NEVE, TIMOTHY (1694–1757), divine and antiquary, was born at Wotton, in the parish of Stanton-Lacy, near Ludlow, Shropshire, in 1694. He was the son of Paul Neve, bailiff of the same place, and was educated at Ludlow school. He was admitted sizar of St. John's College, Cambridge, 10 Nov. 1711, under Goodwyn, and graduated B.A. in 1714. In 1716 he became master of the free grammar school at Spalding, Lincolnshire. He performed service in some capacity in Spalding parish church, and was in 1718 admitted a member of the Gentleman's Society of Spalding, of which he acted as librarian. To this society he communicated several papers, including, in 1727, essays on the invention of printing and our first printers, and on Bishop Kennett's donation of books to Peterborough Cathedral. Leaving Spalding about 1729, when a successor at the school was appointed, he moved to Peterborough, where he was minor canon from 24 March 1728–9 till 1745. While there he was secretary and joint founder, along with Joseph Sparke, the registrar of Peterborough, of the Gentleman's Society, founded on the lines of the Spalding society.
He was chaplain to Dr. Thomas, bishop of Lincoln, and by him nominated prebendary of Lincoln, first of the North Kelsey stall (1744–8), then of Nassington stall (1747–57). On 28 March 1747 he was also collated archdeacon of Huntingdon. For twenty-eight years (1729–57) he was rector of Alwalton, Huntingdonshire, a living attached to his Lincoln prebend. He died there on 3 Feb. 1757, and was buried in Alwalton Church, in the north transept of which is an epitaph to his memory.
By his first wife (married 1722, died 1728) he had four children, of whom two were surviving in 1741—a son, Timothy [q. v.], and a daughter, subsequently married to a Mr. Davies (Nichols, Lit. Anecd. vi. 136). His second wife, whom he married on 26 Feb. 1750, was Christina, daughter of the Rev. Mr. Greene of Drinkstone, Bury St. Edmunds, and sister to Lady Danvers of Rushbrooke, Suffolk.
Watt attributes to him ‘Observations of 2 Parhelia, or Mock Suns, seen 30 Dec. 1735, and of an Aurora Borealis seen 11 Dec. 1735, (Phil. Trans. Abridg. vii. 134, 1751); also on an ‘Aurora Borealis seen in 1741’ (ib. p. 526).
[Watt's Bibl. Brit.; Le Neve's Fasti; Luard's Grad. Cantab.; Nichols's Literary Anecdotes, vi. 63, 70, 99, et passim, and Literary Illustrations, v. 36; Gent. Mag. 1750, 1763, 1783, 1792, 1798; Blomfield's Deanery of Bicester; Thomas Birch's Athenian Letters; Prof. J. E. B. Mayor's Entries of St. John's College, Cambridge, January 1630–1–July 1715; information from Marten Perry, M.D., president of the Spalding Society, the Rev. T. A. Stoodley, Spalding, and William Ellis, esq., senior bursar of Merton College.]
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
