KENNET, White (1660-1728), bishop of Peterborough, a theological writer and learned antiquarian, was born at Dover in 1660. He was educated at Westminster school and at Oxford, where, while still an undergraduate, he published several translations of Latin works, including Erasmus On Folly, Pliny’s Trajan, and Cornelius Nepos. About the year 1685 he became vicar of Amersden. A few years afterwards he returned to Oxford as tutor and vice-principal of St Edmund’s Hall, where he gave considerable impetus to the study of antiquities. In 1695 he published Parochial Antiquities. In 1700 he resigned the vicarage of Amersden to take charge of the parish of St Botolph, Aidgate, Loudon, and in the following year he was preferred to the archdeaconry of Huntingdon. On account of his eulogistic sermon on the duke of Devonshire he was in 1707 recommended to the deanery of Peterborough. Although he afterwards changed to the Low Church party, strenuously opposed the Sacheverel movement, and in the Bangorian controversy supported with great zeal and considerable bittemess the side of Bishop Hoadly, his intimacy with the bishop of Norwich, who was high in favour with the king, secured him in 1718 promotion to the bishopric of Peterborough. He died at Westminster in September 1728. Kennet published in 1698 an edition of Sir Henry Spelman’s History of Sacrilege, and he was the author of as many as fifty-seven printed works, chiefly tracts and sermons. His principal publication was a Compleat History of England, 3 vola, 1706 (enlarged edition, 3 vola, 1719), chiefly a compilation from other authors, but the part from Charles I. to Queen Anne was written by himself....