Basil Kennett

Basil Kennett (21 October 1674 – 3 January 1715) was a Church of England cleric who served as the first chaplain to the British Factory at Leghorn. An academic, writer and translator, Kennett was elected president of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, serving for a short time before his early death. His 1696 Romæ Antiquæ Notitia, or the Antiquities of Rome was considered the subject's standard handbook for a century. Biography Basil Kennett was born at Postling, Kent, on 21 October 1674, and was younger brother of White Kennett, bishop of Peterborough. He was educated under the care of his brother at a school at Bicester and in the family of Sir William Glynne at Ambrosden, Oxfordshire. In 1689 he entered St Edmund Hall, Oxford, under the tuition of his brother, who was then vice-principal. According to Biographia Britannica, "he sat down to his studies with remarkable diligence ... so that he soon became distinguished both by his genius, and the extraordinary advances he made in classical and polite literature." In 1690 he was elected scholar of Corpus Christi College as a native of Kent, and graduated B.A. in 1693, M.A. in 1696. In the same year he published his Romæ Antiquæ Notitia or the Antiquities of Rome, to which he prefixed two essays on the Roman Learning and Education. These essays were the first attempts of the kind made in any language at that time; and the book was so well received by the public, that he was thereby encouraged to prosecute his design of promoting and facilitating the study of classical learning. In that view he proceeded to draw up The Lives and Characters of the ancient Greek Poets, which came out in 1697. The same year, on the 14th of February, he was admitted Fellow of Corpus Christi College, and became a tutor there. It was probably about this time, pursuant to the college-statutes, that he entered into Holy Orders: after which, directing the course of his studies in a more particular manner to Divinity, he published in 1705, An Exposition of the Apostles Creed, according to Bishop Pearson, in a new Method, by way of Paraphrase and Annotations. This was followed in 1706 by An Essay towards a Paraphrase on the Psalms in Verse, with a Paraphrase on the third Chapter of the Revelations.