Known as "Bull" Davy, he was noted as quick-witted, with a ready sense of humour, but, according to one author, relatively unscrupulous.
[1] According to Humphry William Woolrych, he was originally either a grocer or a pharmacist before being declared bankrupt and learning the doctrines around nisi prius, for which much study was not required.
[3] Davy became a Serjeant-at-Law on 11 February 1754, and soon after became involved in prosecutions under the Black Act.
Davy argued that "the air (of England) is too pure for a slave to breathe in"[6] when he represented James Somerset, an escaped African slave come from Boston whose London godparents had sued for a writ of Habeas Corpus, in Somerset v Stewart.
This case was one of the first tests of Habeas Corpus when the gaoler had no colour of state; the writ had been conceived in the midst of the English Civil War as the Habeas Corpus Act 1640, in order to defend the subject from government tyranny.