from the Cott. MS. Vesp. D. xiv., f. 142b. The homilist says that St. Neot was set to book-learning in his youth, ‘thus the book saith,’ and this book may possibly be the life of St. Neot referred to by Asser, and not otherwise known. He also says ‘it is recorded in writing that the holy man went to Glastonbury in holy Bishop Ælfheah's days, and by him he was ordained.’ Now Ælfheah was bishop of Winchester 934–51, yet the homilist also says St. Neot died before King Ælfred, who died in 901. This anachronism weakens the authority of the homily, and the choice of Glastonbury as St. Neot's place of education is suspicious; it is questionable whether a religious house existed there in the reign of King Ælfred (cf. Asser, s. a. 887). Later writers of the life of St. Neot, accepting the homily, make him contemporary not only with Ælfred, but also with Ælfheah, and even Dunstan [q. v.] and Æthelwold [q. v.], and enlarge on his connection with Glastonbury. The homilist tells us further that St. Neot travelled to Rome seven times, and ultimately built a dwelling in a fair place ten miles from Petrockstow (now Bodmin); ‘this place they call Neotestoc’ (now St. Neot's). Here he did much preaching, and King Ælfred often came to the holy man about his soul's need, and the saint reproved him, prophesied his sufferings, and recommended him to go to Rome ‘to Pope Martin, who now ruleth the English school;’ but Marinus or Martin II did not become pope till 882, after St. Neot was dead, according to both the homily and Asser. His disciples buried St. Neot's body in the church which he had founded, and seven years later his bones were elevated and placed near the altar. The homily gives the story of Ælfred and the cakes, and of St. Neot's appearance to Ælfred, as in the interpolated Asser.
To these scanty materials much legendary detail was added by monastic writers eager to magnify the saint, whose relics their monasteries professed to possess. The monastery of Ely was active in relic-hunting at the end of the tenth century, and it is probable that the Abbot Brithnoth, who stole Withburga's relics from Dereham, and was interested in the foundation of the religious house of Eynesbury in Huntingdonshire (Liber Eliensis, p. 143), helped to obtain the relics of St. Neot from the college of secular priests that then maintained his chapel in Cornwall. The sacristan himself agreed to bring them to Eynesbury (Gorham, App. iii. p. 267) about 972–5 (Lib. El. p. 143), and the name of that place became St. Neot's. About 1003 the relics were conveyed to Crowland to protect them from Danish robbers (Ord. Vit. vol. iv. c. 17), and Crowland in after times still claimed to possess them, though when the house of St. Neot's in Huntingdonshire was refounded as a cell to Bec, 1078–9, Anselm, as abbot of Bec, officially attested that the body of the saint was there (Gorham, p. 67, quoting Archives of Lincoln Cathedral). Pits and Bale ascribe several works to St. Neot without any authority (Gorham, p. 43).
[Asser in Mon. Hist. Brit. pp. 480–4; Gorham's History of St. Neot's, 1820; Liber Eliensis, ed. D. J. Stewart, p. 143; Ordericus Vitalis's Hist. Eccles.; Hardy's Descriptive Catalogue, vol. i. pt. ii. p. 538 seq. An account of the legendary lives of St. Neot is given by Gorham and by Hardy; as biographies they are of no value.]
NEPEAN, Sir EVAN (1751–1822), secretary of the admiralty, secretary of state for Ireland, governor of Bombay, born in 1751, was the second son of Nicholas Nepean of Saltash, Cornwall. In early life he entered the navy as a clerk; in 1776 he was purser of the Falcon sloop on the coast of North America, in 1777 of the Harpy, in 1779 of the Hero, from which he exchanged, 1 April 1780, to the Foudroyant with Capt. John Jervis, afterwards earl of St. Vincent [q. v.] In 1782 he was secretary to Molyneux Shuldham, lord Shuldham [q. v.], port admiral at Plymouth, and became under-secretary of state in the Shelburne ministry. In 1784 he was made a commissioner of the privy seal; in 1794 he was appointed under-secretary for war; and in 1795 he succeeded Sir Philip Stephens [q. v.] as secretary of the admiralty. For nine busy years he continued in this office, being made a baronet on 16 July 1802; and on 20 Jan. 1804 he was appointed chief secretary for Ireland. It was only for a few months, and in September 1804 he was back at the admiralty as one of the lords commissioners. He went out of office in February 1806, but in 1812 was appointed governor of Bombay, an office which he held till 1819. In 1799 he had purchased the manor of Loders in Dorset, and had afterwards considerably enlarged the estate by other purchases. On his return from Bombay he retired to his seat, and there he died on 2 Oct. 1822, aged 71 (Gent. Mag.)
As a hard-working official, the story of Nepean's active life is buried in the details of administration; but it is worthy of notice that his service at the admiralty, whether as secretary or with a seat at the board, coincided with the date of the great successes of the navy under Jervis, Duncan, and Nelson; and while his early appointment to the admiralty may have been due to some extent to
