Life

He was born at Spalding

Spalding, Lincolnshire

Spalding is a market town with a population of 30,000 on the River Welland in the South Holland district of Lincolnshire, England. Little London is a hamlet directly south of Spalding on the B1172 road....

, Lincolnshire

Lincolnshire

Lincolnshire is a county in the east of England. It borders Norfolk to the south east, Cambridgeshire to the south, Rutland to the south west, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire to the west, South Yorkshire to the north west, and the East Riding of Yorkshire to the north. It also borders...

, on 12 October 1724, the only surviving son, by his first wife, of Timothy Neve the antiquary. He was admitted at Corpus Christi College, Oxford

Corpus Christi College, Oxford

Corpus Christi College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom...

 on 27 October 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 John Green

John Green (bishop)

John Green was a British clergyman and academic.Green was born at Beverley in Yorkshire in 1706.Having been schooled in his home town, he was admitted to St John’s College, Cambridge in 1724. Green graduated B.A. in 1728 and was awarded a fellowship in 1730.Green joined the priesthood in 1731 and...

, bishop of Lincoln

Bishop of Lincoln

The Bishop of Lincoln is the Ordinary of the Church of England Diocese of Lincoln in the Province of Canterbury.The present diocese covers the county of Lincolnshire and the unitary authority areas of North Lincolnshire and North East Lincolnshire. The Bishop's seat is located in the Cathedral...

, to the rectory of Middleton Stoney

Middleton Stoney

Middleton Stoney is a village and civil parish about west of Bicester, Oxfordshire.-History:Aves ditch is pre-Saxon and may have been dug as a boundary ditch...

, Oxfordshire

Oxfordshire

Oxfordshire is a county in the South East region of England, bordering on Warwickshire and Northamptonshire , Buckinghamshire , Berkshire , Wiltshire and Gloucestershire ....

, 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

Berkshire

Berkshire is a historic county in the South of England. It is also often referred to as the Royal County of Berkshire because of the presence of the royal residence of Windsor Castle in the county; this usage, which dates to the 19th century at least, was recognised by the Queen in 1957, and...

, but he vacated it two years later, on his preferment to the rectory of Godington

Godington

Godington is a village and civil parish northeast of Bicester in Oxfordshire. The parish is bounded on all but the west side by a brook called the Birne, which at this point forms also the county boundary with Buckinghamshire.-Manor:...

, 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

Worcester Cathedral

Worcester Cathedral is an Anglican cathedral in Worcester, England; situated on a bank overlooking the River Severn. It is the seat of the Anglican Bishop of Worcester. Its official name is The Cathedral Church of Christ and the Blessed Mary the Virgin of Worcester...

. He was also chaplain of Merton College, Oxford

Merton College, Oxford

Merton College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. Its foundation can be traced back to the 1260s when Walter de Merton, chancellor to Henry III and later to Edward I, first drew up statutes for an independent academic community and established endowments to...

, and the second Bampton lecturer. He was partly paralysed for several years before his death, which took place at Oxford on 1 January 1798. He left a wife, three sons, and two daughters.

Works

Neve's chief works were:

• Animadversions upon Mr. Phillips's History of the Life of Cardinal Pole, 1766, against Thomas Phillips; some of the criticisms of Neve were expressed in very strong terms, and Phillips replied 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.
• Eight Sermons [ 250 ] preached before University of Oxford in 1781 as Bampton Lecturer, 1781.
• Seventeen Sermons on Various Subjects, 1798. A posthumous work, published for the benefit of his family.

Six letters addressed to him by Maurice Johnson

Maurice Johnson

Maurice Johnson , of Spalding, was the founder of the 'The Gentlemen's Society' .In 1717 he assisted in the re-establishment of the Society of Antiquitaries . He invited William Stukeley to join the society...

on antiquarian topics were 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.