Sir John, an eminent lawyer and poet, born about the year 1570. He first distinguished himself by his poem Nosce Teipsum, on the Immortality of the Soul. He became attorney-general, and speaker of the house of commons in Ireland; and afterwards was appointed lord chief justice of the court of King's Bench in England, but died before his installation, in 1626. He published many law tracts; but was esteemed more as a scholar and a wit than as a lawyer.

Davis, John, a famous navigator in the 16th century, was born at Sandridge, near Dartmouth in Devonshire; and distinguished himself by making three voyages to the most northern parts of America, in order to discover a north-west passage to the East Indies; in which he discovered the straits which bear his name. He afterwards performed five voyages to the East Indies; in the last of which he was slain in a desperate fight with some Javanese, near the coast of Malacca, on the 27th of December 1625. He wrote an account of his second voyage for the discovery of the north-west passage; a voyage to the East Indies; and other tracts.

DAVIS'S Straits. See New Britain.