Thomas Greaves

younger Brother to John Greaves mention’d under the year 1652 p. 87. was born at Colmore in Hampshire, mostly educated in the Charterhouse School near London, admitted Scholar of Corp. Ch. Coll. 15. Mar. 1627, where making great progress in Log. Phil. and other learning he took the degrees in Arts. Afterwards he became Deputy Professor of the Arabick Lecture, in the absence of Mr. Edw. Pocock, an. 1637, Bach. of Div. in 1641, Rector of Dunsby in Lincolnshire in the times of Usurpation, and of another place near London, had the degree of D. of D. confer’d upon him in 1661, and a Prebendship in the Church of Peterborough in the place of Mr. Will. Towers deceased, an. 1666, being then Rector of Benyfield in Northamptonshire: Which last he resigned some years before his death, through trouble from his Parishioners, who, because of his slowness of speech and bad utterance, held him insufficient for them and it, notwithstanding he was a man of great learning. His works are these.

De Linguae Arabicae utilitate & praestantia; oratio Oxonii habita 19. Jul. 1637. &c. Ox. 1639. in 3. sh. in qu.

Observationes quaedam in Persicam Pentiteuchi versionem. They are in the sixth Tome of Bib. Polyglot. p. 48.

Annotationes quaedam in Persicam interpretationem Evangeliorum. In the said sixth Tome p. 56. Which annotations were translated into Lat. by Sam. Clerk. This learned person Dr. Greaves did, in his latter days, retire to Weldon in Northamptonshire, where he had purchased an Estate; and dying there on the 22. of May in sixteen hundred seventy and six,1676. was buried in the Chancel of the Church at that place. Over his grave was soon after a plain gravestone laid in the N. East corner of the said Chancel, with this inscription thereon. Thomas Gravius S. Th. D. Ecclesiae Petroburg. Praebend. vir summae pieta [•] is & eruditionis; in Philosophicis paucis secundus, in Philologicis peritissimis par; in Linguis Orientalibus plerisque major; quarum Persicam notis in appendice ad Biblia Polyglotta doctissime illustravit. Arabicam publicè in Academiâ Oxon professus est; dignissimus etiam, qui & Theologiam in eodem loco profiteretur. Poeta insuper & Orator insignis, atque in Mathematicis profundè doctus. Reipublicae Literariae & Ecclesiae Christianae flebilis obiit Maii 22. an. 1676. aet. suae 65. I find one Thom. Greaves a Minister to have written A brief summ of Christian Religion, &c. Lond. 1656. oct. whether by the former, or another, Thomas Greaves, I cannot yet tell.