Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 47.djvu/423

  1667 (MS. Cat. of Fellows of King's Coll.) He was educated at Cambridge, where he graduated from King's College, B.A. in 1688 and M.A. in 1692. He was elected a fellow of his college, but had to resign his fellowship upon marriage about May 1689, and five years later (9 Aug. 1694) was presented by, first earl of Berkeley [q. v.], to the living of Cranford in Middlesex. On 1 Aug. 1711, upon the death of Abraham Brooksbank, he became vicar of St. Mary's, Reading, and was shortly afterwards appointed a chaplain to Queen Anne. In 1716 he completed his valuable ‘Apologies of Justin Martyr, Tertullian, and Minucius Felix in Defence of the Christian Religion, with the Commonitory of Vincentius Lirinensis concerning the Primitive Rule of Faith,’ a translation, with notes and a preliminary discourse upon each author, upon which he had been engaged for upwards of seven years (London, 2 vols. 8vo). The notes are learned and perspicuous, and the work afforded a useful introduction to patristic study (cf., Bibl. Biblica, p. 368). Reeves died at Reading on 26 March 1726, and was buried near the altar in St. Mary's Church. He left a widow, who died in 1728, and two daughters. A collection of fourteen of his sermons (detailed in Cycl. Bibl. p. 2521) was printed in 1729 from a manuscript which he had already prepared for press (London, 8vo). The first of these, an election sermon, on ‘The Fatal Consequences of Bribery exemplified in Judas’ (Matt. xxvii. 3, 4), ‘has been found very useful’ ; it was separately reprinted, 1733 and 1753, London, 8vo.



REEVES, WILLIAM, D.D. (1815–1892), Irish antiquary, and bishop of Down, Connor, and Dromore, was the eldest child of Boles D'Arcy Reeves, an attorney, and his wife Mary, fourth daughter of Captain Jonathan Bruce Roberts, who fought at the battle of Bunker's Hill, and was afterwards land agent to the Earl of Cork. He was born at Charleville, co. Cork, 16 March 1815, in the house of his maternal grandfather. He was sent in 1823 to the school of John Browne in Leeson Street, Dublin, and afterwards to that of the Rev. Edward Geoghegan. He entered Trinity College, Dublin, in October 1830, and obtained a Hebrew prize immediately after entrance. He became a scholar in his third year, and graduated A.B. in the spring term 1835. He then proceeded to study medicine, won the Berkeley medal, and graduated M.B. in 1837. His object was to be able to practise among the poor of his parish when ordained. He was ordained deacon at Hillsborough, co. Down, 18 March 1838, and became curate of Lisburn, co. Antrim. He was ordained priest at Derry, 2 June 1839, and in 1841 became perpetual curate of Kilconriola, co. Antrim.

Reeves's first publication, printed at Belfast in 1845, was ‘A Description of Nendrum, commonly called Mahee Island.’ On 14 Dec. 1846 he was elected a member of the Royal Irish Academy. In 1847 he published in Dublin ‘Ecclesiastical Antiquities of Down, Connor, and Dromore,’ which has ever since continued the chief work of reference with regard to the ecclesiastical history and topography of that part of Ireland. In 1849 he was made master of the diocesan school at Ballymena, and its stipend was a welcome addition to the 110l. a year which had been his sole income before. When his father died in 1852 he inherited his landed estate in Cork, but generously divided it with his brothers and sisters. In 1850 the Irish Archæological Society published his ‘Acts of Archbishop Colton,’ a volume which does for the diocese of Derry what his former book had accomplished for his own diocese. In both, mediæval records are illuminated by a minute knowledge of the modern local topography, and of all that had been written or was traditional about the districts mentioned. Sixteen papers of varying importance, but all showing original work, followed, chiefly in the ‘Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy’ and in the ‘Ulster Journal of Archæology;’ and in 1857 he published in Dublin his most famous work, ‘The Life of St. Columba, Founder of Hy, written by Adamnan, ninth Abbot of that Monastery, to which are added copious Notes and Dissertations.’ This large volume remains the most learned and the fullest collection of knowledge of ancient Irish ecclesiastical affairs published since the time of John Colgan [q. v.]; Reeves is only less than Colgan, inasmuch as he was not acquainted with the Irish language. The text of the life (every page of which is carefully annotated) is taken from a manuscript of the eighth century. The preparation of this book solaced his grief for the loss of his first wife, his cousin Emma, daughter of Thomas Reeves of Carlisle, whom he had married on 3 Jan. 1838, and who died on 12 Oct. 1855, leaving nine children.

The ‘Life of St. Columba’ was approved