Kenneth II. (d. 995), son of Malcolm I., king of Alban, succeeded Cuilean, son of Indulph, who had been slain by the Britons of Strathclyde in 971 in Lothian. Kenneth began his reign by ravaging the British kingdom, but he lost a large part of his force on the river Cornag. Soon afterwards he attacked Eadulf, earl of the northern half of Northumbria, and ravaged the whole of his territory. He fortified the fords of the Forth as a defence against the Britons and again invaded Northumbria, carrying off the earl’s son. About this time he gave the city of Brechin to the church. In 977 he is said to have slain Amlaiph or Olaf, son of Indulph, king of Alban, perhaps a rival claimant to the throne. According to the English chroniclers, Kenneth paid homage to King Edgar for the cession of Lothian, but these statements are probably due to the controversy as to the position of Scotland. The mormaers, or chiefs, of Kenneth were engaged throughout his reign in a contest with Sigurd the Norwegian, earl of Orkney, for the possession of Caithness and the northern district of Scotland as far south as the Spey. In this struggle the Scots attained no permanent success. In 995 Kenneth, whose strength like that of the other kings of his branch of the house of Kenneth MacAlpin lay chiefly north of the Tay, was slain treacherously by his own subjects, according to the later chroniclers at Fettercairn in the Mearns through an intrigue of Einvela, daughter of the earl of Angus. He was buried at Iona.
See Chronicles of the Picts and Scots, ed. W. F. Skene (Edinburgh, 1867), and W. F. Skene, Celtic Scotland (Edinburgh, 1876).
KENNETT, WHITE (1660-1728), English bishop and antiquary, was born at Dover in August 1660. He was educated at Westminster school and at St Edmund’s Hall, Oxford, where, while an undergraduate, 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. He died at Westminster in December 1728.
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. He was much interested in the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel.
The Life of Bishop White Kennett, by the Rev. William Newton (anonymous), appeared in 1730. See also Nichols’s Literary Anecdotes, and I. Disraeli’s Calamities of Authors.
KENNEY, JAMES (1780-1849), English dramatist, was the son of James Kenney, one of the founders of Boodles’ Club in London. His first play, a farce called Raising the Wind (1803), was a success owing to the popularity of the character of “Jeremy Diddler.” Kenney produced more than forty dramas and operas between 1803 and 1845, and many of his pieces, in which Mrs Siddons, Madame Vestris, Foote, Lewis, Liston and other leading players appeared from time to time, enjoyed a considerable vogue. His most popular play was Sweethearts and Wives, produced at the Haymarket theatre in 1823, and several times afterwards revived; and among the most successful of his other works were: False Alarms (1807), a comic opera with music by Braham; Love, Law and Physic (1812); Spring and Autumn (1827); The Illustrious Stranger, or Married and Buried (1827); Masaniello (1829); The Sicilian Vespers, a tragedy (1840). Kenney, who numbered Charles Lamb and Samuel Rogers among his friends, died in London on the 25th of July 1849. He married the widow of the dramatist Thomas Holcroft, by whom he had two sons and two daughters.
His second son, Charles Lamb Kenney (1823-1881), made a name as a journalist, dramatist and miscellaneous writer. Commencing life as a clerk in the General Post Office in London, he joined the staff of The Times, to which paper he contributed dramatic criticism. In 1856, having been called to the bar, he became secretary to Ferdinand de Lesseps, and in 1857 he published The Gates of the East in support of the projected construction of the Suez Canal. Kenney wrote the words for a number of light operas, and was the author of several popular songs, the best known of which were “Soft and Low” (1865) and “The Vagabond” (1871). He also published a Memoir of M. W. Balfe (1875), and translated the Correspondence of Balzac. He included Thackeray and Dickens among his friends in a literary coterie in which he enjoyed the reputation of a wit and an accomplished writer of vers de société. He died in London on the 25th of August 1881.
See John Genest, Some Account of the English Stage, 1660-1830, vols. vii. and viii. (10 vols., London, 1832); P. W. Clayden, Rogers and his Contemporaries (2 vols., London, 1889); Dict. National Biog.