White Kennett

White Kennett (10 August 166019 December 1728) was an English bishop and antiquarian. He was educated at Westminster School and at St Edmund Hall, Oxford, where, while an undergraduate, he published several translations of Latin works, including Erasmus' In Praise of Folly. Kennett was vicar of Ambrosden, Oxfordshire from 1685 until 1708. During his incumbency he returned to Oxford as tutor and vice-principal of St Edmund Hall, where he gave considerable impetus to the study of antiquities. George Hickes gave him lessons in Old English. In 1695 he published Parochial Antiquities. In 1700 he became rector of St Botolph's Aldgate, London, and in 1701 Archdeacon of Huntingdon. For a eulogistic sermon on the recently deceased William Cavendish, 1st Duke of Devonshire, Kennett was in 1707 recommended to the deanery of Peterborough. He afterwards joined the Low Church party, strenuously opposed the Sacheverell movement, and in the Bangorian controversy supported with great zeal and considerable bitterness the side of Bishop Hoadly. His intimacy with Charles Trimnell, bishop of Norwich, who was high in favour with George I of Great Britain, secured for him in 1718 the bishopric of Peterborough. He died at Westminster in December 1728. White Kennett Street, near St Botolph, Aldgate, is named after him. Biography White Kennett was born in the parish of St Mary, Dover, on 10 August 1660, the son of Basil Kennett, M.A., rector of Dimchurch and vicar of Postling, Kent, by his wife Mary, eldest daughter of Thomas White, a wealthy magistrate and master-shipwright of Dover. After receiving a preliminary education at Elham and Wye, he was placed at Westminster 'above the curtain,' or in the upper school; but as he was suffering from smallpox at the period of the election of scholars on the foundation, his father recalled him home. After his recovery he spent a year at Beaksbourne, in the family of Mr. Tolson, whose three sons he taught 'with great content and success.' He was the older brother of Basil Kennett, whose life and career he was considerably to influence.