commanded his servants to be ready with bow and arrows, sword and buckler, and all habiliments of war: to await upon the safeguard of his person’ (ib. i. 268). When the Yorkist lords, headed by Norfolk, threatened his position, he clung bravely to his post. On 19 March he promised a ‘good and comfortable answer’ to the commons' request for a ‘sad and wise council.’ He died three days after, on 22 March. He was buried at Canterbury, in the south aisle of the choir, ‘in a high tomb of marble, but no image engrossed on it’ (Leland; Gough, Sepulchral Monuments, iii. 170). There is a portrait of Kemp in a stained-glass window at the east end of Bolton Percy Church, near York (Notes and Queries, 4th ser. iv. 419, vii. 321).
Kemp was a thoroughly political ecclesiastic. Henry VI declared that he was one of the wisest lords of the land (Paston Letters, i. 315), and in thanking the pope for making him a cardinal, commended him for his ‘holiness, purity of life, abundance of knowledge, ripeness of counsel, experience in business, wisdom, eloquence, gravity, and dignity of person’ (Beckington Correspondence, i. 40). He was not much of a bishop, and was very unpopular in Yorkshire, which he seldom visited. In 1441 a great conflict broke out between Kemp's tenants and servants at Ripon and the king's tenants of the Forest of Knaresborough as to certain rights of toll at fairs. Kemp kept ‘his town of Ripon like a town of war with hired soldiers.’ Three hundred mercenaries in the archbishop's pay sought to coerce the Knaresborough men, and seem in the end to have succeeded in making them pay the disputed toll. The whole story illustrates the extreme anarchy of the period (Plumpton Correspondence, liv–lxii., Camden Soc.). In March 1443 bands of rioters, angered at his proceedings against some of the laity for spiritual offences, and instigated by the Earl of Northumberland, pulled down his house, assaulted his servants, and threatened his palace at Southwell (Ord. P. C. v. cxxi. 273, 275, 276, 309). After long debates in council the earl was ordered to pay all damages. In May 1443 a royal order to the custodes pacis of the three ridings of Yorkshire was issued to prevent further attacks on the archbishop (Fœdera, xi. 27). In 1444 he held a provincial council at York, and issued a constitution which sought to prevent the smaller monasteries from alienating their property. Kemp restored Southwell and other manor houses of the see of York (Weever, Funerall Monuments, p. 229). He paid for painting the vaulting of the nave of York Cathedral in white and gold (Raine, Historians of Church of York, ii. 435). The Canterbury historians, though with less reason, also accuse Kemp of neglecting the interests of that see.
Kemp was commemorated as a benefactor of the university of Oxford (Munimenta Academica, Rolls Ser., pp. 351, 352, 354), though the story of Wood, that he contributed five hundred marks to the completion of the divinity school seems to rest partly on a confusion between him and his nephew, who contributed one thousand marks, and partly on the fact that he was an executor of Cardinal Beaufort, who gave that sum (Lyte, Hist. of the University of Oxford, p. 318). His arms are still to be seen in the groined roof of the divinity school. But Kemp's chief act of beneficence was the erection of a college of secular priests, or ‘perpetual chantry,’ in the parish church of Wye, his native place, for which he always showed a strong affection. He obtained a royal license for this object in February 1432, and permission to add largely to its endowment in March 1439. But it was not until 1447 that the plans were finally completed. Kemp drew up elaborate statutes for the government of the master or provost and fellow of his college. He gave a preference to Merton men for the provostship. A grammar school was established in connection with the college, and one of the fellows was to act as curate of Wye. Kemp built a fine new cruciform church and buildings for the college adjacent. He put the college under the care of Battle Abbey, to which the manor of Wye belonged. It was suppressed under Henry VIII (Dugdale, Monasticon, iii. 254, vi. 1430–2; Hasted, Kent, iii. 170–3).
[Dean Hook's life of Kemp, in Lives of Archbishops of Canterbury, v. 188–267, Stubbs's Const. Hist. vol. iii., and Gairdner's preface to Paston Letters explain more clearly Kemp's political position. Raine's Historians of Church of York, vol. ii.; Le Neve's Fasti Ecclesiæ Anglicanæ, ed. Hardy; Beckington Correspondence, and Stevenson's Wars of the English in France, all in Rolls Ser.; Wharton's Anglia Sacra; Paston Letters, ed. Gairdner; Rymer's Fœdera; Rolls of Parliament; Nicolas's Proceedings and Ordinances of Privy Council; Hasted's Kent; Dugdale's Monasticon, ed. Caley, Ellis, and Bandinel.]
KEMP, JOHN (1665–1717), antiquary, born in 1665, was possessed of private means, and resided in the parish of St. Martin-in-the Fields, London. He was elected F.R.S. on 20 March 1712 (Thomson, Hist. Roy. Soc. App. iv.), and died unmarried on 19 Sept. 1717. He had a fine museum of antiquities, chiefly formed by Jean Gailhard, a Frenchman, who was governor to George, first lord
