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White Kennett

English bishop and antiquarian (1660-1728)

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionOct 25, 2025
Entity authorityQ7994942
Source-derived summary

White Kennett (10 August 1660 – 19 December 1728) was an English bishop and antiquarian. He was educated at Westminster School and at St Edmund Hall, Oxford, where, while an undergraduate, he published several translations of Latin works, including Erasmus' In Praise of Folly.

Kennett was vicar of Ambrosden, Oxfordshire from 1685 until 1708. During his incumbency he returned to Oxford as tutor and vice-principal of St Edmund Hall, where he gave considerable impetus to the study of antiquities. George Hickes gave him lessons in Old English. In 1695 he published Parochial Antiquities. In 1700 he became rector of St Botolph's Aldgate, London, and in 1701 Archdeacon of Huntingdon.

For a eulogistic sermon on the recently deceased William Cavendish, 1st Duke of Devonshire, Kennett was in 1707 recommended to the deanery of Peterborough. He afterwards joined the Low Church party, strenuously opposed the Sacheverell movement, and in the Bangorian controversy supported with great zeal and considerable bitterness the side of Bishop Hoadly. His intimacy with Charles Trimnell, bishop of Norwich, who was high in favour with George I of Great Britain, secured for him in 1718 the bishopric of Peterborough.

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“White Kennett” enters the record as english bishop and antiquarian (1660-1728). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what White, Kennett and English can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1660, 1728, 1685, 1708—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1660-08-10. Its strongest next move is a source search built around White, Kennett and English.
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“White Kennett” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, White, Kennett and English provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Oct 25, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q7994942. VIAF identifies the subject as 27095804. The Library of Congress control number is n82207871. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1660, 1728, 1685 and 1708.

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This entry incorporates text from White Kennett” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.