He was educated at Yale college, near Boston, and studied law under Egbert Benson, the attorney-general for the state of New York. Having been called to the bar in 1785, he settled in Poughkeepsie, and commenced practice. From 1790 to 1794 he was member of the state legislature, where he headed the federalist minority. A defeat he sustained at the following election determined him to settle in New York, where, abandoning politics, he spent the remainder of his life in studying and applying the principles of jurisprudence. In 1793 he was appointed professor of law in Columbia college, and in 1795 he published "Dissertations: being the preliminary part of a course of law lectures." The following year he was made master in chancery, and in 1797 recorder of New York. These offices he resigned the year afterwards, on being appointed by Governor Jay judge of the supreme court, whence he rose in 1804 to the office of chief-justice of New York. For ten years he fulfilled the duties thus laid upon him in a manner that increased his reputation, and led to his being appointed chancellor. In this capacity he continued to administer justice until 1823, when, having attained the age of sixty, he was disabled by the American law from holding the office of a judge. With characteristic energy Mr. Kent immediately accepted a reappointment to the professorship of law in Columbia college, and applied himself not only to the delivery of his lectures, but to their publication in an enlarged form, under the title of "Commentaries on American Law." The hale vigour of body and mind which he indicated in the preface to the first volume, published in 1826, accompanied Mr. Kent through the weighty task he had undertaken, which grew on his hand as he proceeded, and terminated only in the year 1830, with a fourth volume. The work at once became a standard work on the subject of which it treats, and not only a text-book for law-students in America, but a valuable work of reference in libraries all over the world. The eighth and last edition bears date 1854. Kent continued his practice, chiefly in chamber consultations, to the last year of a long life. His decisions as a judge, delivered with great clearness, are highly esteemed as legal authorities. In the list of his works will be found "Notes to the New York City Charter," 1836, a revision of the municipal code having been the work of his earlier career. He was always a genuine lover of the best English literature, and a book bearing his name has been published, entitled "Outlines of a course of English Reading." He died on the 12th December, 1847, aged eighty-four. It is said that materials exist for a copious biography of this eminent lawyer, and that his son, William Kent, the editor of the later editions of the "Commentaries," is engaged upon a life of his father.—R. H.
KENT, William, "painter, sculptor, architect," as he loved to designate himself, was born in 1684 of humble parentage in the North Riding of Yorkshire. He was apprenticed to a coach-painter, but growing tired of the employment, ran away from his master and set up in London as a portrait-painter. Here he found friends who raised funds to send him in 1710 to Rome, where he took lessons in painting of Cav. Luti. Whilst at Rome he had the good fortune to attract the notice of the earl of Burlington, who directed his thoughts to architecture, became his active patron and friend, and on his return to London gave him apartments in his house, where he continued to reside during the remainder of his life. From his settling in London, Kent, under the auspices of the earl of Burlington, then chief arbiter of taste in the fashionable world, found ample employment in all the various arts to which he directed his attention. As a painter of portraits, of landscapes, of the halls, staircases, and ceilings of lordly mansions, and of the altar-pieces of churches, Kent's pencil was in general request, though even his panegyrist Walpole admits, that "as a painter he was below mediocrity." He was the fashionable architect and landscape gardener; and he was equally ready to sculpture a monument of Shakspeare for Westminster Abbey, or a "classic" chimney-piece for a private house; to give designs for picture-frames and furniture; or even, yielding to what Walpole calls the impetuousness of fashion, could suffer himself to be prevailed on by "two great ladies to make designs for their birth-day gowns." Among Kent's chief buildings were the Horse guards and the Courts of law, Westminster, and Holkham, Norfolk, the seat of the earl of Leicester. Walpole styles Kent "the father of modern gardening," and his chapter on that art is a eulogy on the genius of Kent. There can be no doubt that, although his abilities even in this line have been overrated, he here did display really original ability, and that to him is mainly due the great improvement which from that time ensued in the taste for landscape gardening in England. Among other grounds laid out by him were the Royal gardens or park at Richmond, the gardens of Carlton house, Kensington gardens, and Claremont. On the death of Jarvis in 1739, Kent was appointed principal painter to the crown. He had previously been made master carpenter and architect, and keeper of the royal pictures. His prosperity drew on him the envy of rivals and the lash of the satirists, and gave additional zest to the burlesques of Hogarth; but Kent seems not to have permitted these attacks to ruffle his equanimity. He died at Burlington house, April 12, 1748. Kent made designs for editions of the poems of Spenser, Pope, and Gay; and published, at the cost of Lord Burlington, the designs of Inigo Jones, to which he appended some of his own, and also a few of his patron's.—J. T—e.
KENTIGERN (Saint), a pious Culdee by whose labours the Strathclyde Britons were converted to Christianity, and who, according to the ancient chronicles and unvarying tradition, was the founder of the see of Glasgow. In the year 539 Kentigern, then twenty-five years of age, quitted Orkney, where he had been instructed by the bishop St. Servanus, and came to Glasgow. His zealous labours among the Britons who inhabited the valley of the Clyde, and his great sanctity, induced Marken, king of Strathclyde, and the clergy of the district to elect him their bishop, his coronation having been performed by St. Columba. The king became jealous of the influence exercised by the new bishop over his subjects, and compelled him to quit the kingdom and to seek refuge in Wales, where he founded the see of St. Asaph. After the lapse of several years, Kentigern on the death of Marken was recalled to Glasgow, and erected a church on the wooded banks of the Molendinar burn in 560, on a spot which had been occupied by a druidical circle. This building was the precursor of the splendid cathedral which now occupies the same site, and the few huts and wooden houses which congregated around the sacred edifice were the germ of the great commercial city of Glasgow. St. Kentigern continued to labour here till his death, which took place in 601. From his pious, benevolent, and amiable character he obtained the appellation of Mungo, a word used both in the British and Norwegian languages as an epithet of fondness and endearment.—J. T.
KENYON, John, poet and benefactor of poets, was born in 1783 in the island of Jamaica, where his father was possessed of considerable property. At the age of five he was sent to England, and educated at Bristol, at the Charter-house, and at Cambridge university. On leaving the university he cultivated with eagerness intellectual society, and became the friend of Coleridge, Southey, and Wordsworth. He published in 1833 (anonymously) a "Rhymed Plea for Tolerance," followed in 1838 by "Poems, for the most part occasional;" and in 1849 by "A Day at Tivoli, with other poems"—polished and graceful compositions. He died at Cowes in December, 1856, leaving numerous and munificent bequests; among those to his literary friends, one of £10,000 to Mr. and Mrs. Browning, and another of £6000 to Mr. Procter—"Barry Cornwall."—F. E.
KENYON, Lloyd, Lord, a notable English judge, who died lord chief-justice of the king's bench, was born on the 5th of October, 1732, at Gredington in Flintshire. His father, of an old Lancashire family which had removed to Flintshire, was a small squire cultivating his own little estate. As a boy the young Kenyon was noted for irascibility, but also for affectionateness of disposition and quickness of parts. He received his scanty education at the free grammar-school of Ruthin, where he acquired the smattering of Latin, with the perverted employment of which he afterwards amused the bench and the bar. His arithmetic extended no further than the rule of three, according to Lord Campbell, who in the amusing biography of Kenyon in the Lives of the Chief-justices avers, that to his dying day he believed in the revolution of the sun round the earth. His acuteness marked him out for the profession of the law, and he was articled for five years to a prosperous attorney at Nantwich. His master was to have rewarded his industry and ability by a partnership, but is said to have behaved ungenerously; and his elder brother dying, it was thought that he might aspire to barristership. In the November of 1750, accordingly, he was admitted a student of the Middle temple, and entered upon the occupation of a fourth story in Brick Court. Not having taken a degree, he had to spend five years in the preliminary stage of studentship. During these he
