Lady Davenant, one of the two wives of Lord Davenant.  She was “a faultless wife,” with beauty to attract affection, and every womanly grace.

Charles Davenant, a son of Lord Davenant, who married Marianne Dormer, his father’s wife.—­Cumberland, The Mysterious Husband (1783).

Davenant (Will), a supposed descendant from Shakespeare, and Wildrake’s friend,—­Sir W. Scott, Woodstock (time, the Commonwealth).

DAVENPORT (Colonel), a Revolutionary veteran who, fighting the battle of Long Island over again in Parson Cushing’s family, admits that General Washington poured out “a terrible volley of curses.”

“And he swore?” objects Parson Gushing.

“It was not profane swearing.  It was not taking GOD’S name in vain, for it sent us back as if we had been chased by lightning.  It was an awful hour, and he saw it.  It was life or death; country or no country.”—­Harriet Beecher Stowe, Poganuc People (1878).

DAVID, in Dryden’s satire of Absalom and Achitophel is meant for Charles II.  As David’s beloved son Absalom rebelled against him, so the Duke of Monmouth rebelled against his father Charles II.  As Achitophel was a traitorous counsellor to David, so was the Earl of Shaftesbury to Charles II.  As Hushai outwitted Achitophel, so Hyde (duke of Eochester) outwitted the Earl of Shaftesbury, etc., etc.

  Auspicious prince. 
  Thy longing country’s darling and desire,
  Their cloudy pillar, and their guardian fire ... 
  The people’s prayer, the glad diviner’s theme,
  The young men’s vision and the old men’s dream.

Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel, i. (1681).

David, king of North Wales, eldest son of Owen, by his second wife.  Owen died in 1169.  David married Emma Plantagenet, a Saxon princess.  He slew his brother Hoel and his half-brother Yorworth (son of Owen by his first wife), who had been set aside from the succession in consequence of a blemish in the face.  He also imprisoned his brother Rodri, and drove others into exile.  Madoc, one of his brothers, went to America, and established there a Welsh colony.—­Southey, Madoc (1805).

DAVID SOVINE.  Witness in a murder case in Edward Eggleston’s novel The Graysons. He is put upon the stand and tells a plausible story of “the shooting,” which he claims to have seen.  The prosecutor then hands him over to the prisoner’s counsel, Abraham Lincoln, whose cross-examination of the wretched man concludes thus: 

“Why does David Sovine go to all this trouble to perjure himself?  Why does he wish to swear away the life of that young man who never did him any harm?  Because that witness shot and killed George Lockwood himself.  I move your honor that David Sovine be arrested at once for murder!” (1888).