Sneyd Davies

Sneyd Davies (30 October 1709–20 January 1769) was an English poet, academic and churchman, archdeacon of Derby from 1755.

Life He was born on 30 October 1709 at Shrewsbury, Shropshire, where, at St Mary's Church, he was baptised the next day. His father, John Davies, was rector of Kingsland, Herefordshire, and prebendary of Hereford and St Asaph Cathedrals. His mother, Honora, was daughter of Ralph Sneyd, and married, first, William Ravenscroft in 1690, who died in 1698, and secondly, John Davies, by whom she had four children, Sneyd being the second son. He was on the foundation at Eton College, and later became scholar and fellow of King's College, Cambridge. was breaking, and he died on 20 January 1769 aged 59.

Davies left the living of Kingsland and his whole fortune to Richard Evans; he was the nephew of his brother-in-law Henry Morgan of Henblas.

Works Davies's poems were not collected. They included Latin verses, imitations of Horace's epistles, serious and burlesque imitations of John Milton, and verses in the manner of Jonathan Swift. Some of them were published anonymously in two volumes of poems (1732 and 1745) by John Whaley, also a fellow of King's College. These and other poems by Davies are in James Dodsley's Collection (1775), and John Nichols's Collection (1780). Thomas Pennant's Tour in Wales contains a poem on Caractacus, delivered at an annual meeting on Caer Caradoc. One poem is in the fourth volume of William Duncombe's Imitations of Horace, which is dedicated to Davies. Others are in the life of Davies, by George Hardinge, in the first volume of Nichols's Illustrations of Literature.

Some letters, really written by James Davis and called Origines Divisianæ; or the Antiquities of the Devizes, in familiar letters to a friend (1754), have been attributed to Sneyd Davies.