Thomas Ken (July 1637 ? 19 March 1711) was an
English cleric who was considered the most eminent
of the English non-juring bishops, and one of the
fathers of modern English hymnology.
Although Ken wrote much poetry, besides his hymns,
he cannot be called a great poet; but he had that
fine combination of spiritual insight and feeling
with poetic taste which marks all great
hymnwriters. As a hymnwriter he has had few equals
in England, he wrote Praise God from whom all
blessings flow;[2] it can scarcely be said that
even John Keble, though possessed of much rarer
poetic gifts, surpassed him in his own sphere. In
his own day he took high rank as a pulpit orator,
and even royalty had to beg for a seat amongst his
audiences; but his sermons are now forgotten. He
lives in history, apart from his three hymns,
mainly as a man of unstained purity and invincible
fidelity, to conscience, weak only in a certain
narrowness of view which is a frequent attribute
of the intense character which he possessed. As an
ecclesiastic he was a High Churchman of the old
school.
Ken's poetical works were published in collected
form in four volumes by W Hawkins, his relative
and executor, in 1721; his prose works were issued
in 1838 in one volume, under the editorship of
J.T. Round. A brief memoir was prefixed by Hawkins
to a selection from Ken's works which he published
in 1713; and a life, in two volumes, by the Rev.
W.L. Bowles, appeared in 1830. But the standard
biographies of Ken are those of J. Lavicount
Anderdon (The Life of Thomas Ken, Bishop of Bath
and Wells, by a Layman, 1851; 2nd ed., 1854) and
of Dean Plumptre (2 vols., 1888; revised, 1890).
See also the Rev. W Hunt's article in the
Dictionary of National Biography.
He was buried at the Church of St John the
Baptist, Frome where his crypt can still be seen.
He is remembered in the Church of England with a
Lesser Festival on 8 June. He is also commemorated
with a statue in niche 177 on the West Front of
Salisbury Cathedral
Ken is honored with a feast day on the liturgical
calendar of the Episcopal Church (USA) on March
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