Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 47.djvu/420

  ‘England's Restitution, or the Man, the Man of Men, the States-man,’ London, 1660, 4to; dedicated to Charles II.



REEVE, 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 satire, ‘Peter and Lord Quidam,’ quoted in  and, 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 (, Buckinghamshire, iv. 492); he had no children. A portrait of Reeve by Amiconi was engraved by Baron and Boekman. His name is sometimes (e.g. Gent. Mag. 1736, p. 56) erroneously given as Reeves.



REEVE, WILLIAM (1757–1815), actor and musical composer, born in London in 1757, was originally destined for a business career, and for that purpose was apprenticed to a law stationer in Chancery Lane, where Joseph Munden, subsequently the comedian, was his fellow clerk. Office work, however, proved distasteful, and Reeve, who had some aptitude for music, gave up business to become a pupil of Richardson, organist of St. James's, Westminster. From 1781 to 1783 Reeve was organist at Totnes, Devonshire, but he resigned his post to take an engagement as composer to Astley's. In 1787 he was assisting (1742?–1798) [q. v.] in the management of the Royalty Theatre, and appeared on the stage. In May 1789 he was playing the part of the Knifegrinder at the Haymarket in George Colman's successful play, ‘Ut Pictura Poesis, or the Enraged Musician.’ Two years after this, while a chorus singer at Covent Garden, Reeve was called upon to complete the music to ‘Oscar and Malvina, or the Hall of Fingal,’ a ‘ballet of action,’ adapted from Ossian, which Shield had begun, but declined to finish owing to a dispute with the manager. The success of this effort was emphatic, and from that time Reeve's services were in great demand at various theatres. He adapted Gluck's ‘Orpheus and Eurydice,’ produced at Covent Garden, 28 Feb. 1792, for Mrs. Billington's benefit; and in the same year he was appointed organist of St. Martin's, Ludgate Hill, a post he resigned in 1802 on becoming joint-proprietor of Sadler's Wells Theatre. During this period Reeve was industriously composing music for plays like ‘Tippoo Saib’ (Covent Garden, 6 June 1791); ‘The Apparition’ (1794); ‘Ramagh Droogh’ (Covent Garden, 12 Nov. 1798); ‘Paul and Virginia,’ a popular success, written in collaboration with Mazzinghi (Covent Garden, 1 May 1800); ‘Chains of the Heart,’ a comic opera, also with Mazzinghi (Covent Garden, 9 Dec. 1801, with Storace and Braham in the cast); ‘The Cabinet,’ comic opera by Dibdin, with music by Reeve, Rauzzini, Braham, Corri, and others (Covent Garden, 19 Feb. 1802); ‘The Jubilee,’ a pièce d'occasion written by Dibdin in honour of the jubilee of George III, which was produced at Covent Garden for a charity, 25 Oct. 1809, but the performance was stopped by the ‘O. P.’ combatants; and ‘The Outside Passenger’ (1811). He also wrote ‘The Juvenile Preceptor,’ a pianoforte tutor (London, n.d.).

Reeve, who had earned a comfortable independence, died 22 June 1815, at Marchmont Street, Russell Square. He was a popular writer of comic songs; and in those dramatic works in which he was associated with Mazzinghi the latter is said to have composed the serious music, while Reeve was entrusted with that in a lighter vein. A daughter of Reeve appeared at one time upon the stage, making her début at Covent Garden as Ophelia.

[Oulton's Continuation of Victor's and Oulton's Histories of the Theatres of London and Dublin, 1818; Biographia Dramatica, 1812;