CAVE (Dr William), a learned English divine, born in 1637, educated in St John's college Cambridge; and successively minister of Haseley in Oxfordshire, Allhallows the Great in London, and of Islington. He became chaplain to Charles II. and in 1684 was installed a canon of Windsor. He compiled the Lives of the Primitive Fathers in the three first centuries of the church, which is esteemed a very useful work; and Historia Literaria, &c. in which he gives an exact account of all who had writ for or against Christianity,
anity, from the time of Christ to the 14th century: which works produced a warm controversy between Dr Cave and M. Le Clerc, who was then writing his Bibliotheca Universalis in Holland, and who charged the doctor with partiality. Dr Cave died in 1712.