was laid on 15 Aug. 1840, and Kemp supervised the erection of the monument. But before its completion, on his way home through a foggy night from the contractor's, he fell into the canal at Edinburgh, on 6 March 1844. His body was found the following week, and interred in St. Cuthbert's churchyard, where a monument with a medallion portrait, by Handyside Ritchie, was erected by public subscription. Kemp was a singularly lovable man, ‘almost culpably modest and diffident.’ His genius appears in his one finished work. A bust by Ritchie and a portrait by his wife's brother, William Bonnar, R.S.A., are in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh. Kemp's model of the Scott monument is preserved in the Edinburgh Museum of Science and Art.
[Short biographies of Kemp are in Chambers's Journal (21 April 1838) and the Biog. Dict. of Eminent Scotsmen (1875), as well as in the Edinburgh newspapers of March 1844; but all previous accounts are superseded by the Life by Thomas Bonnar (Edinb. 1891).]
KEMP or KEMPE, JOHN (1380?–1447), archbishop successively of York and Canterbury, cardinal, and chancellor, was the son, not, as Leland says, of ‘a poor husbandman’ (Itinerary, vi. f. 2), but of a Kentish gentleman, Thomas Kemp, and his wife Beatrix, daughter of Sir Thomas Lewknor. He was born at his father's seat of Olanteigh or Ollantigh, situated in the northwestern extremity of the parish of Wye, near Ashford. The estate had been in the family since the days of Edward I. John, who was the second son, was probably born in 1380, as he was sixty-seven years old in 1447 (Hasted, Kent, iii. 170–3). His elder brother, Thomas, was the father of Thomas Kemp, bishop of London.
In 1395 Kemp's name first appears on the books of Merton College, Oxford, of which society he subsequently became a fellow (Brodrick, Memorials of Merton, p. 221, Oxford Hist. Soc.) He ultimately proceeded doctor of laws, and practised as a lawyer in the ecclesiastical courts. In 1413 he was one of the assessors employed by Archbishop Arundel in the trial of Sir John Oldcastle for heresy. In 1415 he was made dean of the court of arches, and vicar-general to Archbishop Chichele. His early ecclesiastical preferment included the rectory of St. Michael's, Crooked Lane, London, which he resigned in 1408 (Newcourt, Repertorium Ecclesiasticum Lond. i. 22), and the rectory of Southwick in Sussex (Dallaway, Western Sussex, ii. 68). In or after 1416 he became archdeacon of Durham (Le Neve, Fasti Eccl. Angl. iii. 303–304, ed. Hardy).
Henry V employed Kemp in several diplomatic negotiations. In July 1415 he was commissioned with John Waterton to treat for an alliance with Ferdinand the Just, king of Aragon, and for the marriage of Henry V to Ferdinand's daughter Mary (Fœdera, ix. 293–5). He was one of the seven former fellows of Merton who attended Henry V on his invasion of Normandy. In February 1418 he was appointed, with two others, to hold the musters of the men-at-arms and archers at Bayeux (ib. ix. 543). In the same year he became keeper of the privy seal, and in November was commissioned to treat with Yolande, queen of Sicily, and her son Louis, for a truce with Anjou and Maine (ib. ix. 649). In January 1419 Kemp was elected bishop of Rochester, though his final appointment to that see was obtained by papal provision of 26 June (Wharton, Anglia Sacra, i. 379). He remained, however, in Normandy discharging the king's business, and was probably consecrated bishop on 3 Dec. at Rouen at the same time as Bishop Morgan of Worcester (Stubbs, Registrum Sacrum Anglicanum, p. 64). On 9 Dec. he received the temporalities and spiritualities of his see from Archbishop Chichele. In September 1419 he was one of an embassy empowered to treat for truce or peace with France (Fœdera, ix. 796). He was made chancellor of Normandy, and retained that office until Henry V's death. On 28 Feb. 1421 he was translated to Chichester, but performed no episcopal acts in that see, being on 17 Nov. translated to London by provision of Martin V. The dean and chapter had already elected Thomas Polton, bishop of Hereford, but the king approved of Kemp, and they had no alternative but submission. On 20 May 1422 Kemp received the spiritualities, and on the same date in the following month the temporalities of his new bishopric (ib. x. 218).
Kemp was made a member of the new council appointed after the accession of Henry VI, and resigned the chancellorship of Normandy to reside in London. But in May 1423 he was sent to France with the earl-marshal and Lord Willoughby to convey the thanks of the council to the regent Bedford, and to attend the king's council there (Ordinances of Privy Council, iii. 70, 72). In February 1424 he was sent on another mission to the Scottish marches to negotiate for the release of the captive James I. Eighty pounds were allowed him for his expenses (ib. iii. 137).
Like most of the councillors and high officials, Kemp was no friend of Humphrey, duke of Gloucester [q. v.], the protector, and
