of January 1820. In 1818 the duke married Maria Louisa Victoria (1786–1861), widow of Emich Charles, prince of Leiningen (d. 1814), and sister of Leopold I., king of the Belgians; and his only child was Queen Victoria (q.v.).
KENT, JAMES (1763–1847), American jurist, was born at Philippi in New York State on the 31st of July 1763. He graduated at Yale College in 1781, and began to practise law at Poughkeepsie, in 1785 as an attorney, and in 1787 at the bar. In 1791 and 1702–93 Kent was a representative of Dutchess county in the state Assembly. In 1793 he removed to New York, where Governor Jay, to whom the young lawyer’s Federalist sympathies were a strong recommendation, appointed him a master in chancery for the city. He was professor of law in Columbia College in 1793–98 and again served in the Assembly in 1796–97. In 1797 he became recorder of New York, in 1798 judge of the supreme court of the state, in 1804 chief justice, and in 1814 chancellor of New York. In 1822 he became a member of the convention to revise the state constitution. Next year, Chancellor Kent resigned his office and was re-elected to his former chair. Out of the lectures he now delivered grew the Commentaries on American Law (4 vols., 1826–1830), which by their learning, range and lucidity of style won for him a high and permanent place in the estimation of both English and American jurists. Kent rendered most essential service to American jurisprudence while serving as chancellor. Chancery law had been very unpopular during the colonial period, and had received little development, and no decisions had been published. His judgments of this class (see Johnson’s Chancery Reports, 7 vols., 1816–1824) cover a wide range of topics, and are so thoroughly considered and developed as unquestionably to form the basis of American equity jurisprudence. Kent was a man of great purity of character and of singular simplicity and guilelessness. He died in New York on the 12th of December 1847.
To Kent we owe several other works (including a Commentary on International Law) of less importance than the Commentaries. See J. Duer’s Discourse on the Life, Character and Public Services of James Kent (1848); The National Portrait Gallery of Distinguished Americans, vol. ii. (1852); W. Kent, Memoirs and Letters of Chancellor Kent (Boston, 1898).
KENT, WILLIAM (1685–1748), English “painter, architect, and the father of modern gardening,” as Horace Walpole in his Anecdotes of Painting describes him, was born in Yorkshire in 1685. Apprenticed to a coach-painter, his ambition soon led him to London, where he began life as a portrait and historical painter. He found patrons, who sent him in 1710 to study in Italy; and at Rome he made other friends, among them Lord Burlington, with whom he returned to England in 1719. Under that nobleman’s roof Kent chiefly resided till his death on the 12th of April 1748—obtaining abundant commissions in all departments of his art, as well as various court appointments which brought him an income of £600 a year. Walpole says that Kent was below mediocrity in painting. He had some little taste and skill in architecture, of which Holkham palace is perhaps the most favourable example. The mediocre statue of Shakespeare in Westminster Abbey sufficiently stamps his powers as a sculptor. His merit in landscape gardening is greater. In Walpole’s language, Kent “was painter enough to taste the charms of landscape, bold and opinionative enough to dare and to dictate, and born with a genius to strike out a great system from the twilight of imperfect essays.” In short, he was the first in English gardening to vindicate the natural against the artificial. Banishing all the clipped monstrosities of the topiary art in yew, box or holly, releasing the streams from the conventional canal and marble basin, and rejecting the mathematical symmetry of ground plan then in vogue for gardens, Kent endeavoured to imitate the variety of nature, with due regard to the principles of light and shade and perspective. Sometimes he carried his imitation too far, as when he planted dead trees in Kensington gardens to give a greater air of truth to the scene, though he himself was one of the first to detect the folly of such an extreme. Kent’s plans were designed rather with a view to immediate effect over a comparatively small area than with regard to any broader or subsequent results.
KENT, one of the kingdoms of Anglo-Saxon Britain, the dimensions of which seem to have corresponded with those of the present county (see below). According to tradition it was the first part of the country occupied by the invaders, its founders, Hengest and Horsa, having been employed by the British king Vortigern against the Picts and Scots. Their landing, according to English tradition, took place between 450–455, though in the Welsh accounts the Saxons are said to have arrived in 428 (cf. Hist. Britt. 66). According to The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which probably used some lost list of Kentish kings, Hengest reigned 455–488, and was succeeded by his son Aesc (Oisc), who reigned till 512; but little value can be attached to these dates. Documentary history begins with Aethelberht, the great-grandson of Aesc, who reigned probably 560–616. He married Berhta, daughter of the Frankish king Haribert, or Charibert, an event which no doubt was partly responsible for the success of the mission of Augustine, who landed in 597. Aethelberht was at this time supreme over all the English kings south of the Humber. On his death in 616 he was succeeded by his son Eadbald, who renounced Christianity and married his stepmother, but was shortly afterwards converted by Laurentius, the successor of Augustine. Eadbald was succeeded in 640 by his son Erconberht, who enforced the acceptance of Christianity throughout his kingdom, and was succeeded in 664 by his son Ecgbert, the latter again by his brother Hlothhere in 673. The early part of Hlothhere’s reign was disturbed by an invasion of Aethelred of Mercia. He issued a code of laws, which is still extant, together with his nephew Eadric, the son of Ecgbert, but in 685 a quarrel broke out between them in which Eadric called in the South Saxons. Hlothhere died of his wounds, and was succeeded by Eadric, who, however, reigned under two years.
The death of Eadric was followed by a disturbed period, in which Kent was under kings whom Bede calls “dubii vel externi.” An unsuccessful attempt at conquest seems to have been made by the West Saxons, one of whose princes, Mul, brother of Ceadwalla, is said to have been killed in 687. There is some evidence for a successful invasion by the East Saxon king Sigehere during the same year. A king named Oswine, who apparently belonged to the native dynasty, seems to have obtained part of the kingdom in 688. The other part came in 689 into the hands of Swefheard, probably a son of the East Saxon king Sebbe. Wihtred, a son of Ecgbert, succeeded Oswine about 690, and obtained possession of the whole kingdom before 694. From him also we have a code of laws. At Wihtred’s death in 725 the kingdom was divided between his sons Aethelberht, Eadberht and Alric, the last of whom appears to have died soon afterwards. Aethelberht reigned till 762; Eadberht, according to the Chronicle, died in 748, but some doubtful charters speak of him as alive in 761–762. Eadberht was succeeded by his son Eardwulf, and he again by Eanmund, while Aethelberht was succeeded by a king named Sigered. From 764–779 we find a king named Ecgbert, who in the early part of his reign had a colleague named Heaberht. At this period Kentish history is very obscure. Another king named Aethelberht appears in 781, and a king Ealhmund in 784, but there is some reason for suspecting that Offa annexed Kent about this time. On his death (796) Eadberht Praen made himself king, but in 798 he was defeated and captured by Coenwulf, who made his own brother Cuthred king in his place. On Cuthred’s death in 807 Coenwulf seems to have kept Kent in his own possession. His successors Ceolwulf and Beornwulf likewise appear to have held Kent, but in 825 we hear of a king Baldred who was expelled by Ecgbert king of Wessex. Under the West Saxon dynasty Kent, together with Essex, Sussex and Surrey, was sometimes given as a dependent kingdom to one of the royal family. During Ecgbert’s reign it was entrusted to his son Aethelwulf, on whose accession to the throne of Wessex, in 839, it was given to Aethelstan, probably his son, who lived at least till 851. From 855 to 860 it was governed by Aethelberht son of Aethelwulf. During the last years of Alfred’s reign it seems to have been entrusted by him to his son Edward. Throughout the 9th century we hear also of two earls, whose spheres of authority may have corresponded to those of the two
