Cave, William

CAVE, WILLIAM: Church of England patristic scholar; b. at Pickwell (13 m. e. by n. of Leicester) Dec. 30, 1637; d. at Windsor Aug. 4, 1713. He studied at Cambridge, in St. John's College, and was made M.A. in 1660, D.D. in 1672, in 1681 D.D. by Oxford. He was vicar of Islington, now part of London, 1662–91; rector of All Hallows the Great, Thames Street, London, 1679–89; became chaplain of Charles II. and canon of Windsor in 1681; and in 1690 vicar of Isleworth, London. His reputation rests on his eminent attainments in patristics. His principal works are: (1) Primitive Christianity (London, 1672; reprinted, Oxford, 1840, in connection with his Dissertation Concerning the Government of the Ancient Church by Bishops, Metropolitans, and Patriarchs, 1683); (2) Tabulæ ecclesiasticæ, tables of ecclesiastical writers (1674; improved ed. under the title Chartophylax ecclesiasticus, 1685); (3) Apostolici, or the Lives of the Primitive Fathers for the Three First Ages of the Christian Church (1677); (4) Ecclesiastici: or, the Histories of the Lives, Acts, Deaths and Writings of the Most Eminent Fathers of the Church That Flourisht in the Fourth Century (1683; 3 and 4 were combined and edited by Henry Cary under the title Lives of the Most Eminent Fathers of the Church That Flourished in the First Four Centuries, 3 vols., Oxford, 1840); (5) Scriptorum ecclesiasticorum historia literaria (1688; in Latin, to the fourteenth century, continued by others to 1617 and reprinted, Oxford, 2 vols., 1740–43).

Bibliography: J. Darling, Cyclopædia Bibliographica, pp. 605–607, London, 1854; S. A. Allibone, Critical Dictionary of English Literature, i. 356–357, Philadelphia, 1891; DNB, ix. 341–343.