[2] Kennedy left Paisley in 1828, and for a short time afterwards was probably a journalist in Kingston upon Hull, where he married his employer's daughter.
There he met Mary Howitt, in a literary milieu described by Laetitia Elizabeth Landon in Romance and Reality.
The ailing Durham retired at the end of the year, and Kennedy travelled in America, sending to London a municipal report on Canadian institutions, which was printed for parliamentary use.
He criticised Daniel O'Connell's suggestion that the independent Texas should be recognised only with the consent of Mexico.
[2] In 1841 Kennedy published, in two volumes, with an autobiographical preface, The Rise, Progress, and Prospects of the Republic of Texas.