Note 66 — CALAMITIES OF AUTHORS: (continued 2)

Kennett was characterised throughout life by a strong party feeling, which he took care to display on every occasion. He was born at Dover in 1660, and his first publication, at the age of twenty, gave great offence to the Whig party; it was in the form of a letter from a Student at Oxford to a friend in the country, concerning the approaching parliament. He scarcely ever published a sermon without so far mixing party matters in it as to obtain replies and rejoinders; the rector of Whitechapel employed an artist to place his head on Judas’s shoulders in the picture of the Last Supper done for that church, and to make the figure unmistakeable, placed the patch on the forehead which Kennett wore, to conceal a scar he got by the bursting of a gun. His diligence and application through life was extraordinary. He assisted Anthony Wood in collecting materials for his “Athenæ Oxonienses;” and, like Oldys, was continually employed in noting books, or in forming manuscript collections on various subjects, all of which were purchased by the Earl of Shelburne, afterwards Marquis of Lansdowne, and were sold with the rest of his manuscripts to the British Museum. He died in 1714, of a fever he had contracted in a journey to Italy.—Ed.