who called him 'Weathercock Kennett'. In January 1689, while shooting at Middleton Stoney, his gun burst and fractured his skull. The operation of trepanning was successfully performed, but he was obliged to wear a large black patch of velvet on his forehead during the remainder of his life. After a few years' absence at Ambrosden he returned to Oxford as tutor and vice-principal of St Edmund Hall, and in September 1691 was chosen lecturer of St Martin's, commonly called Carfax, Oxford. He was also appointed a public lecturer in the schools, and filled the office of pro-proctor for two successive years. He proceeded BD on 5 May 1694. In February 1694–5 he was presented by William Cherry to the rectory of Shottesbrooke, Berkshire. He was created DD at Oxford on 19 July 1700, and in the same year was presented to the rectory of St Botolph's Aldgate. He resigned the vicarage of Ambrosden, and did not obtain possession of St Botolph's without a lawsuit. On 15 February 1701 he was installed in the prebend of Combe and Harnham, in the church of Salisbury. Antiquarian reputation Kennett's historical and antiquarian researches had meanwhile procured him some reputation. From Dr George Hickes (afterwards nonjuring bishop of Thetford), who lived for a time in seclusion with him at Ambrosden, he received instruction in the Anglo-Saxon and other northern tongues. For several years the two scholars were on the most friendly terms, but eventually there was an open rupture between them, owing to religious and political differences. Kennett contributed a life of William Somner to the James Brome's edition of that antiquary's Treatise of the Roman Ports and Forts in Kent (1693), and the biography was enlarged and reissued in Somner's Treatise of Gavelkind, 2nd edition 1726. His reputation as a topographer and philologist was enhanced by his Parochial Antiquities attempted in the History of Ambrosden, Burcester, and other adjacent parts in the counties of Oxford and Bucks, with a Glossary of Obsolete Terms, Oxford, 1695, 4to, dedicated to his patron, Sir W. Glynne. A new edition, greatly enlarged from the author's manuscript notes, was issued at Oxford (2 vols. 1818, 4to) under the editorship of Bulkeley Bandinel. While engaged on this work the question of lay impropriations had come much under his notice, and he published "for the terror of evil-doers" the History and Fate of Sacrilege, discovered by examples of Scripture, of