WHITE

See also:

• WHITE KENNETT (1660–1728)

KENNETT (1660–1728)  , English bishop and antiquary, was born at Dover in August 166o . He was educated at Westminster school and at St Edmund's Hall, Oxford, where, while an undergraduate, he published several translations of Latin works, including Erasmus In Praise of Folly . In 1685 he became vicar of Ambrosden, Oxfordshire . A few years after-wards he returned to Oxford as tutor and vice-principal of St Edmund's 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 first duke of Devonshire he was in 1707 recommended to the deanery of Peterborough . He afterwards joined the Low Church party, strenuously opposed the Sacheverel movement, and in the Bangorian controversy supported with great zeal and consider-able bitterness the side of Bishop Hoadly . His intimacy with Charles Trimnell, bishop of Norwich, who was high in favour with the king, secured for him in 1718 the bishopric of Peter-borough . He died at Westminster in December 1728 . Kennett published in 1698 an edition of Sir Henry Spelman's History of Sacrilege, and he was the author of fifty-seven printed works, chiefly tracts and sermons .

He wrote the third

volume (Charles I: Anne) of the composite Compleat History of England (1706), and a more detailed and valuable Register and Chronicle of the Restoration . He was much interested in the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel . The Life of Bishop White Kennett, by the Rev . William Newton (anonymous), appeared in 1730 . See also Nichols's Literary Anecdotes, and I . Disraeli's Calamities of Authors .