Orinoco, Kemys was appointed by Ralegh to command the expedition up the river and to the mine. According to his instructions, he was to keep on the north side of the river going up, so as to escape the notice of the Spaniards; but if they should discover and attack him he was to repel them by force; if he saw that the Spaniards were too strong, so that he could not pass without manifest peril, ‘then,’ Ralegh wrote, ‘be well advised how you land, for I would not for all the world receive a blow from the Spaniards to the dishonour of our nation.’ Kemys was apparently unequal to the difficulties of his position; the orders, too, were contradictory, for the Spaniards had moved their settlement, S. Tomas, so as to intercept the advance to the mine. So without waiting for them to attack, he forthwith stormed their town and drove them into the woods, not without loss, young Walter, Ralegh's son, being among the slain. But after some days' further skirmishing in the woods, conceiving that he had not strength to force his way to the mine, or to hold and work it if he should reach it, he returned to the ships and reported what had occurred. Ralegh answered that he had undone him. Kemys, in sorrow and despair, retired to his cabin and shot himself with a pistol; the wound was not immediately mortal; he thrust a large knife into it up to the haft, and so died.
The name has been spelt in many different ways. The spelling here adopted is from his signature (State Papers, Dom. James I, xlviii. 50). The writing of this holograph is peculiarly neat, small and well formed, and, together with the Latin verses published as his by Hakluyt, contradicts the common notion that he was merely a rude seaman. A portrait, doubtfully said to be of Kemys, is at Cefn Mably, near Cardiff, formerly the seat of a family of the name (information from Mr. E. Delmar Morgan).
[Gardiner's Hist. of England, iii. 119, and the authorities there cited; see also index to vol. x.; other authorities in text.]
KEN or KENN, THOMAS (1637–1711), bishop of Bath and Wells, son of Thomas Ken, by his second wife Martha, daughter of John Chalkhill [q. v.], was born at Great, or at Little, Berkhampstead, Hertfordshire, in July 1637. His father was an attorney, of Furnival's Inn, London, and, it is asserted, a clerk of the House of Lords, and clerk of assize for the counties of Glamorgan, Brecon, and Radnor (Webb, Memorials of the Civil War in Herefordshire, i. 189); he is said to have been connected with the family which gave its name to, or took it from, the village of Kenn or Ken, near Clevedon, Somerset (Hawkins, p. 2). His mother died in 1641, and his father apparently in 1651, after which date it is probable that his home was at the house of Isaac Walton, who married his half-sister Anne in 1646. Having been elected scholar of Winchester on 26 Sept. 1651, Ken was admitted in the January following, and his name is still to be seen cut in the cloisters of the college, with the date 1656, in which year he was elected to New College, Oxford, and, there being no vacancy, entered as a member of Hart Hall, the present Hertford College, and was admitted to New College in the following year. At Oxford he was in the habit of giving alms to the poor whom he met in his walks, and was a member of a musical society. The supposition (Plumptre) that he was fascinated even ‘in scant measure’ by the license of the Restoration is utterly unwarranted. He graduated B.A. on 3 May 1661, and M.A. on 21 Jan. 1664. In 1661 he held a tutorship at New College, lecturing on logic and mathematics, and having taken orders in that or the following year (ib.), was in 1663 presented to the rectory of Little Easton, Essex, where he acted as spiritual counsellor to the saintly Margaret, lady Maynard (d. 1682), daughter of the Earl of Dysart, and second wife of William, lord Maynard, patron of the living. He resigned the rectory in 1665, and went to Winchester, becoming domestic chaplain to Bishop George Morley, and taking gratuitous charge of the parish of St. John in the Soke, where he induced many unbaptised persons of adult age to receive baptism (Hawkins, p. 4). On 8 Dec. 1666 he was elected a fellow of Winchester, resigning in consequence his fellowship at New College, and as a parting gift contributing 100l. to the new buildings there. He was collated in 1667 to the rectory of Brightstone in the Isle of Wight, and became known in London as an eloquent preacher by sermons which he delivered in the old church at Chelsea. Resigning Brightstone in 1669, he was collated to a prebend at Winchester, and to the rectory of East Woodhay, Hampshire, which he resigned in 1672 to make room for his friend George Hooper [q. v.], afterwards bishop of Bath and Wells. He then resided at Winchester, again taking gratuitous charge of the parish of St. John in the Soke, performing his duties in the cathedral and the college, and as bishop's chaplain, and recreating himself with music, for he had an organ of his own. In 1674 he published his ‘Manual for Winchester Scholars,’ though as yet without the three hymns. In 1675 he went for a tour on the continent with his nephew, the younger Isaac Walton,
