Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 31.djvu/29

 in pamphlet form. He died of apoplexy at Fulham, Middlesex, 10 Oct. 1810.

Another (fl. 1730), scholar, born at Weedon, Northamptonshire, was educated at Eton and King's College, Cambridge. He proceeded B.A. 1729, A.M. 1733, and became a fellow of King's College. In 1744 he was for a time deranged, but recovered, and in 1748 was head-master of Wisbech school, and afterwards curate of Kersey in Suffolk. While at Cambridge he published ‘Excerpta quædam ex Luciani Samosatensis Operibus. In usum Tyronum,’ Cambridge, 1730, 8vo. Latin notes and a Latin version accompanied the text. The work was several times reprinted in London; the third edition ‘prioribus auctior et emendatior’ appeared in 1757; another ed. 1788.

 KENT, ODO (d. 1200), abbot of Battle. [See .]

KENT, THOMAS (d. 1489), mathematician, was elected fellow of Merton College, Oxford, in 1480. According to Tanner and Pits, he had no small reputation as an astronomer and mathematician, and issued predictions as to the severe winter and famine of 1490. He died, however, of the plague 7 Sept. 1489, and was buried in the Merton burying-ground. He is said to have written a treatise on astronomy, but if he did so it has perished.

Another (fl. 1460) was clerk to the privy council. He graduated as a doctor of civil and canon law, probably at Cambridge, and was clerk to the privy council as early as 1444. His name consequently appears at the foot of many acts of the privy council (cf., Proceedings of the Privy Council, vi. 31, 37, 38, &c.; , Letters and Papers illustrative of the Wars of the English in France during the Reign of Henry VI, i. 490, 493, &c.; for his signature see Brit. Mus. Cotton. MS. Galba, B. I. 151). Kent was frequently employed as an ambassador to various countries. On 4 July 1444 he was appointed, with Sir Humfrey Stafford, William Pyrton, and William Cotesbroke, to treat for commercial intercourse with Holland and Zealand (, Fœdera, xi. 67). On 20 July 1459 he was one of several commissioners, among whom was the Bishop of Durham, to treat with the king of Scotland about a truce (ib. xi. 424); his last embassy seems to have been entered upon 20 Sept. 1467, when he made arrangements for the marriage of Charles the Bold with Margaret, sister of Edward IV (ib. p. 390). His salary when on an embassy seems to have been 20s. a day (ib. p. 504). Meanwhile, on 7 Jan. 1444–5, he had been appointed sub-constable of England, at a salary of one hundred marks a year from the customs of Southampton (ib. p. 75). A Thomas Kent, who may have been the same as the ambassador, resigned the rectory of St. Dunstan-in-the-East, London, in 1443, and was presented to the rectory of Woodford, Essex, 22 Aug. 1458.

 KENT, WILLIAM (1684–1748), painter, sculptor, architect, and landscape gardener, was born in the North Riding of Yorkshire in 1684, and was apprenticed to a coach-painter in his fourteenth year. Five years afterwards he left his employer without leave and came to London. There he made some attempts at portrait and historical painting, which, says Walpole, induced some ‘gentlemen of his country’ (county?) to send him to Rome. He went to Rome in company with John Talman [q. v.], the first director of the Society of Antiquaries, studied under the Cavalier Luti, and gained a second prize in the second class at the academy. At Rome also he met with other patrons. Sir William Wentworth allowed him 40l. a year for seven years, and in 1716 he attracted the notice of the Earl of Burlington [see, third ], who brought him to England with him, and gave him apartments in his town house for the remainder of his life. Through the influence of the earl he soon obtained extensive employment in portrait-painting, and covered the walls and ceilings in the houses of the aristocracy with historical and allegorical subjects. Among the works mentioned by Horace Walpole are ‘full-lengths’ (for the Right Hon. Henry Pelham [q. v.]) at Esher, Surrey; frescoes in the hall at Wanstead House (now destroyed), Essex; ceilings and staircases for Sir Robert Walpole at Houghton, Norfolk; and a staircase at Rainham, Norfolk, for Lord Townshend. But his talents did not lie in this direction. Hogarth's verdict, that neither England nor Italy ever produced a