OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Keck, Anthony

​KECK, Sir ANTHONY (1630–1695), commissioner of the great seal, fifth son of Nicholas Keck of Old Cowcliffe, Oxfordshire, and Long Marston, Gloucestershire, by Margaret, daughter of John Morris (cf. Harl. MS. 1046, fol. 187), was born at Mickleton, Gloucestershire, in 1630. He was admitted a member of the Inner Temple in 1653, was called to the bar (1659), and was elected a bencher (1677) and autumn reader (1684) of that society. As one of the chief barristers of the court of chancery he was named on 4 March 1688–9 second commissioner of the great seal. Sir John Maynard and Mr. Serjeant Rawlinson were the other two. The next day he was sworn in and knighted. He held office till 14 May 1690; when Maynard was dismissed Keck retired. He was chosen M.P. for Tiverton in 1691, and died in Bell Yard, Chancery Lane, in December 1695. Roger North describes him as ‘a person that had raised himself by his wits, and, bating some hardness in his character, which might be ascribed to his disease, the gout, he was a man of a polite merry genius.’ He believed the best form of government was ‘a republic, or, which was the same thing, a king always in check.’ He married Mary (d. 21 Sept. 1702), daughter of Francis Thorne, by whom he had seven daughters and a son, Francis.
In 1697 there was published anonymously ‘Cases argued and decreed in the High Court of Chancery from the 12th year of King Charles II to the 31st.’ A manuscript note in the British Museum copy of the work says that Ward, chief baron of the exchequer, quoted the reports as Keck's in 1709, and ​there seems no doubt that they were compiled from his papers (Wallace, The Reporters, pp. 296 et seq.). Among the manuscripts of the Earl of Ashburnham are two volumes of reports of chancery cases from the reign of Charles I to that of William III (Hist. MSS. Comm. 8th Rep. App. pt. iii. p. 23).
[Le Neve's Pedigrees of Knights (Harl. Soc.), p. 418; Luttrell's Relation, i. 506, ii. 52, 217, iii. 567, v. 217; Masters of the Inner Temple, 1883; Foss's Judges; Campbell's Chancellors, iv. 3; North's Lives, ed. Jessopp, iii. 169.]
F. W-t.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Keble, Richard

​KEBLE, KEEBLE, or KEBBEL, RICHARD (fl. 1650), judge, was of an old family settled at Newton in Suffolk. He was admitted a member of Gray's Inn 7 Aug. 1609, called to the bar 14 July 1614, and became on ancient of the inn in 1632 and Lent reader in 1639. He first appears in reported cases in Croke's 'Reports' in 1636. Parliament appointed him a judge in Wales in March 1647, and he became a serjeant in 1648. In 1651 presided at the trials of Colonel Lilburne, Christopher Love, and John Gibbons. An opponent calls him 'an insolent, mercenary pettifogger,' who without jury or evidence sent to the gallows any he suspected of royalism (Life of Dr. Join Barwick, p. 153). After the execution of Charles I he had been appointed the junior of the three commissioners who had the custody of the great seal. Echard (History of England, ed. 1718, ii. 652) speaks of him as being then a man of 'little practical experience.' From this office he was removed in April 1654. His salary was irregularly paid, and his petition for payment of what was owing, part of which amounted to one thousand guineas, was presented in 1655, and still disregarded in 1658 (Whitelocke, Memorials, pp. 240, 342, 380; Blomefield, Norfolk, i. 396; Public Record Commission, 5th Rep. App. ii. 271; Green, Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1655- 1668). At the Restoration he was excepted ​out of the Act of Indemnity. The date at his death, as of his birth, is unknown. His son Joseph is noticed separately.
[Foss's Judges of England; State Trials, iv. 1269, v. 49, 268; Gray's Inn Books; Wood's Athenae, iv. 575; Parl. Hist. iv. 70.]
J. A. H.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Gascoigne, Richard (d.1716)

​GASCOIGNE, RICHARD (d. 1716), Jacobite, was born in Ireland and descended from a good Roman catholic family. His grandfather was killed in fighting for Charles I, and his father fell in the service of James II at the siege of Limerick. On coming into an estate of the value of 200l. a year, he converted it into money and came up to London, where he speedily dissipated his fortune and was reduced to very low circumstances. He recovered his position, however, by his skill and luck at games of cards and dice, and was taken up by the leaders of the tory party, who entrusted him with the management of their affairs at Bath. He was there when the rebellion broke out in 1715, and hearing that his arrest had been ordered, he set out with such forces as he could gather together to join the army at Preston. He proclaimed the Pretender king at the principal towns he passed through on his northern march, and arrived at Preston only in time to be taken prisoner. He was brought up to Newgate with the other leaders, and was put on his trial for high treason. He pleaded ‘not guilty,’ but it was proved that some chests of arms which had been seized at Bath were purchased abroad by him, and he was sentenced to death. He was hanged at Tyburn, 25 May 1716, and ‘died with the greatest unconcernedness of any of the unfortunate rebels’ (Patten, Hist. of the Rebellion). In a paper which he handed to the sheriff on the scaffold, he declared that he was never in his life an agent nor employed by any person in any political design, and he denied all knowledge of the arms that were seized. He further said that he did not take up arms with any view of restoring the catholic religion, but solely on behalf of his lawful king James III. After his death a letter which he had written to a friend the night before his execution was printed.
A. V.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Gascoigne, William (1612?-1644)

​GASCOIGNE, WILLIAM (1612?–1644), inventor of the micrometer, son of Henry Gascoigne, esq., of Thorpe-on-the-Hill, in the parish of Rothwell, near Leeds, Yorkshire, by his first wife, Margaret Jane, daughter of William Cartwright, was born not later than 1612. He resided with his father at Middleton, near Leeds, and acquired a remarkable knowledge of astronomy. Charles Townley, writing to Ralph Thoresby 16 Jan. 1698–9, mentions that Gascoigne was a correspondent of Jeremiah Horrocks and William Crabtree, and adds: ‘It is to the mutual correspondence of this triumvirate that we owe the letters my brother Townley has of theirs, de re Astronomica. They are many and intricate, and he thinks not to be made use of, without particular hints or instructions from himself’ (Correspondence of Thoresby, i. 352). Gascoigne fell on the royalist side at the battle of Marston Moor on 2 July 1644. Aubrey's erroneous assertion (Lives of Eminent Men, p. 355), that at the time of his death he was ‘about the age of 24 or 25 at most,’ has been frequently repeated. Gascoigne left the manuscript of a treatise on optics ready for the press.
He invented methods of grinding glasses, and Sir Edward Sherburne states that he was the first who used two convex glasses in the telescope. When in 1666 Auzout announced his invention of the micrometer, Richard Townley, nephew of Christopher, presented Hook with a modification by himself of a similar instrument made by Gascoigne. A letter written by Crabtree to Horrocks in 1639 shows that Crabtree had seen Gascoigne use an instrument of the kind (Sherburne, Catalogue of Astronomers, pp. 92, 114). The instrument appears to have originally consisted either of two parallel wires or of two plates of metal placed in the focus of the eye-glass of a telescope, and capable of being moved so that the image of an object could be exactly comprehended between them. A scale served for the measurement of the angle subtended by the interval, and Gascoigne is said to have used this instrument for the purpose of measuring the diameters of the moon and planets, and also for determining the magnitudes or distances of terrestrial objects.
It is now generally admitted that Gascoigne was the original inventor of the wire micrometer, of its application to the telescope, and of the application of the telescope to the quadrant; though the invention was never promulgated, even in England, until the undoubtedly independent inventions of Auzout and Picard suggested its publication.
T. C.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Gascoigne, John

​GASCOIGNE, JOHN (fl. 1381), doctor of canon law at Oxford, was possibly the ‘Jo. Gascoigne, cler.’ who is named in a seventeenth-century pedigree (Thoresby, Duc. Leod. p. 177) as brother to Sir William Gascoigne [q. v.], the chief justice, and to Richard ​Gascoigne of Hunslet, who is said to have been father of Thomas [q. v.], afterwards chancellor of the university of Oxford. John Gascoigne was a member of that university and became a doctor of canon law, in which capacity he was called to give evidence before a commission of five bishops, appointed 20 June 1376 to examine into certain controversies between the masters of arts and the faculty of law at Oxford (Rymer, Fœdera, vii. 112; Wood, History and Antiquities of the University of Oxford, i. 488, ed. Gutch). In 1381 he appears among the signatories of the judgment of William Berton, chancellor of the university, condemning the doctrine of Wycliffe touching the sacrament (Fasc. Ziz. 113, ed. Shirley). Possibly on the strength of this, for there is no further available evidence, Pits (De Angliæ Scriptoribus, p. 540), credits him with the authorship of a book ‘Contra Wiclevum.’ There has also been assigned to him a life of St. Jerome, which is really the work of Thomas Gascoigne [q. v.], and a ‘Lectura de Officio et Potestate Delegati,’ of which a copy was once to be found in the royal library (then at Westminster), but is no longer identifiable.
R. L. P.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Kent, Victoria Mary Louisa

Princess Victoria in the ODNB.
​KENT, VICTORIA MARY LOUISA, Duchess of (1786–1861), fourth daughter of Francis Frederic Antony, hereditary prince (afterwards duke) of Saxe-Saalfeld-Coburg, by Augusta Carolina Sophia, daughter of Henry, count Reuss-Eberstadt, was born at Coburg on 17 Aug. 1786, and married on 21 Dec. 1803 to Emich Charles, hereditary prince, afterwards prince of Leiningen-Dachsburg-Hardenburg, a widower twenty-three years her senior. The marriage was happy, and on the death of the prince (4 July 1814) he left his widow guardian of their only son, Charles Frederick William Ernest (1804–1856), and regent of the principality. Her ​only other child by the prince was Anne Feodorowna Augusta Charlotte Wilhelmina (1807–1872), who resided with her mother till her marriage on 18 Feb. 1828 to Ernest Christian Charles, prince of Hohenlohe-Langenburg.
Princess Victoria Mary married in 1818 a second husband, Edward Augustus, duke of Kent [q. v.], fourth son of George III. The marriage ceremony took place at Coburg on 29 May, and was repeated at Kew on 13 July. By the Duke of Kent she had an only daughter, Alexandrina Victoria, queen of England. On the duke's death on 23 Jan. 1820 the duchess was in straitened circumstances, having only a jointure of 6,000l. and an allowance of 3,000l. made her by her brother Leopold. In 1825, however, parliament voted her an annuity of 6,000l. towards the support and education of her daughter Victoria, and a further annuity of 10,000l. was granted her in 1831. In the previous year she had been appointed regent of the realm in the event of her daughter succeeding to the throne while yet a minor. She resided at Kensington Palace, devoting herself to the education of her daughter, and during the reign of George IV saw little society; but as the Princess Victoria grew up she took her from time to time to visit most of the places of interest in England, and gathered round her at Kensington a small highly intellectual coterie. She regretted the princess's accession to the throne in 1837 as depriving her of her one interest and occupation. Thenceforward she accompanied the court on its periodical migrations.
She died of cancer at Frogmore on 16 March 1861, and was buried in St. George's Chapel, Windsor on 25 March, whence her remains were transferred to the Frogmore mausoleum.
[Almanach de Gotha for 1790, 1805–6, 1817, 1829; Commons' Journals, lxxx. 471, lxxxvi. pt. ii. p. 727; Duke of Buckingham's Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of William IV and Victoria, ii. 23; Greville Memoirs, 1837–52, i. 15; Gent. Mag. 1861, pt. i. p. 456; Sir Theodore Martin's Life of the Prince Consort.]
J. M. R.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Kent, Nathaniel

​KENT, NATHANIEL (1737–1810), land valuer and agriculturist, born in 1737, was first employed in the diplomatic service as secretary to Sir James Porter at Brussels. During his stay there he set himself to study the husbandry of the Austrian Netherlands, which was at that time held to be the best in Europe. Some of Kent's letters to Sir James Porter dated 1765 and 1766 are in Brit. Mus. MS. Egerton 2157. Returning to England in 1766, he drew up an account of Flemish husbandry at the request of Sir John Cust, speaker of the House of Commons, and was persuaded by him to quit diplomacy and devote himself to agriculture. He shortly afterwards made the valuable acquaintance of Benjamin Stillingfleet [q. v.] the naturalist. Kent published in 1775 ‘Hints to Gentlemen of Landed Property,’ London, 8vo (3rd edit. 1793), containing, among other valuable suggestions, some designs for labourers' cottages, which were greatly in advance of his time (Donaldson, Agricult. Biog. p. 59). The book brought him employment on a large scale as an estate agent and land valuer, and he did much to improve English methods of land management (cf. Gent. Mag. 1811, pt. i. p. 182). His work lay chiefly in Norfolk, the farmers of which county presented him in 1808 with a silver goblet in acknowledgment of his services to agriculture, but he also suggested extensive embankments in Lincolnshire, which were successfully executed. Besides the ‘Hints’ he contributed ‘A General View of the Agriculture of the County of Norfolk’ to the ‘Survey’ issued by the board of agriculture in 1794, with supplementary remarks, Norwich, 1796, and several papers to vols. iv. v. and vi. of Hunter's ‘Georgical Essays,’ York, 1803. Kent was for a short time bailiff of George III's farm in the Great Park at Windsor. Particulars concerning the king's farm, communicated by him to the Society of Arts in 1798, were subsequently published ​in pamphlet form. He died of apoplexy at Fulham, Middlesex, 10 Oct. 1810.
Another Nathaniel Kent (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.
[For the land valuer see Gent. Mag. 1810, pt. ii. pp. 396, 452; Kent's books in Brit. Mus. Cat.; and authorities quoted; for the scholar see Harwood's Alumni Etonenses, p. 315; Cat. of Cambridge Graduates; Cooper's Memorials of Cambridge, i. 229; Brit. Mus. Cat.]
R. B.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Kent, Thomas

​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 Thomas Kent (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. Nicolas, Proceedings of the Privy Council, vi. 31, 37, 38, &c.; Stevenson, 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 (Rymer, 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.
[Tanner's Biog. Brit.; Pits, Rel. Hist. de Reb. Angl. p. 914; Wood's Hist. and Antiq. of Univ. of Oxf. ed. Gutch, App. p. 203; Brodrick's Memorials of Merton (Oxf. Hist. Soc.), pp. 37, 64, 241. For the ambassador see authorities quoted; Newcourt's Repert. i. 333, ii. 662; and for his other embassies see Rymer's Fœdera, pp. 138, 186, 187, 189, 229, 233, 241, 269, 272, 274, 304, 415, 424, 504, 524, 541, 542, 563, 565, 576, 578, 590.]
W. A. J. A.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Kent, William (1751-1812)

​KENT, WILLIAM (1751–1812), captain in the navy, born in 1751, son of Henry Kent of Newcastle-on-Tyne, and of his wife Mary, sister of Vice-admiral John Hunter [q. v.], was promoted to the rank of lieutenant in 1781, and after continuous service in the Channel and North Sea was appointed in 1795 to the command of the Supply, in which, on 16 Feb., he sailed for New South Wales, in company with his uncle, Captain Hunter, in the Reliance. The ships arrived at Sydney on 7 Sept., and for the next five years Kent was employed in the service of the colony, making several voyages to Norfolk Island and the Cape of Good Hope, and surveying parts of the coast of New South Wales, In October 1800 he sailed for England in command of the Buffalo, and on his arrival was reappointed to her, June 1801, for the return voyage to Sydney, where, in October 1802, he was promoted by the governor, Captain King, to the rank of commander. In the following April he was ordered to go to Norfolk Island with stores, and thence through the islands examining their capabilities as to the supply of cattle and forage. He was afterwards to go to Calcutta and bring back as many cows as possible of the best breed. On 19 May he made the south-west coast of New Caledonia, and discovered a 'beautiful and extensive harbour,' which he named Port St. Vincent, where he remained for several weeks (Kent, Journal, quoted in 'Quarterly Review,' iii. 33). In January 1804 he was at Calcutta (Addit. MS. 1375S, f. 96), and returned to Port ​Jackson in June, bringing back a supply of cattle and other stores. He was afterwards moved into the Investigator, which had undergone a thorough repair [cf. Flinders, Matthew], and in 1805 was sent home with important information about the state of Peru. The Investigator was paid off at Plymouth on 22 Dec. 1805, and on 22 Jan. 1806 Kent was advanced to post rank. In November 1808 he was appointed to the Agincourt, and from her was moved to the Union of 98 guns, in command of which, off Toulon, he died 29 Aug. 1812.
In 1791 Kent married his cousin Eliza, daughter of William Kent of Newcastle-on-Tyne, and left issue one son, born at Sydney in 1799. A portrait of Kent in pastel is in the possession of his grandson Mr. Charles Kent.
J. K. L.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Kent, James

​KENT, JAMES (1700–1776), organist and composer, born at Winchester on 13 March 1700, was admitted in November 1711 as chorister of Winchester Cathedral. From 1714 to 1718 he was a chorister of the Chapel Royal, under Dr. William Croft [q. v.] In 1718, through the influence of the subdean (the Rev. John Dolben), he was appointed organist to the parish church of Finedon, Northamptonshire. ‘An organ stool, still preserved at Finedon, on which Kent carved “J. K., 1717,” probably records an anticipatory visit’ (Bemrose). In 1731 he was elected organist to Trinity College, Cambridge, and held the post till 1737, when he succeeded John Bishop [q. v.] as organist of Winchester Cathedral and College. The latter appointment he resigned in 1774 to Peter Fussell, and died in Winchester on 6 May 1776. He was married to Elizabeth, daughter of John Freeman.
In 1773 Kent published, in London, a collection of twelve anthems. He also wrote services in C and D, and assisted Dr. Boyce in the compilation of the latter's ‘Cathedral Music.’ His anthems were republished in London by T. Gresham in 1844. Eight of them, together with Kent's two services, were edited by Joseph Corfe.
Kent's music never rose above mediocrity, and he unscrupulously plagiarised the works of the Italian composers, especially Bassani, and also of Dr. Croft, whose style he closely followed. He took the chorus ‘Thy Righteousness,’ in the anthem ‘Lord, what love,’ from Bassani's ‘Magnificat’ in G minor, with little alteration; and the ‘Hallelujah’ in the anthem ‘Hearken unto this’ is transcribed note for note from Bassani's ‘Alma Mater.’
[Grove's Dict. of Music, ii. 50, and i. 150; Bemrose's Choir Chant Book, App. p. xxii; Hogarth's Musical Hist. p. 299; Winchester Chapter Books; Kent's music in Brit. Mus.]
R. F. S.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Dudley, William

​DUDLEY, WILLIAM (d. 1483), bishop of Durham, younger (probably third) son of John Sutton de Dudley, baron Dudley [q. v.], by Elizabeth Berkeley, his wife, was educated at University College, Oxford, proceeding B.A. 1453–4, and M.A. 1456–7. He was instituted to the living of Malpas, Cheshire, in 1457, became rector of Hendon, Middlesex, on 24 Nov. 1466, was appointed to various prebendal stalls in St. Paul's Cathedral between 1468 and 1473), and was archdeacon ​of Middlesex 16 Nov. 1475. Edward IV showed him special favour and made him dean of the Chapel Royal, dean of the collegiate church of Bridgnorth (1471), prebendary of St. Mary's College, Leicester (2 Aug. 1472), dean of Windsor (1473), prebendary of Wells (1475–6), and bishop of Durham (October 1476). In 1483 he was nominated chancellor of the university of Oxford in place of the king's brother-in-law, Lionel Wydville, bishop of Salisbury. He died 29 Nov. 1483, and was buried beneath an elaborate monument in the chapel of St. Nicholas in Westminster Abbey.
S. L. L.