40 K E N K E N
the cathedrals of Rochester and Canterbury, the churches of special interest are those of Darenth, partly Old English; Lyminge, of very great antiquity; Barfreston, a small but unique specimen of enriched Late Norman work; Patricksbonrne, a very beautiful example of Norman; Sb Margarets-at-Cliffe, with many portions of very rich Norman, the west doorway being one of the finest examples of Norman work in England; New Romney, with the finest Norman tower in Kent; Folkestone, Early English, with some portions almost Norman; St Martin's Church, Canterbury; Brabourne, with some singular Norman work, and possessing several brasses; St Clement's, Sandwich, partly Early English, with enriched Norman tower; Minster in Sheppey, Norman and Early English, with brass of date about 1330; Minster in Thanet, Norman tower and nave, with Early English chancel; Lydd, partly Early English and possessing several brasses; Cobham, Early English, with the finest collection of brasses in England; Hythe, with plain exterior, but possessing a chancel whose interior is one of the finest specimens of Early English work extant; Stone, Early English to Decorated, and in style resembling Lincoln cathedral; Chartham, a fine specimen of the Decorated, and possessing several brasses, one of the date 1306; Ashford, Decorated and Perpendicular, with brass of 1375, and one of the finest towers in Kent.
The principal secular buildings of interest, in addition to the Roman ruins already referred to, are the Norman keeps of Malling, Canterbury, Rochester, Dover, Chilham, and Tunbridge; the castles of Sandown, Deal, and Walmer, built by Henry VIII. for defensive purposes; Hever Castle, the seat of the Boleyns, and the scene of the courtship of Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII.; Allington Castle near Maidstone, the birthplace of Sir Thomas Wyatt; the banquetting hall and gateway of the Royal Palace at Eltham; the castellated mansion of Leeds Castle near Maidstone; Penshurst Castle, the seat of the Sidneys; Knole House near Sevenoaks, formerly one of the palaces attached to the archbishopric of Canterbury, and once the seat of the dukes of Dorset, now of Lord Sackville; the Mote, at Ightham; and Cobham Hall.
A full account of the geology of Kent is comprehended in Topleyös Geology of the Weald, and Whitaker's Geology of the London Basin, forming part of the memoirs of the Geological Survey of the United Kingdom. Among the more ancient books on Kent are Lambard's Perambulation, written in 1570, 1st ed. 1576, latest 1826; Kilburne's Brief Survey, 1657; and Philipot's Villare Cantianum, 1659. The principal histories are those of Harris (1719), Hasted (1778-99), Seymour (1776), Henshall (1798), Ireland (1828-30), Collings (1834), and Dunkin (1856-77). Among the many works treating oil Kentish antiquities may be men tioned Somner, Treatise on the Roman Ports and Farts of Kent, 1693; Nichols, Antiquities in Kent, 1782-80; Parsons, Monuments of Kent, 1794; Sandys, Con- xuetudines Kancix, 1851; Hussey, Notes on the Churches of Kent, 1852; F. H. Appach, C. J. Cæsar's British Expeditions from Boulogne to the Bay of Apuldore, 1868; Larking, Facsimile of Domesday Book relating to Kent, 1869; Furley, A History of the Weald of Kent, 1871-74; Scott-Robertson, Kentish Archæology, 1877-81; Glynne, Notes on Churches of Kent, 1877. Sec also Frost, In Kent with Charles Dickens, 1880. A very full bibliography of works relating to Kent and its several towns is given in Smith's Bibliotheca Cantiana, 1837; see also Anderson's British Topography, 1881. The Archæologia Cantiana, a periodical publication of the Kent Archaeological Society, contains accounts of the latest antiquarian discoveries.
KENT, JAMES (1763-1847), American jurist, was born at Philippi in New York State, July 31, 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 1790 and 1792 Kent was chosen to represent Dutchess county in the State legislature. In 1793 he remove! to New York, where Governor Jay, to whom the young lawyer's Federalist sympathies were a strong recom mendation, appointed him a master in chancery for the city. The year 1796 saw Kent again a member of the legislature and professor of law in Columbia College. 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, having attained the age of sixty, 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., 1826-30), which by their learning, range, and lucidity of style, have 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 down to his time but little development, and no decisions had been published. His judgments of this class (see Johnson's Chancery Reports, 7 vols., 1816-24) cover a wide range of topics, and are so thoroughly considered and developed as unquestion
ably to form the basis of American equity jurisprudence. Kent was a man of great purity of character, of singular simplicity and guilelessness in his ways, and is altogether a conspicuous and remarkable figure in American annals. He died in New York, December 12, 1847.
To Kent we owe several other works (including a Commentary on International Law) of less importance than the Commentaries. These have passed through twelve editions, the most recent (1873) being annotated by O. W. Holmes, jun. See Duer's Discourse on the Life, Character, and Public Services of James Kent, 1848; and The National Portrait Gallery of Distinguished Americans, vol. ii. , 1852.
KENT, WILLIAM (1685-1748), "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 was fortunate enough to fall in with kind 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 April 12, 1748, enjoying through his patron's influence abundant commissions in all departments of his art, as well as various court appointments which brought him an income of 600 a year. Walpole flatly 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 stilted 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 strikeout 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 monstrosi ties 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, doubtless from landscape gardening being then but in its infancy.
KENTIGERN, St (c. 516-603), popularly known as St Mungo, the apostle of Strathclyde and the restorer of Christianity among the Cumbrians, was, according to Jocelyn of Furness, the son of "the daughter of a certain king most pagan in his creed who ruled in the northern parts of Britannia." His mother, probably a nun, was, it is said, when with child sentenced to be thrown from one of the precipices of Dunpelder (Traprain Law, formerly Dumpender Law, in Haddington), but miraculously escaping was exposed in a boat to the mercy of the sea and landed on the sand at Culenross (Culross), where she gave birth to the child. On the spot where the boat reached land there was at one time a small chapel dedicated to St Kentigern. According to the tradition, St Servanus (who, however, lived two hundred years after Kentigern) took special care of the mother and child, calling the mother Taneu (Thanew) and the child Kentigern, "head master or lord." Afterwards he also named him, on account of his intelligence and the graces of his character, Munghu
