Davies Giddy was born on 6 March 1767, the second of the three children of Reverend Edward Giddy, curate of
St Erth's Church, and his wife Catherine, daughter of Henry Davies of Tredrea,
St Erth in
Cornwall. His parents' first child, also Davies by forename, died within 24 hours of birth in 1766, and their third child, Mary Philippa Davies Giddy (known as Philippa) was born in 1769. The Giddy family moved to
Penzance, living on Chapel Street in 1775, until Giddy's mother Catherine inherited the family home of Tredrea back in St Erth. By 1780 the family returned to St Erth, and Davies was taught by his father, alongside his sister Philippa. Davies Giddy would later adopt Gilbert as his surname, the maiden name of his wife, the agronomist
Mary Ann Gilbert, whom he married at Easter of 1808. the mathematical astronomer. At the age of 17, at the recommendation of Hitchins, he was sent to Bristol to join the Mathematical Academy of
Benjamin Donne where he remained for three years. His sister Philippa simultaneously finished her own schooling with the famous bluestocking
Hannah More. He went up to
Pembroke College, Oxford in 1786, whence he graduated with a MA on 29 June 1789. Davies was
High Sheriff of Cornwall from 1792 to 1793. He served in the
House of Commons as Member of Parliament for
Helston in Cornwall from 1804 to 1806 and for
Bodmin from 1806 to 1832. Giddy was a close friend of the physician
Thomas Beddoes, had attended Beddoes' lectures at Oxford when Beddoes became University Reader in Chemistry in 1788 and was in regular correspondence with him over the latter's plans for a
Pneumatic Institution in Bristol. Giddy was an early supporter of
Humphry Davy and persuaded Beddoes to employ him in the laboratory at the institute. The
Dictionary of National Biography article says of him: "Gilbert's importance to the development of science in the early nineteenth century lay in his faith that science provided the best means to tackle practical problems and in his facility as a parliamentary promoter of scientific ventures." His mathematical skills were sought by early engineering pioneers such as
Jonathan Hornblower,
Richard Trevithick and
Thomas Telford. He also had an interest in the history and culture of Cornwall. For instance, he removed a Celtic cross from near
Truro, on the Redruth Road (where it had found new use as a gatepost), and took it to a churchyard in his new home of
Eastbourne. When asked why he carried off a Cornish Cross and re-erected it in Eastbourne by the Rev. Canon Hockin, of
Phillack, Davies replied,
It was to show the poor, ignorant folk that there was something bigger in the world than a flint! He changed his name to Gilbert in 1817. In 1822 he collected and published a number of Cornish
carols and in 1838 assembled and published
A Parochial History of Cornwall. He edited for publication a Cornish Language poem about the Passion:
Passyon agan Arluth, as
Mount Calvary (1826). He was elected to the
Society of Antiquaries in 1820. He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1832. Davies Gilbert was opposed to mass education during his time in parliament. When the Parochial Schools Bill of 1807 was debated in the Commons, Tory MP Davies Gilbert warned the House that: "However specious in theory the project might be of giving education to the labouring classes of the poor, it would, in effect, be found to be prejudicial to their morals and happiness; it would teach them to despise their lot in life, instead of making them good servants in agriculture and other laborious employments to which their rank in society had destined them; instead of teaching them the virtue of subordination, it would render them factious and refractory, as is evident in the manufacturing counties; it would enable them to read seditious pamphlets, vicious books and publications against Christianity; it would render them insolent to their superiors; and, in a few years, the result would be that the legislature would find it necessary to direct the strong arm of power towards them and to furnish the executive magistrates with more vigorous powers than are now in force. Besides, if this Bill were to pass into law, it would go to burthen the country with a most enormous and incalculable expense, and to load the industrious orders with still heavier imposts. (Hansard, House of Commons, Vol. 9, Col. 798, 13 June 1807, quoted in Chitty 2007:15–16)" He died in
Eastbourne in
Sussex on Christmas Eve 1839. ==Marriage and family==