copy of the Gospels in Latin, containing also local records, dating from the 8th century, and preserved in the library of Trinity College, Dublin. The illumination is executed with extraordinary delicacy, and the work is asserted to be the finest extant example of early Christian art of this kind. Neighbouring antiquities are the church of Dulane, with a fine doorway, and the dun or fortification of Dimor, the principal erection of a series of defences on the hills about 6 m. W. of Kells. Among several seats in the vicinity is that of the Marquess of Headfort. Kells returned two members to the Irish parliament before the Union.
KELLY, EDWARD (1854–1880), Australian bushranger, was
born at Wallan Wallan, Victoria. His father was a transported
Belfast convict, and his mother’s family included several thieves.
As boys he and his brothers were constantly in trouble for horse-stealing,
and “Ned” served three years’ imprisonment for this
offence. In April 1878, an attempt was made to arrest his brother
Daniel on a similar charge. The whole Kelly family resisted this
and Ned wounded one of the constables. Mrs Kelly and some of
the others were captured, but Ned and Daniel escaped to the hills,
where they were joined by two other desperadoes, Byrne and
Hart. For two years, despite a reward of £8000 offered jointly
by the governments of Victoria and New South Wales for their
arrest, the gang under the leadership of Kelly terrorized the
country on the borderland of Victoria and New South Wales,
“holding up” towns and plundering banks. Their intimate
knowledge of the district, full of convenient hiding-places, and
their elaborate system of well-paid spies, ensured the direct
pecuniary interest of many persons and contributed to their
long immunity from capture. They never ill-treated a woman,
nor preyed upon the poor, thus surrounding themselves with an
attractive atmosphere of romance. In June 1880, however,
they were at last tracked to a wooden shanty at Glenrowan,
near Benalla, which the police surrounded, riddled with bullets,
and finally set on fire. Kelly himself, who was outside, could, he
claimed, easily have escaped had he not refused to desert his
companions, all of whom were killed. He was severely wounded,
captured and taken to Beechworth, where he was tried, convicted
and hanged in October 1880. The total cost of the
capture of the Kelly gang was reckoned at £115,000.
See F. A. Hare, The Last of the Bushrangers (London, 1892).
KELLY, SIR FITZROY (1796–1880), English judge, was born
in London in October 1796, the son of a captain in the Royal
Navy. In 1824 he was called to the bar, where he gained a
reputation as a skilled pleader. In 1834 he was made a king’s
counsel. A strong Tory, he was returned as member of parliament
for Ipswich in 1835, but was unseated on petition. In 1837
however he again became member for that town. In 1843 he sat
for Cambridge, and in 1852 was elected member for Harwich,
but, a vacancy suddenly occurring in East Suffolk, he preferred
to contest that seat and was elected. He was solicitor-general in
1845 (when he was knighted), and again in 1852. In 1858–1859
he was attorney-general in Lord Derby’s second administration.
In 1866 he was raised to the bench as chief baron of the exchequer
and made a member of the Privy Council. He died at Brighton
on the 18th of September 1880.
See E. Foss, Lives of the Judges (1870).
KELLY, HUGH (1739–1777), Irish dramatist and poet, son of
a Dublin publican, was born in 1739 at Killarney. He was
apprenticed to a staymaker, and in 1760 went to London. Here
he worked at his trade for some time, and then became an
attorney’s clerk. He contributed to various newspapers, and
wrote pamphlets for the booksellers. In 1767 he published
Memoirs of a Magdalen, or the History of Louisa Mildmay (2 vols.),
a novel which obtained considerable success. In 1766 he published
anonymously Thespis; or, A Critical Examination into the Merits
of All the Principal Performers belonging to Drury Lane Theatre,
a poem in the heroic couplet containing violent attacks on the
principal contemporary actors and actresses. The poem opens
with a panegyric on David Garrick, however, and bestows
foolish praise on friends of the writer. This satire was partly
inspired by Churchill’s Rosciad, but its criticism is obviously
dictated chiefly by personal prejudice. In 1767 he produced a
second part, less scurrilous in tone, dealing with the Covent
Garden actors. His first comedy, False Delicacy, written in
prose, was produced by Garrick at Drury Lane on the 23rd of
January 1768, with the intention of rivalling Oliver Goldsmith’s
Good-Natured Man. It is a moral and sentimental comedy,
described by Garrick in the prologue as a sermon preached in acts.
Although Samuel Johnson described it as “totally void of character,”
it was very popular and had a great sale. In French and
Portuguese versions it drew crowded houses in Paris and Lisbon.
Kelly was a journalist in the pay of Lord North, and therefore
hated by the party of John Wilkes, especially as being the editor
of the Public Ledger. His Thespis had also made him many
enemies; and Mrs Clive refused to act in his pieces. The production
of his second comedy, A Word to the Wise (Drury Lane,
3rd of March 1770), occasioned a riot in the theatre, repeated at
the second performance, and the piece had to be abandoned. His
other plays are: Clementina (Covent Garden, 23rd of February
1771), a blank verse tragedy, given out to be the work of a “young
American Clergyman” in order to escape the opposition of the
Wilkites; The School for Wives (Drury Lane, 11th of December
1773), a prose comedy given out as the work of Major (afterwards
Sir William) Addington; a two-act piece, The Romance of an Hour
(Covent Garden, 2nd of December 1774), borrowed from Marmontel’s
tale L’Amitié à l’épreuve; and an unsuccessful comedy,
The Man of Reason (Covent Garden, 9th of February 1776).
He was called to the bar at the Middle Temple in 1774, and
determined to give up literature. He failed in his new profession and died in poverty on the 3rd of February 1777.
See The Works of Hugh Kelly, to which is prefixed the Life of the Author (1778); Genest, History of the Stage (v. 163, 263–269, 308, 399, 457, 517). Pamphlets in reply to Thespis are: “Anti-Thespis . . .” (1767); “The Kellyad . . .” (1767), by Louis Stamma; and “The Rescue or Thespian Scourge . . .” (1767), by John Brown-Smith.
KELLY, MICHAEL (1762–1826), British actor, singer and
composer, was the son of a Dublin wine-merchant and dancing-master.
He had a musical education at home and in Italy, and
for four years from 1783 was engaged to sing at the Court Theatre
at Vienna, where he became a friend of Mozart. In 1786 he sang
in the first performance of the Nozze di Figaro. Appearing in
London, at Drury Lane in 1787, he had a great success, and
thenceforth was the principal English tenor at that theatre. In
1793 he became acting-manager of the King’s Theatre, and he
was in great request at concerts. He wrote a number of songs
(including “The Woodpecker”), and the music for many dramatic
pieces, now fallen into oblivion. In 1826 he published his entertaining
Reminiscences, in writing which he was helped by Theodore
Hook. He combined his professional work with conducting
a music-shop and a wine-shop, but with disastrous financial
results. He died at Margate on the 9th of October 1826.
KELP (in M.E. culp or culpe, of unknown origin; the Fr.
equivalent is varech), the ash produced by the incineration of
various kinds of sea-weed (Algae) obtainable in great abundance
on the west coasts of Ireland and Scotland, and the coast of
Brittany. It is prepared from the deep-sea tangle (Laminaria
digitata), sugar wrack (L. saccharina), knobbed wrack (Fucus
nodosus), black wrack (F. serratus), and bladder wrack (F. vesiculosus).
The Laminarias yield what is termed “drift-weed kelp,”
obtainable only when cast up on the coasts by storms or other
causes. The species of Fucus growing within the tidal range
are cut from the rocks at low water, and are therefore known as
“cut-weeds.” The weeds are first dried in the sun and are then
collected into shallow pits and burned till they form a fused
mass, which while still hot is sprinkled with water to break it up
into convenient pieces. A ton of kelp is obtained from 20 to 22
tons of wet sea-weed. The average composition may vary as
follows: potassium sulphate, 10 to 12%; potassium chloride,
20 to 25%; sodium carbonate, 5%; other sodium and magnesium
salts, 15 to 20%; and insoluble ash from 40 to 50%.
The relative richness in iodine of different samples varies
largely, good drift kelp yielding as much as 10 to 15 ℔ per ton
of 2212 cwts., whilst cut-weed kelp will not give more than 3 to
