CAVE, Dr William, a learned English divine, born in 1637, educated in St John's College, Cambridge; and successively minister of Hasely in Oxfordshire, All-hallows 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 written for or against Christianity from the time of Christ to the 14th century: which works produced a very warm dispute between Dr Cave and M. le Clerc, who was then writing his Bibliothèque Universelle in Holland, and who charged the doctor with partiality. Dr Cave died in 1713.