White Kennett

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.

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.

Soon afterwards he published An Address of Thanks to a good Prince; presented in the Panegyric of Pliny upon Trajan, the best of Roman Emperors, London, 1686, 8vo, with a high-flown preface expressing his loyalty to the throne.

He preached a series of discourses against "popery", refused to read the Declaration of Indulgence in 1688, and acted with the majority of the clergy in the diocese of Oxford when they rejected an address to the king recommended by Bishop Parker.

Hearne relates that at the beginning of the Glorious Revolution Kennett lent Dodwell a manuscript treatise, composed by himself and never printed, offering arguments for taking the oaths of allegiance and supremacy to William and Mary.

From Dr George Hickes (afterwards nonjuring bishop of Thetford), who lived for a time in seclusion with him at Ambrosden, he received instruction in the Anglo-Saxon and other northern tongues.

In a sermon preached in his parish church of Aldgate on 31 January 1703–4, the fast day for the martyrdom of Charles I, Kennett acknowledged that there had been some errors in his reign, owing to a 'popish' queen and a corrupt ministry, whose policy tended in the direction of an absolute tyranny.

To correct exaggerated statements made about this sermon, Kennett printed it under the title of A Compassionate Enquiry into the Causes of the Civil War, London (three editions), 1704, 4to.

[2] In 1704 he published The Case of Impropriations, and of the Augmentation of Vicarages, and other insufficient Cures, stated by History and Law, from the first Usurpations of the Popes and Monks, to her Majesty's Royal Bounty lately extended to the poorer Clergy of the Church of England.

In 1705 some booksellers undertook a collection of the best works on English history down to the reign of Charles II, and induced Kennett to write a continuation to the time of Queen Anne.

Although it appeared anonymously as the third volume of the Compleat History of England, 1706, fol., the author's name soon became known, and he was exposed to renewed attacks from his Jacobite enemies.

[2] A sermon which he preached at the funeral of the first Duke of Devonshire on 5 September 1707, and which laid him open to the charge of encouraging a deathbed repentance, was published by Henry Hills, without a dedication, in 1707.

The imputation against Kennett was fresh in the memory of Alexander Pope when in the Essay on Criticism he wrote:[2] Then unbelieving priests reformed the nation, And taught more pleasing methods of salvation.

He zealously opposed the doctrine of the invalidity of lay baptism, and his answer to Henry Sacheverell's sermon preached before the lord mayor on 5 November 1709 raised a storm of indignation.

In 1710 he was severely censured for not joining in the congratulatory address of the London clergy to the queen, which was drawn up on the accession of the tories to office after Sacheverell's trial.

Richard Welton, rector of St Mary Matfelon, Whitechapel, introduced into an altar-piece in his church a portrait of Kennett to represent Judas Iscariot.

[2] To advance the interests of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, Kennett made a collection of books, charts, maps, and documents, with the intention of composing a History of the Propagation of Christianity in the English-American Colonies, and on the relinquishment of that project he presented his collections to the corporation, and printed a catalogue entitled Bibliothecæ Americanæ Primordia, London, 1713, 4to, afterwards republished with additions by Henry Homer the elder, 1789, 4to.

The collection, consisting of about fifteen hundred books and tracts, was placed in a private room at Peterborough, and a manuscript catalogue was drawn up and subscribed Index librorum aliquot vetustorum quos in commune bonum congessit W. K., Decan.

William Newton, admits that his zeal as a whig partisan sometimes carried him to extremes, but he was very charitable, and displayed great moderation in his relations with the dissenters.

[2] Probably his best-known work, apart from his Compleat History, was his Register and Chronicle, Ecclesiastical and Civil: containing Matters of Fact delivered in the words of the most Authentick Books, Papers, and Records; digested in exact order of time.

With papers, notes, and references towards discovering and connecting the true History of England from the Restauration of King Charles II, volume 1 published in London in 1728.

[2] Many other Kennett's manuscripts went into James West's library as president of the Royal Society, being purchased in 1773 by the 1st Marquess of Lansdowne, ending up in the same national collection.

Kennett published more than twelve sermons preached on public occasions between 1694 and 1728, and others in support of charity schools (cited in The Excellent Daughter, 1708; 11th edit.