KENITES, in the Bible a tribe or clan of the south of Palestine, closely associated with the Amalekites, whose hostility towards Israel, however, it did not share. On this account Saul spared them when bidden by Yahweh to destroy Amalek; David, too, whilst living in Judah, appears to have been on friendly terms with them (1 Sam. xv. 6; xxx. 29). Moses himself married into a Kenite family (Judges i. 16), and the variant tradition would seem to show that the Kenites were only a branch of the Midianites (see [Jethro, Midian]). Jael, the slayer of Sisera (see [Deborah]), was the wife of Heber the Kenite, who lived near Kadesh in Naphtali; and the appearance of the clan in this locality may be explained from the nomadic habits of the tribe, or else as a result of the northward movement in which at least one other clan or tribe took part (see Dan). There is an obscure allusion to their destruction in an appendage to the oracles of Balaam (Num. xxiv. 21 seq., see G. B. Gray, Intern. Crit. Comm. p. 376); and with this, the only unfavourable reference to them, may perhaps be associated the curse of Cain. Although some connexion with the name of Cain is probable, it is difficult, however, to explain the curse (for one view, see [Levites]). More important is the prominent part played by the Kenite (or Midianite) father-in-law of Moses, whose help and counsel are related in Exod. xviii.; and if, as seems probable, the Rechabites (q.v.) were likewise of Kenite origin (1 Chron. ii. 55), this obscure tribe had evidently an important part in shaping the religion of Israel.
See on this question, [Hebrew Religion], and Budde, Religion of Israel to the Exile, vol. i.; G. A. Barton, Semitic Origins, pp. 272 sqq.; L. B. Paton, Biblical World (1906, July and August). On the migration of the Kenites into Palestine (cf. Num. x. 29 with Judges i. 16), see [Caleb], [Genesis], [Jerahmeel], [Judah].
(S. A. C.)
KENMORE, a village and parish of Perthshire, Scotland, 6 m. W. of Aberfeldy. Pop. of parish (1901), 1271. It is situated at the foot of Loch Tay, near the point where the river Tay leaves the lake. Taymouth Castle, the seat of the Marquess of Breadalbane, stands near the base of Drummond Hill in a princely park through which flows the Tay. It is a stately four-storeyed edifice with corner towers and a central pavilion, and was built in 1801 (the west wing being added in 1842) on the site of the mansion erected in 1580 for Sir Colin Campbell of Glenorchy. The old house was called Balloch (Gaelic, bealach, “the outlet of a lake”). Two miles S.W. of Kenmore are the Falls of the Acharn, 80 ft. high. When Wordsworth and his sister visited them in 1803 the grotto at the cascade was fitted up to represent a “hermit’s mossy cell.” At the village of Fortingall, on the north side of Loch Tay, are the shell of a yew conjectured to be 3000 years old and the remains of a Roman camp. Glenlyon House was the home of Campbell of Glenlyon, chief agent in the massacre of Glencoe. At Garth, 2½ m. N.E., are the ruins of an ancient castle, said to have been a stronghold of Alexander Stewart, the Wolf of Badenoch (1343-1405), in close proximity to the modern mansion built for Sir Donald Currie.
KENMURE, WILLIAM GORDON, 6th viscount (d. 1716), Jacobite leader, son of Alexander, 5th viscount (d. 1698), was descended from the same family as Sir John Gordon of Lochinvar (d. 1604), whose grandson, Sir John Gordon (d. 1634), was created Viscount Kenmure in 1633. The family had generally adhered to the Presbyterian cause, but Robert, the 4th viscount, had been excepted from the amnesty granted to the Scottish royalists in 1654, and the 5th viscount, who had succeeded his kinsman Robert in 1663, after some vacillation, had joined the court of the exiled Stuarts. The 6th viscount’s adherence to the Pretender in 1715 is said to have been due to his wife Mary Dalzell (d. 1776), sister of Robert, 6th earl of Carnwath. He raised the royal standard of Scotland at Lochmaben on the 12th of October 1715, and was joined by about two hundred gentlemen, with Carnwath, William Maxwell, 5th earl of Nithsdale, and George Seton, 5th earl of Wintoun. This small force received some additions before Kenmure reached Hawick, where he learnt the news of the English rising. He effected a junction with Thomas Forster and James Radclyffe, 3rd earl of Derwentwater, at Rothbury. Their united forces of some fourteen hundred men, after a series of rather aimless marches, halted at Kelso, where they were reinforced by a brigade under William Mackintosh. Threatened by an English army under General George Carpenter, they eventually crossed the English border to join the Lancashire Jacobites, and the command was taken over by Forster. Kenmure was taken prisoner at Preston on the 13th of November, and was sent to the Tower. In the following January he was tried with other Jacobite noblemen before the House of Lords, when he pleaded guilty, and appealed to the king’s mercy. Immediately before his execution on Tower Hill on the 24th of February he reiterated his belief in the claims of the Pretender. His estates and titles were forfeited, but in 1824 an act of parliament repealed the forfeiture, and his direct descendant, John Gordon (1750-1840), became Viscount Kenmure. On the death of the succeeding peer, Adam, 8th viscount, without issue in 1847, the title became dormant.
KENNEDY, the name of a famous and powerful Scottish family long settled in Ayrshire, derived probably from the name Kenneth. Its chief seat is at Culzean, or Colzean, near Maybole in Ayrshire.