Beveridge was entered a member of St. John's College, Cambridge, in May 1653, then under the government of the well-known Dr. Anthony Tuckney; and it is remarkable, considering the works by which they were distinguished in after life, that the compiler and author of the "Pandectæ Canonum" and of the "Codex Canonum Ecclesiæ Primitivæ Vindicatus," and the author of the "Historia Literaria," should have been entered within a very few days of each other members of the same College, where, no doubt, was laid the foundation of that sound learning, perhaps, of those very works themselves for which they are so eminent. There is apparently, no trace discoverable of any peculiar intimacy existing between them, but there is a coincidence in the lives and pursuits and writings of Bishop Beveridge and Dr. Cave which, in the absence of any very remarkable incident in the history of either of them separately, it may be interesting to mention here. Both were born within a year, in the same county, and, though not in the immediate neighbourhood of each other, yet at a distance of not many miles-Beveridge, at Barrowupon-Soar near Loughborough, and Cave at Pickwell, near Melton Mowbray, in the county of Leicester. They were school-fellows at Oakham school, in Rutlandshire, where Cave is described as having received his education, and where, though Beveridge spent only two years, yet those were probably the two years immediately preceding his removal to the University. Both were sons of the incumbents of the above-named parishes, and had relatives who, in the violence of the times, were suspended from their livings. Both were admitted, as we have seen, members of the same College, within a few days of each other, Cave on the 9th, and Beveridge on the 14th day of May, 1653; and as neither was ordained till after the Restoration, they were employed, doubtless, during much of the period of trial which intervened, on the subject to which the temper and tumult of the times providentially directed so many others—the primitive records and history of the Church, its original constitution, government, discipline, and worship. Both were afterwards settled as parish priests in the same diocese; Beveridge, as vicar of Ealing, to which he was presented in 1661; and Cave, as vicar of Islington, to which he was admitted in 1662. Subsequently they held benefices in the same neighbourhood, in the City of London; Beveridge, that of St. Peter's, Cornhill, which he held from 1672 till raised to the see of St. Asaph in 1704; and Cave, that of Allhallows the Great, in Thames Street, which he held from 1679 till 1691, when he resigned it for the living of Isleworth. Beveridge died Bishop of St. Asaph in 1708; Cave, Canon of Windsor, in 1713. Beveridge's attention seems, in the first instance, to have been directed to Oriental learning and Chronology; his first publication being a "Treatise on the Excellency and Uses of the Oriental Tongues and a Syriac Grammar," in 1658, and his second, "Institutiones Chronologica," published in 1669. But the two great works by which he is best known are, his "Euvodixov, sive Pandectæ Canonum SS. Apostolorum et Conciliorum, necnon Canonicarum SS. Patrum Epistolarum cum Scholiis," printed at the Theatre, |