lived at Pentyrch, and was afterwards a farm-servant near Caerphilly, but being ill-treated fled to Kentchurch, Herefordshire, and entered the service of the Scudamore family there. His patrons sent him to Oxford, and eventually he became a parish priest, first at Newcastle Emlyn, and then at Kentchurch. He is said to have lived to the age of a hundred and twenty. The popular legends make Kent a magician, and many stories of his power are still current in Monmouthshire; ‘as great as the devil and John of Kent’ is a local proverb. One legend relates that he outwitted the devil by being buried half within and half without the church at Kentchurch. Another tombstone, without an inscription, is shown as Kent's at Grosmont, Monmouthshire (Symonds, Diary, p. 204, Camd. Soc.) In the possession of the Scudamore family at Kentchurch there is an ancient portrait, supposed to represent Kent; it is engraved in Coxe's ‘Tour in Monmouthshire,’ p. 338. The Scudamores are descended from a daughter of Owen Glendower, and hence some have conjectured that Kent was Glendower in disguise.
Kent apparently sympathised with Oldcastle, and it has been conjectured that he was the pretended chaplain John, whose services at the lollard leader's house in Kent excited the censure of Archbishop Arundel (Wilkins, Concilia, iii. 330–1); but for this there is no sufficient authority. Kent satirised the clergy and friars; but there seems to be no evidence for describing him as a lollard. He is one of the best of the Welsh poets, and one of the first and most successful cultivators of ‘continued’ verse. Numerous Welsh poems are extant under his name. Wilkins gives a list of forty-four pieces. Four are printed in the ‘Iolo MSS.,’ pp. 285, 286, 290, 304 (Welsh MSS. Soc. 1848). One of his poems is a ‘Lamentation on the Condition of the Welsh under Henry IV,’ and in another poem he alludes to the death of Sir John Oldcastle. Poems by Kent are to be found in Additional MS. 24980, and in the Myfyr MSS. (Add. MSS. 14962, 14965–7, 14972, 14974, 14977–9, 14984, 14988, 15004–15008, 15010, 15038) in the British Museum. Besides his poems, Kent is said to have been the author of a grammar, of ‘The Apologue of Einiawn ab Gwalchmai,’ ‘Llyfr yr Offeren,’ ‘Araith y Tri Brodyr,’ of a version of St. John's Gospel in Welsh, and of some fables, besides Latin theological treatises.
The suggestion that John Kent is identical with John Kent or Gwent (fl. 1348) is impossible. The latter was a Franciscan, and doctor of theology at Oxford, where he was divinity reader for his order. He was twentieth provincial of the Franciscans in England, is said to have worked miracles, and was the author of a commentary on the ‘Sentences’ of Peter Lombard. He died at Hereford, and was buried there (Monumenta Franciscana, i. 538, 554; Leland, Comment. de Scriptt. pp. 376–7).
[Information supplied by the Rev. M. G. Watkins; Wilkins's Hist. of Literature of Wales, pp. 50–9; Iolo MSS. pp. 676–7, 682, 687; Williams's Eminent Welshmen, pp. 268–9; Coxe's Tour in Monmouthshire, pp. 336–8; Cambrian Journal, Tenby, 1859, pp. 268–75; Phillips's History of Cilgerran, p. 151; two biographical sketches in Welsh are contained in Geirlyfr Bywgraphiadol o Enwogion Cymru, pt. ii. and Geiriadur Bywgraffyddol o Enwogion Cymru.]
KENT, NATHANIEL (1737–1810), land valuer and agriculturist, born in 1737, was first employed in the diplomatic service as secretary to Sir James Porter at Brussels. During his stay there he set himself to study the husbandry of the Austrian Netherlands, which was at that time held to be the best in Europe. Some of Kent's letters to Sir James Porter dated 1765 and 1766 are in Brit. Mus. MS. Egerton 2157. Returning to England in 1766, he drew up an account of Flemish husbandry at the request of Sir John Cust, speaker of the House of Commons, and was persuaded by him to quit diplomacy and devote himself to agriculture. He shortly afterwards made the valuable acquaintance of Benjamin Stillingfleet [q. v.] the naturalist. Kent published in 1775 ‘Hints to Gentlemen of Landed Property,’ London, 8vo (3rd edit. 1793), containing, among other valuable suggestions, some designs for labourers' cottages, which were greatly in advance of his time (Donaldson, Agricult. Biog. p. 59). The book brought him employment on a large scale as an estate agent and land valuer, and he did much to improve English methods of land management (cf. Gent. Mag. 1811, pt. i. p. 182). His work lay chiefly in Norfolk, the farmers of which county presented him in 1808 with a silver goblet in acknowledgment of his services to agriculture, but he also suggested extensive embankments in Lincolnshire, which were successfully executed. Besides the ‘Hints’ he contributed ‘A General View of the Agriculture of the County of Norfolk’ to the ‘Survey’ issued by the board of agriculture in 1794, with supplementary remarks, Norwich, 1796, and several papers to vols. iv. v. and vi. of Hunter's ‘Georgical Essays,’ York, 1803. Kent was for a short time bailiff of George III's farm in the Great Park at Windsor. Particulars concerning the king's farm, communicated by him to the Society of Arts in 1798, were subsequently published
