KENG TUNG (now TUNG KENG) : see SHAN STATES. KENILWORTH, market town, Warwickshire, England; sit uated on a tributary of the Avon, on a branch of the L.M.S. rail way, 99 M. N.W. from London. Pop. (1931) 7,592. The town is only of importance for the ruins of its old castle. The walls originally enclosed an area of seven acres. The gatehouse is now used as a dwelling-house ; Caesar's tower, the only portion built by Geoffrey de Clinton now extant, has massive walls 16 ft. thick; Merwyn's tower of Scott's Kenilworth; the great hall built by John of Gaunt; and the Leicester buildings, also survive. Near the castle are remains of an Augustinian monastery founded in 1122, and afterwards made an abbey. The Norman doorway of St. Nicholas church is supposed to have been the entrance of the former abbey church.
Kenilworth (Chinewrde, Kenillewurda, Kinelingworthe, Keni lord, Killingworth) is said to have been a member of Stoneleigh before the Norman Conquest and a possession of the Saxon kings.
The town was granted by Henry I. to Geoffrey de Clinton, a Norman who built the castle. Geoffrey's grandson released his right to King John, and the castle remained with the crown until Henry III. granted it to Simon de Montfort, earl of Leicester.
The famous "Dictum de Kenilworth" was proclaimed here in 1266. After the battle of Evesham the rebel forces rallied at the castle, which, after a siege of six months, was surrendered by Henry de Hastings, the governor. The king then granted it to his son Edmund. Through John of Gaunt it came to Henry IV.
and was granted by Elizabeth in 1562 to Robert Dudley, after wards earl of Leicester, but on his death in 1588 again merged in the possessions of the Crown. The earl spent large sums on restoring the castle and grounds, and here in July 1575 he en tertained Queen Elizabeth at "excessive cost," as described in Scott's Kenilworth. During the civil wars the castle was disman tled by the soldiers of Cromwell and from that time abandoned. The only mention of Kenilworth as a borough occurs in a charter of Henry I. to Geoffrey de Clinton and in the charters of Henry I.
and Henry II. to the church of St. Mary of Kenilworth confirm ing the grant of lands made by Geoffrey to this church, and men tioning that he kept the land in which his castle was situated and also land for making his borough, park and fishpond. The town possesses large tanneries.