Godfrey Davies (13 May 1892 – 28 May 1957) was a respected English historian of the 17th century and member of the research staff of the Huntington Library. The Mississippi Valley Historical Review summarized his contributions by noting: "Through his published works he came to be recognized as a leading authority in seventeenth-century English history, and through his innumerable services to British and American students who have worked at the Huntington Library during the past quarter of a century he made a leading contribution not only to his own but also to many fields of historical scholarship." Early life, family, and education Godfrey Davies was born on 13 May 1892 at Cirencester, Gloucestershire, the second son of (Sir) Thomas Davies (d. 1939), Member of Parliament for Cirencester and Tewkesbury, 1918–1929. Godfrey was educated at Chipping Campden Grammar School and was elected in 1910 to a Townsend Scholarship at Pembroke College, Oxford, where he received his second class bachelor's degree in modern history on 26 November 1914 and his master's degree on 26 May 1917. He married Margret Fitz Randolph Gay (1901-1989) on 17 June 1939. The couple are buried in the Mountain View Columbarium. Professional career As early as 1915, C. H. Firth, the Regius Professor of History at Oxford from 1904 to 1925, used Davies an assistant. In that year, as Davies related it, Firth entrusted him to "try my 'prentice hand on the task of preparing them for the press." As Firth's assistant, Davies became a member of the Faculty of Modern History at the University of Oxford from 1919 until Firth's retirement in 1925. After Firth's death in 1936, Davies wrote the memoir of Firth's life for the Proceedings of the British Academy published in 1937, edited for publication Firth's A Commentary on Macaulay's History of England (Macmillan, 1938), saw through publication Firth's posthumously published Essays, Historical and Literary (Oxford University Press, 1938) and completed his Regimental History of Cromwell's Army (1940). Davies' mentor and his working library remained an inspiration throughout Davies' career. In the introduction to his last major book, The Restoration of Charles II, 1658-1660 (1955), Davies wrote "Though Sir Charles Firth had passed away before I wrote a sentence of this book, his inspiration has remained with me until its completion. Much of it has been written from books and pamphlets that were once his. The memory of many conversations with him has