fox-Davies in 1921.
Neither the Fox nor the Davies families were armigerous, so in 1905, when Fox-Davies was 34 and already well-advanced in his career as a writer on heraldic and genealogical subjects, he organised posthumous grants of arms to both his grandfathers. The arms granted to Charles Davies were "sable, a demi sun in splendour issuant in base or, a chief dancetée of the last", with, for crest, "a demi dragon rampant gules collared or, holding in the dexter claw a hammer proper"; those granted to John Fox were "per pale argent and gules, three foxes sejant counterchanged", with, for crest, "a demi stag winged gules collared argent". Fox-Davies bore the Davies arms with a crescent for cadency, and intended to quarter them with the Fox arms after his mother's death; but as she outlived him, dying in 1937, this was not possible. He also considered obtaining grants to his wife's families of Crookes and Proctor, which would entitled his children to additional quarterings, but at this point he no longer had the money for further grants of arms. He did obtain, in 1921, the grant of a badge, which consisted of a "crown vallary gules". His motto was Da Fydd, Welsh for "good faith" and a pun on the name Davies.
In addition to his writings on heraldry, he published a number of works of fiction, including detective stories such as The Dangerville Inheritance (1907), The Mauleverer Murders (1907) and The Duplicate Death (1910).
Politically Conservative, Fox-Davies "quite hopelessly" stood for election as a member of parliament for Merthyr Tydfil in 1910, 1923, and 1924. He was, however, successfully elected as a member of Holborn Borough Council in London.
Fox Davies lived at 65 Warwick Gardens in Kensington, London, and had chambers at 23, Old Buildings, Lincoln's Inn. He died, aged 57, of portal hypertension and cirrhosis of the liver, having lain ill in his home for several weeks. He was buried at the parish church in Coalbrookdale.
EXPERT IN PEDIGREES AND HERALDRY
Mr. Arthur Charles Fox-Davies, genealogist, barrister, and author, died on Saturday at the age of 57 at his home in Warwick-gardens, W., where he had been lying ill for some weeks. He will be chiefly remembered for his work in the genealogical field. In this he took his keenest pleasure. It was for him not merely a labour of love, but an exciting form of sport, to hunt down and kill some picturesque dragon of genealogical imposture, to overthrow some cherished idol of family pride based on nothing more substantial than the vain imaginings of a recent ancestor or the artful tale of some flatterer possessed of a smattering of heraldry.
Other scholars had laboured in the same field before Fox-Davies came, but it was he who took the campaign against armorial pretence out of the austere pages of learned publications and brought it to the notice of the public at large. Many will remember, for example, the fluttering of the dovecotes which followed his refusal to accept as armigerous a host of worthy folk who had uncritically accepted as genuine the blazons arbitrarily adopted by their sires or grandsires and wished to be recorded in his "Armorial Families."
His cheerful iconoclasm of Wardour-street "family traditions," his polite offer of an entry in italics or careful explanation of the defects in an unproved pedigree induced numbers of families which had erred in sheer ignorance or noncurance to put their heraldic houses in order. His labours thus helped to provide a field in which the talents of herald-painters, armorial craftsmen, and designers of bookplates could be exercised, and greatly helped to forward that heraldic revival, started by others, which has borne rich fruit in the restored splendour of public ceremonies and the resuscitation of the almost forgotten celebrations of the festivals of the Orders of the Garter, the Thistle, and the Bath and the institution of others.
Besides practising his heraldry, Fox-Davies also presented it in several interesting works, among them "The Complete Guide to Heraldry" and "Heraldic Badges." In the "Book of Public Arms" he recorded many of the results of his campaign for getting genuine grants for public as well as private arms substituted to the constituted armorial authorities of the three kingdoms for the unauthorized assumptions at one time so prevalent. In the " Art of Heraldry," for which he secured the collaboration of many experts, he showed how admirably heraldic forms and devices were adapted for almost every conceivable variety of decoration, and as editor of the 1914 edition of Burke's "Landed Gentry" he was able to provide decent interment for a multitude of cherished family fictions, and to confine armorial and genealogical imaginings within the sober bounds of what could reasonably be proved.
As a barrister Fox-Davies appeared in several important peerage cases, but occasionally took a holiday from his hobby by accepting an ordinary brief, or contesting, in the Conservative interest, a quite hopeless seat at an election. He sought further relaxation by serving on the Holborn Borough Council and by writing 'thrillers' in which he obtained admirable results by juggling with ingenious points of law, and so carefully described the criminal activities of a likeable baronet who sought a justifiable revenge that a burglar stole the proofs of the book before publication in hopes of improving the technique of his own iniquities. During the War, Fox-Davies served at first in the Anti-Aircraft Corps and afterwards in the Naval Law Branch at the Admiralty, where he had to deal with the remarkable collection of juristic improbabilities and international tangles which came from the Aegean and other parts of the Mediterranean.
Mr. Fox-Davies was the second son of Mr. T.E. Fox-Davies, of Coalbrookdale, Shropshire, and was born at Bristol on February 28, 1871. He married, in 1901, Mary, daughter of Captain S.W. Crookes, of The Wyke, Shifnal, and had a son and a daughter.
ARMORIAL FAMILIES
A DIRECTORY OF GENTLEMEN OF COAT-ARMOUR
COMPILED AND EDITED BY ARTHUR CHARLES FOX-DAVIES
OF LINCOLN S INN, BARRISTER-AT-LAW
"Nohtles sunt qui Arma gentilitia antecessorum
suorum proferre possunt"
SEVENTH EDITION
LONDON : HURST ftf BLACKETT, LTD.
PATERNOSTER HOUSE, E.C.4 1929
Printed by The Anchor Press, Ltd.
At Tiptree, Essex, England Reprinted by permission from The Times, May 21, 1928.
===========
Arthur Charles Fox-Davies (28 February 1871 – 19 May 1928) was a British author on heraldry. His Complete Guide to Heraldry, published in 1909, has become a standard work on heraldry in England. A barrister by profession, Fox-Davies also worked as a journalist and novelist.
Arthur Charles Davies, known to his friends as Charlie, was born in Bristol, the second son of Thomas Edmond Davies (1839-1908) and his wife Maria Jane Fox, the daughter and co-heiress of Alderman John Fox, JP. Fox-Davies was brought up at Coalbrookdale in Shropshire, where his father worked for the Coalbrookdale Iron Company; his grandfather, Charles Davies of Cardigan in Wales, had been an ironmonger. He added his mother's maiden name to his own by deed poll on his nineteenth birthday in 1890, thereby changing his surname from Davies to Fox-Davies. In 1894, his father took the same course for himself and the rest of the family.
Fox-Davies attended Ackworth School in Yorkshire, but was expelled in 1884 at the age of fourteen, after hitting one of the schoolmasters. He received no further formal education, but was admitted to Lincoln's Inn in 1901 and called to the bar in 1906. As a barrister, he practised on the South Eastern Circuit, at the Old Bailey, and at the Surrey and South London Sessions.He also prepared printed cases for peerage cases in the House of Lords.
He married in 1901 Mary Ellen Blanche Crookes (1870-1935), daughter and coheiress of Septimus Wilkinson Crookes and Anne Blanche Harriet Proctor. They had a son, Harley Edmond Fitzroy Fox-Davies (1907-1941), and a daughter, Moyra de Somery Regan. His wife worked as an heraldic artist, often for her husband's publications, under the pseudonym "C. Helard".
The badge granted to Fox-Davies in 1921.
Neither the Fox nor the Davies families were armigerous, so in 1905, when Fox-Davies was 34 and already well-advanced in his career as a writer on heraldic and genealogical subjects, he organised posthumous grants of arms to both his grandfathers. The arms granted to Charles Davies were "sable, a demi sun in splendour issuant in base or, a chief dancetée of the last", with, for crest, "a demi dragon rampant gules collared or, holding in the dexter claw a hammer proper"; those granted to John Fox were "per pale argent and gules, three foxes sejant counterchanged", with, for crest, "a demi stag winged gules collared argent". Fox-Davies bore the Davies arms with a crescent for cadency, and intended to quarter them with the Fox arms after his mother's death; but as she outlived him, dying in 1937, this was not possible. He also considered obtaining grants to his wife's families of Crookes and Proctor, which would entitled his children to additional quarterings, but at this point he no longer had the money for further grants of arms. He did obtain, in 1921, the grant of a badge, which consisted of a "crown vallary gules". His motto was Da Fydd, Welsh for "good faith" and a pun on the name Davies.
In addition to his writings on heraldry, he published a number of works of fiction, including detective stories such as The Dangerville Inheritance (1907), The Mauleverer Murders (1907) and The Duplicate Death (1910).
Politically Conservative, Fox-Davies "quite hopelessly" stood for election as a member of parliament for Merthyr Tydfil in 1910, 1923, and 1924. He was, however, successfully elected as a member of Holborn Borough Council in London.
Fox Davies lived at 65 Warwick Gardens in Kensington, London, and had chambers at 23, Old Buildings, Lincoln's Inn. He died, aged 57, of portal hypertension and cirrhosis of the liver, having lain ill in his home for several weeks. He was buried at the parish church in Coalbrookdale.
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