Family and Education

b. 4 June 1737, 3rd s. of Sir Jermyn Davers, 4th Bt., M.P., of Rushbrooke by Margaret, da. of Rev. Edward Green. educ. Bury St. Edmunds g.s. 1744; Trinity, Camb. 1755. unm. 5s. 3da. by Frances Triece with whom he lived c.1768-d. suc. bro. as 6th Bt. June 1763.

Offices Held

Lt. 48 Ft. 1758, capt. Jan. 1761; capt. 44 Ft. Oct. 1761; served in America during seven years’ war; ret. 1766.

Biography

The Davers family first sat for Bury St. Edmunds in 1689, and Sir Charles’s father represented the borough 1722-7. In 1767 Davers concluded an agreement with the Duke of Grafton by which he promised to support Grafton’s candidate for Bury St. Edmunds at the coming general election in return for a seat elsewhere. Grafton, through the Treasury, arranged a seat for him at Weymouth and Melcombe Regis.

Davers voted regularly against the court until the fall of North’s Administration. In 1770 he thought of retiring from Parliament, and on 14 May 1770 his American friend Charles Lee wrote to dissuade him:1

I know your reasons, but cannot approve of them. You think that as you are no speaker and have no turn for business, that you can contribute but little to stem the torrent of corruption and villainy which at present seems to bear everything down before it ... I conjure you ... not in despair to quit the deck and get under the hatches.

In 1779 he was described in the Public Ledger as ‘a gentleman of a very ancient family, and independent fortune’, who

has never taken a busy part in politics. Sir Charles may be esteemed, in the truest sense of the word, a respectable country gentleman. He is tolerably regular in his attendance in Parliament.

There is no record of his having spoken in the House.

He voted for Shelburne’s peace preliminaries, 18 Feb. 1783, for parliamentary reform, 7 May 1783, and for Fox’s East India bill, 27 Nov. 1783; and opposed Pitt.

He died 4 June 1806.

Ref Volumes: 1754-1790

Author: John Brooke

Notes

• 1. Lee Pprs. (N.Y. Hist. Soc.) i. 371.