KENNET, WHITE, distinguished as a divine, antiquarian writer, and prelate of the Church of England, was born in 1669. He was the son of a Kentish clergyman ; was educated at Westminster and Oxford ; had the living of Ambrosden early bestowed upon him with a prebend in the church of Peterborough, but returned to Oxford, where he became vice-principal of Edmund Hall, the college to which Hearne belonged. He subsequently resigned Ambroaden, and settled in London as minister of St. Eotolph's, Aldgate, where he became a very popular preacher. He was made successively archdeacon of Huntingdon and dean of Peterborough, and finally, in 1718, bishap of Peterborough. He died in 1728. Bishop Kennet was a man, as his biographer says, "of incredible diligence and application, not only in his youth, but to the very last, the whole disposal of himself being to perpetual industry and service, his chiefest recreation being variety of employment." His published works are, according to his biographer's catalogue, fifty-seven in number, including several single sermons and small tatteta; but perhaps not a less striking proof of the indefatigable industry ascribed to him is to be seen in his manuscript collections, mostly in his own hand, now in the Lands downe department of the British Museum Library of Manuscripts, where from No. 935 to 1042 are all his, and most of them containing matter not incorporated in any of his printed works.
His principal published works are : 1. 'Parochial Antiquities, attempted in the History of Ambrosden, Burcester, and other adjacent places iu the counties of Oxford and Bucks,' 4to, 1695. Thie has been reprinted. In this work his very useful glossary is to be • found. 2. ' The Case of Impropriations, lee., with an Appendix of Records and Memorials,' 1704. 3. 'A Register and Chronicle, Eccle siastical and Civil,' in 2 volumes folio, 1728 ; relating to the events of a few years of the reign of King Charles IL' He also published a corrected edition of ' The History of Gavelkind,' by William Somner, to which he prefixed a life of that eminent Saxouist. Most of his other works were either sermons or controversial tracts, many of the latter being on ecclesiastical controversy, in which he was reckoned what is called a Low Churchman ; and having, previously to the Revolution, taken the opposite side, he was often severely handled by the other PartY• There is an octavo volume, published in 1730, entitled 'The Life of the Right Reverend Dr. White Kennett, late Lord Bishop of Peter borough,' from which the above particulars have been derived. It is anonymous ; and as the fact is not generally known, it may not be improper to state that the author was William Newton, rector of Wingham in Kent.