Born in Llanfaredd, Radnorshire,[1] Davies attended Christ College, Brecon (alongside his friend, the historian Theophilus Jones).
Davies produced a number of collections of poetry and plays but it was his writings on myth and history which were most successful.
Influential in their time and later, his historical works are wildly inaccurate and speculative by modern standards.
He was not fluent in Welsh and used unreliable sources and guesswork in his attempt to make Celtic myth correspond with biblical history.
However, like most of his contemporaries, Davies fell for a number of Iolo's frauds, which further undermines the reliability of his work.