Cylchgronau Cymru

Another administrator meriting mention is Sir Robert Henry Davies (1824-1902). Davies came of good stock. His family, the Davies's of Gorwydd and Rhosybedw in Cardiganshire, had for generations been closely associated with the soil. Their history shows the fine quality of the Cardiganshire yeoman and the mettle of his pasture. Hysbys y dengys y dyn O ba radd y bo'i wreiddyn.'4 Davies was the second son of Sir David Davies, physician to King William IV and Queen Adelaide. His mother was a daughter of John Williams, cleric and schoolmaster, known in a large part of the principality as Yr Hen Syr, headmaster of Ystradmeurig school. From Haileybury college Davies was appointed a writer in the Bengal Civil Service in 1844 and served in the N.W. Provinces and Cis-Sutlej territory as Assistant Commissioner and settlement officer of the Lahore district. It was during the time that he held office at Lahore that the Indian Mutiny broke out and for a time Davies saw military service. He was Joint Magistrate and Deputy Collector at Azingarh in 1858. His outstanding ability led to his appointment as Secretary to the Punjab Government, and six years later he became Financial Commissioner in the province of Oudh and Chief Commissioner from 1865 to 1871. In the latter year Davies became Lieutenant-Governor of the Punjab, a post he held until 1877. He received many honours and was a member of the Council for India, 1885-95. On the death of his father in 1865 he became the owner of Rhosybedw estate. He himself died in 1902 at Chobham and was buried at Thorney, Peterborough. Open competition for the Indian Civil Service was introduced in the fifties of the last century and no bureaucracy was ever better officered. The Indian Civil Service regularly attracted some of the best brains in Britain. In the period of expansion which followed the Mutiny the district officer, invariably a member of the I.C.S., had been mainly occupied in the task of establishing law and order, but with the passage of time he took on more positive duties, which involved a great deal of touring, pitching his tent in village after village, work which in essence meant the protection and well-being of the simple country folk entrusted to his care. One of the first Welshmen to enter the I.C.S. by open competi- tion must have been Sir John Lewis Jenkins (1858-1912), son of James Jenkins, a well-known tenant farmer of Glansawdde. Llan- 4 Transactions, Cardiganshire Antiquarian Society, xiii, 77.