of Richard Smith, M.D., of London and Aylesbury (she died in August 1702); thirdly, in 1703, Dorcas, daughter of Thomas Fuller, D.D., rector of Wellinghale, Essex, 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 London, who died on 6 May 1740; and a daughter Sarah, who married John Newman of Shottesbrook, Berkshire, and died on 22 February 1756. Hearne, writing on 26 April 1707, says that Kennett's 'present [his third] wife wears the breeches, as his haughty, insolent temper deserves'. Character 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 is now remembered chiefly as a painstaking and laborious antiquary, especially in the department of ecclesiastical biography. The number of his works both in print and manuscript shows him to have been throughout his life a man of incredible diligence and application. He was always ready to communicate the results of his researches to fellow-students. Works Probably his best-known work, apart from his Compleat History, was his Register and Chronicle, Ecclesiastical and Civil: containing Matters of Fact delivered in the words of the most Authentick Books, Papers, and Records; digested in exact order of time. With papers, notes, and references towards discovering and connecting the true History of England from the Restauration of King Charles II, volume i published in London in 1728. The materials for this are preserved in the British Museum as part three of the Lansdowne manuscripts (manuscripts 1002 to 1010). The published volume spans 1660 to December 1662; the rest of the work in manuscript (hand-written) runs to 1679. Many other Kennett's manuscripts went into James West's library as president of the Royal Society, being purchased in 1773 by Lansdowne, ending up in the same national collection. Kennett published more than twelve sermons preached on public occasions between 1694 and 1728, and others in support of charity schools (cited in The Excellent Daughter, 1708; 11th edit. 1807) or of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (relevant to his sermon of 1712). His addresses to his clergy at Peterborough on his first visitation were issued in 1720. Kennett was also the author of : Remarks on the