Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Reeve, Thomas (d.1737)
REEVE, Sir THOMAS (d. 1737), judge, was son of Richard Reeve of Dagnall in Buckinghamshire, who founded four almshouses at Windsor in 1688. After entering Trinity College, Oxford, as a commoner in 1688, and becoming a student, first of the Inner Temple and then of the Middle Temple, he was called to the bar in 1713. As early as 1718 he became a king's counsel, and was appointed attorney-general of the duchy of Lancaster, and in 1720 was elected a bencher of his inn, the Middle Temple, and reader in 1722. His best-known appearances were as counsel for the crown against Bishop Atterbury on the bill for his attainder in 1722, and for the widow of Robert Castell against Bambridge, warden of the Fleet, in 1730. In April 1733 he was appointed a judge of the common pleas and knighted, and became chief justice of the common pleas in January 1736. In his old age he was vainly courted by Lord Sydney Beauclerc, in hopes of a legacy (see Gent. Mag. 1737, p. 60, and Sir C. H. Williams's satire, ‘Peter and Lord Quidam,’ quoted in Elwin and Courthope, Pope's Works, iii. 339 n.) On 13 Jan. 1737 he died, leaving over 20,000l. personalty and lands and houses in London. He married Annabella, sister of Richard Topham of New Windsor, keeper of the records in the Tower, as an executor of whose will he presented to Eton College a collection of drawings after the antique (Lipscomb, Buckinghamshire, iv. 492); he had no children. A portrait of Reeve by Amiconi was engraved by Baron and Boekman (Bromley). His name is sometimes (e.g. Gent. Mag. 1736, p. 56) erroneously given as Reeves.
[Foss's Judges of England; Ashmole's Antiquities of Berkshire, iii. 104; State Trials, xvi. 469, 607; xvii. 398.]
Dictionary of National Biography, Errata (1904), p.232
N.B.— f.e. stands for from end and l.l. for last line
| Page | Col. | Line | |
| 414 | i | 13 | Reeve, Sir Thomas: for After becoming read After entering Trinity College, Oxford, as a commoner in 1688, and becoming |