Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Reeve, Edmund (d.1660)

by Charlotte Fell Smith

REEVE, EDMUND (d. 1660), divine, who is described as B.D., was appointed vicar of Hayes-cum-Norwood, Middlesex, on 30 Oct. 1627. In 1635 he reported that he had erected a new pulpit and seats in his church. He defended the ‘Book of Sports’ as tending to a ‘verie great encrease of godlinesse.’ He also wrote a work in defence of altars, with Richard Shelford and others. This is apparently not extant, but was answered by William Prynne in ‘A Quenche Coale,’ &c., London, 1637. Reeve was apparently rejected by the ‘Triers’ or examiners of the Commonwealth, since we find him in 1648 living in London, near the Old Bailey, teaching Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. He died in 1660.

He published:

1. ‘A Treatise concerning Tongues,’ n.d.
2. ‘The Christian Divinitie contained in the Divine Service of the Church of England,’ London, 1631, 4to.
3. ‘The Communion Book Catechisme expounded,’ London, 1635, 4to.
4. ‘A Way unto true Christian Unitie,’ London, 1648, 4to.
5. ‘The New Jerusalem, the Perfection of Beauty:’ a Sermon composed for the learned Society of Astrologers, and published with an Appendix on Astrologie, London, 1652, 4to.
6. ‘The Rules of the Latin Grammar construed which are omitted in the Book called Rules and the Syntaxis construed by William Lily' [q. v.], London, 1657, 4to.

[Calendar of State Papers, Dom. 1635, p. 69; Newcourt's Repert. Eccles. i. 641; Works; Brit. Mus. Cat.]

C. F. S.