The English ship Kentish (changed to HMS Kent after the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660) was a 40-gun fourth-rate frigate of the Commonwealth of England Navy, built by contract at Deptford (not in the Dockyard) and launched in November 1652.

Command was then passed to Captain Edward Witheridge, with Kentish returned to Chatham for the winter.

[2] Her most famous action was on 4 April 1655, when she attacked a squadron of Tunisian warships lying in Porto Farina, on the Barbary Coast.

She defeated both the ships and the on-shore fort to win her third battle honour.

[1] In 2007, when the wreck of HMS Gloucester was found 28 miles (45 km) off the Norfolk coast,[3] the finding of the ship's bell ruled out the possibility of the wreck being HMS Kent, the only other Royal Navy ship of the period to be shipwrecked in the area.