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CHRISTIAN GUARDIAN,

AND

Church of England Magazine.

DECEMBER 1832.

MEMOIR OF BISHOP KEN.

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THOMAS, youngest son by the first wife of Thomas Ken, of Furnival's Inn, London, was born at Berkhampstead, Herts, in 1637. His Father was of an ancient and honourable family, and one of his sisters was subsequently married to Isaak Walton, the celebrated angler, and the interesting biogra pher of Hooker, &c. At the age of thirteen, young Ken was admitted as a foundation scholar at Winchester College, where he commenced residence in January 1651. Here he continued till he was eighteen, and there being no vacancy at that time in the Proba tionary Fellowships at New College Oxford, to which the more distinguished Wykehamites succeed of course, he was entered at Hart-hall, afterwards Hertford College, and now Magdalen Hall, Oxford; before however he was fully nineteen, a vacancy offered at New College, and Mr. Ken was consequently admitted Probationer Fellow in 1657, under the wardenship of Mr. George Harris, who had been obtruded on the Society contrary to the statutes, and in opposition to the voice of all the Fellows, by the violence of the parliamentary visitors in 1649. Mr. Harris, who appears to have been distinguished as a Grecian, died the year after Ken's admission, and the Fellows immediately proceeded to fill up the vacancy, by electing agreeably

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to their statutes, Mr. Michael Woodward, who continued warden till his death.

Of Mr. Ken's proceedings at Winchester and at Oxford in these early years, no record has been preserved, though it appears from a casual notice, that he was early attached to music. Indeed, it may generally speaking be observed that the most eminent characters usually pass the morning of their lives in quiet and retired pursuits, which attract little notice from their cotemporaries, and are only known by the fruits eventually produced; and it most frequently happens, that those hopeful youths whose early attainments are indiscreetly brought forward by parents and tutors, eventually disappoint the expectations which such exhibitions excite. There are indeed many reasons arising from the circumstances of those times, which compelled the judicious student to cultivate retirement, and to shrink from every thing which might attract the notice of those who then exercised the supreme power.

Mr. Ken took his degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1661, and proceeded Master of Arts in January 1664.

We are not exactly informed when he was ordained, though it was most probably soon after his first degree, and he appears to have resided as Fellow of New College, and to have been engaged

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