Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Cove, Morgan
COVE, MORGAN (1753?–1830), divine, was born in or about 1753. He received his academical education at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where he was admitted sizar on 7 Nov. 1768, scholar on 15 Jan. 1770, fellow-commoner on 26 Nov. 1775, and proceeded LL.B. in 1776 (College Admission Book). He was incorporated of Magdalen Hall, Oxford, on 19 Jan. 1810, and became a grand compounder for the degree of D.C.L. on 1 Feb. following. In 1795, when residing at Helston, Cornwall, he published anonymously an ‘Essay on the Revenues of the Church of England, with an Inquiry into the … Abolition or Commutation of Tithes’ (second edition, with author's name, 1797; third edition, 1816), wherein he showed himself a vigorous apologist for the existing arrangements in the revenues of the church. The pamphlet attracted much attention, and in the year of its publication the author was collated to the vicarage of Sithney, Cornwall, by Dr. Buller, the then bishop of Exeter. Four years later, in 1799, he was presented to the rectory of Eaton-Bishop, Herefordshire, by Bishop Butler, who also gave him on 12 April 1800 the prebend of Withington Parva, and on 23 March 1801 translated him to the prebend of Gorwall and Overbury in Hereford Cathedral. On 1 Oct. 1828 he was appointed chancellor of the choir, an office he continued to hold until his death, which occurred at Hereford on 9 April 1830 at the age of seventy-seven. Besides the above-mentioned work Cove published ‘An Inquiry into the Necessity, Justice, and Policy of a Commutation of Tithes,’ 8vo, London, Hereford [printed], 1800. Both pamphlets, ‘corrected and greatly enlarged,’ were reissued in one volume in 1817.
[Gent. Mag. c. i. 648; Le Neve's Fasti (Hardy), i. 494, 507, 533.]