Author: Kenton, James
Biography:
KENTON, James (1723-1802: findmypast.com)
Son of John and Jane Kenton, he was baptised on 3 Oct. 1823 in the parish of Clerkenwell, London. Records of his life are scanty but he became a Methodist preacher and hymn-writer and was probably converted early in life. His poems are all memorial tributes of one kind or another; in the one he wrote on the occasion of the death of John Wesley (q.v.) in 1788, a preface refers to Wesley's "fatherly tenderness" towards him during an acquaintance of over fifty years. He does not appear to have married: in 1790 he was admitted as a single man to the charitable almshouse of the Charterhouse. He dated his final publication from "that House, in which I am so comfortably situated and provided for." He was buried on 2 June 1802 in Bunhill Fields, the Dissenters' graveyard. (findmypast.com 23 May 2021; Francis Collins, The Registers of Charterhouse Chapel [1892])