Background
He was born at Dover on 10 August 1660. The son of Basil Kennett, M. A. , rector of Dimchurch and vicar of Postling, Kent, by his wife Mary, eldest daughter of Thomas White, a wealthy magistrate and master-shipwright of Dover.
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He was born at Dover on 10 August 1660. The son of Basil Kennett, M. A. , rector of Dimchurch and vicar of Postling, Kent, by his wife Mary, eldest daughter of Thomas White, a wealthy magistrate and master-shipwright of Dover.
He was educated at Westminster school and at St Edmund's Hall, Oxford, where, while an undergraduate began to write.
While at university he published several translations of Latin works, including Erasmus In Praise of Folly. In 1685 he became vicar of Ambrosden, Oxfordshire. 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. 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 first duke of Devonshire he was in 1707 recommended to the deanery of Peterborough. He afterwards joined the Low Church party, strenuously opposed the Sacheverel 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 the king, secured for him in 1718 the bishopric of Peterborough.
Kennett published in 1698 an edition of Sir Henry Spelman's History of Sacrilege, and he was the author of fifty-seven printed works, chiefly tracts and sermons. He wrote the third volume (Charles I. Anne) of the composite Compleat History of England (1706), and a more detailed and valuable Register and Chronicle of the Restoration. The Life of Bishop White Kennett, by the Rev. William Newton (anonymous), appeared in 1730.
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Kennett's political views were quickly modified by dislike of the ecclesiastical policy of James II. He preached a series of discourses against "popery", refused to read the 'Declaration for Liberty of Conscience' in 1688. Subsequently, Kennett openly supported the cause of the revolution.
His biographer, the Rev. William Newton, admits that his zeal as a whig partisan sometimes carried him to extremes, but he was very charitable, and displayed great moderation in his relations with the dissenters.
He married first, in 1693, Sarah, only daughter of Robert and Mary Carver of Bicester (she died on 2 March 1693–4); secondly, in 1695, Sarah, sister of Richard Smith, M. D. , of London and Aylesbury (she died in August 1702); thirdly, in 1703, Dorcas, daughter of Thomas Fuller and widow of Clopton Havers, M. D. (she died 9 July 1743). His second wife bore him a son, White Kennett, rector of Burton-le-Coggles, Lincolnshire, and prebendary of Peterborough, Lincoln; and a daughter Sarah, who married John Newman of Shottesbrook.