Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Neve, Timothy (1724-1798)
NEVE, TIMOTHY (1724–1798), divine, born at Spalding, Lincolnshire, on 12 Oct. 1724, was the only surviving son, by his first wife, of Timothy Neve (1694-1757) [q. v.] He was admitted at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, on 27 Oct. 1737, at the age of thirteen, and was elected scholar in 1737 and fellow in 1747. He graduated B.A. 1741, M.A. 1744, B.D. 1753, and D.D. 1758. In 1759 he was one of the preachers at the Chapel Royal, Whitehall, and on 23 April in that year he was instituted, on the nomination of Bishop Green of Lincoln, to the rectory of Middleton Stoney, Oxfordshire, which he resigned in 1792 in favour of his son, the Rev. Egerton Robert Neve (1766-1818). In 1762 he was appointed by his college to the rectory of Letcomb-Bassett, Berkshire, but he vacated it two years later, on his preferment by the same body to the more valuable rectory of Godington, Oxfordshire, which he kept for the rest of his life. From 1783 to his death in 1798 Neve held the Lady Margaret professorship of divinity at Oxford and the sixth prebendal stall in Worcester Cathedral. He was also chaplain of Merton College, Oxford, and the second lecturer on the Bampton foundation. He was partly paralysed for several years before his death, which took place at Oxford on 1 Jan. 1798. He left a wife, three sons, and two daughters. The widow is commemorated by G. V. Cox as ' a gay old lady,' living for many years in Beam or Biham, opposite Merton College chapel, and one of his daughters was ranked among the belles of academic society.
Neve's chief works were: 1. 'Animadversions upon Mr. Phillips's History of the Life of Cardinal Pole,' 1766; a vindication of the doctrine and character of the reformers from the attacks which Thomas Phillips (1708-1784) [q. v.], a priest of the Roman communion, had made upon them. Neve's copy, bound up in three interleaved volumes, with numerous notes by him, and with several letters inserted from Jortin, Charles Townshend, and others, is in the British Museum. Some of the criticisms of Neve were expressed in very strong terms, and Phillips animadverted upon them in the third edition (pp. 248 et seq.) of his 'Study of Sacred Literature, to which is added an Answer to the Principal Objections to the History of the Life of Cardinal Pole.' 2. 'Eight Sermons preached before University of Oxford in 1781 as Bampton Lecturer,' 1781. The argument of this work was to prove that Jesus Christ was the Messiah and Saviour of the World. 3. 'Seventeen Sermons on Various Subjects,' 1798. A posthumous work, published for the benefit of his family. Six letters addressed to him by Maurice Johnson [q. v.] on antiquarian topics are printed in the 'Bibliotheca Topographica Britannica,' iii. 417-35. Neve was elected in April 1746 a fellow of the Literary Society at Spalding, and became its correspondent at Oxford.
[Foster's Alumni Oxon. 1715-1886; Fowler's Corpus Christi Coll. (Oxford Hist. Soc.), pp. 282,405; Cox's Recollections of Oxford, 2nd edit. p. 155; Gent. Mag. 1798, pt. i. pp. 85-6; Le Neve's Fasti, iii. 85, 519; Nichols's Lit. Anecd. vi. 70, 99-100, 134; Blomfield's Bicester Deanery, pt. iv. pp. 80-1.]