Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 07.pdf/180

 The

Vol. VII.

No. 4.

Green

BOSTON.

Bag.

April, 1895.

CHANCELLOR JAMES KENT. By Charle S. Martin. THERE are three men whose names are the most illustrious and enduring in the judicial history of the United States. One is John Marshall, the masterly Chief Justice, whose penetrating analysis made clear the principles of law and their just and logical applicability to the affairs of men, and whose creative mind expounded the Constitution of our country in such a way as to place it on a foundation which has never since been shaken; another is Joseph Story, the scholar of profound and varied attainments, the able, fluent, and graceful legal writer; while the triangle is completed by the name of one in whom the salient qualities of these two were remarkably com bined, and whose biography has yet to be written : James Kent, the subject of this sketch. He was born on the 31st day of July, 1763, at Fredericksburgh, Dutchess County, in the state of New York. The genealogy of the Kent family is easily traced in this country to Richard Kent, who sailed from London, England, on March 26, 1633, in the *' Mary and John" of London, and set tled in the neighborhood of Boston. The Chancellor's reference to his ancestry is as follows : " My paternal grandfather, Elisha Kent, was the son of a farmer in Suffield, Conn., was graduated at Yale College in 1728, married a daughter of Rev. M. Moss of Darby, Conn., preached some time at Newtown, and then settled in the south east part of Dutchess County in this state. His parish grew, and was afterwards known as Kent's parish.

"My father, Moss Kent, was his eldest son, was graduated from Yale College in 1752, admitted about 1756 to the bar as an attorney in Dutchess County Court. I was sent to Norwalk to school at about the age of five years." In 1773 he was sent to Danbury to a Latin school under the tuition of Rev. Ebenezer Baldwin, remained there until 1776, and entered Yale the following year. He records in his memoranda, that the four years' residence at New Haven College were distinguished by nothing material in the memoranda of his life. " I had the rep utation of being quick to learn," he con tinues, " and of being industrious and full of emulation. I left New Haven, clothed with college honors, and a very promising reputation, but the learning at that day was contemptible. My favorite studies were geography, history, belles lettres, etc. "When the college was broken up and dispersed in July, 1779, by the British, I retired to a country village, and finding Blackstone's Commentaries, I read the four volumes. Part of the work struck my taste, and the work inspired me at the age of fif teen with awe, and I fondly determined to be a lawyer." At the time Kent was graduated, the Col lege staff consisted of the President, one pro fessor, and three tutors, and the diary of President Stiles shows that young Kent had the most honorable appointment. In November, 1781, he began the sys tematic study of law in the office of Egbert Benson, then Attorney-General, at