Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Kelly, Edward" to "Kite" by Various
1900. (E. He.)
2546 words | Chapter 11
KENYON, LLOYD KENYON, 1ST BARON (1732-1802), lord chief-justice of
England, was descended by his father's side from an old Lancashire
family; his mother was the daughter of a small proprietor in Wales. He
was born at Gredington, Flintshire, on the 5th of October 1732. Educated
at Ruthin grammar school, he was in his fifteenth year articled to an
attorney at Nantwich, Cheshire. In 1750 he entered at Lincoln's Inn,
London, and in 1756 was called to the bar. As for several years he was
almost unemployed, he utilized his leisure in taking notes of the cases
argued in the court of King's Bench, which he afterwards published.
Through answering the cases of his friend John Dunning, afterwards Lord
Ashburton, he gradually became known to the attorneys, after which his
success was so rapid that in 1780 he was made king's counsel. He showed
conspicuous ability in the cross-examination of the witnesses at the
trial of Lord George Gordon, but his speech was so tactless that the
verdict of acquittal was really due to the brilliant effort of Erskine,
the junior counsel. This want of tact, indeed, often betrayed Kenyon
into striking blunders; as an advocate he was, moreover, deficient in
ability of statement; and his position was achieved chiefly by hard
work, a good knowledge of law and several lucky friendships. Through the
influence of Lord Thurlow, Kenyon in 1780 entered the House of Commons
as member for Hindon, and in 1782 he was, through the same friendship,
appointed attorney-general in Lord Buckingham's administration, an
office which he continued to hold under Pitt. In 1784 he received the
mastership of the rolls, and was created a baronet. In 1788 he was
appointed lord chief justice as successor to Lord Mansfield, and the
same year was raised to the peerage as Baron Kenyon of Gredington. As he
had made many enemies, his elevation was by no means popular with the
bar; but on the bench, in spite of his capricious and choleric temper,
he proved himself not only an able lawyer, but a judge of rare and
inflexible impartiality. He died at Bath, on the 4th of April 1802.
Kenyon was succeeded as 2nd baron by his son George (1776-1855), whose
great-grandson, Lloyd (b. 1864), became the 4th baron in 1869.
See _Life_ by Hon. G. T. Kenyon, 1873.
KEOKUK, a city of Lee county, Iowa, U.S.A., on the Mississippi river, at
the mouth of the Des Moines, in the S.E. corner of the state, about 200
m. above St Louis. Pop. (1900), 14,641; (1905), 14,604, including 1534
foreign-born; (1910), 14,008. It is served by the Chicago, Burlington &
Quincy, the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific, the Wabash, and the Toledo,
Peoria & Western railways. There is a bridge (about 2200 ft. long)
across the Mississippi, and another (about 1200 ft. long) across the Des
Moines. The city has a public library and St Joseph and Graham
hospitals, and is the seat of the Keokuk Medical College (1849). There
is a national cemetery here. Much of the city is built on bluffs along
the Mississippi. Keokuk is at the foot of the Des Moines Rapids, round
which the Federal Government has constructed a navigable canal (opened
1877) about 9 m. long, with a draft at extreme low water of 5 ft.; at
the foot a great dam, 1½ m. long and 38 ft. high, has been constructed.
Keokuk has various manufactures; its factory product in 1905 was valued
at $4,225,915, 38.6% more than in 1900. The city was named after Keokuk,
a chief of the Sauk and Foxes (1780-1848), whose name meant "the
watchful" or "he who moves alertly." In spite of Black Hawk's war policy
in 1832 Keokuk was passive and neutral, and with a portion of his nation
remained peaceful while Black Hawk and his warriors fought. His grave,
surmounted by a monument, is in Rand Park. The first house on the site
of the city was built about 1820, but further settlement did not begin
until 1836. Keokuk was laid out as a town in 1837, was chartered as a
city in 1848, and in 1907 was one of five cities of the state governed
by a special charter.
KEONJHAR, a tributary state of India, within the Orissa division of
Bengal; area, 3096 sq. m.; pop. (1901), 285,758; estimated revenue,
£20,000. The state is an offshoot from Mayurbhanj. Part of it consists
of rugged hills, rising to more than 3000 ft. above sea-level. The
residence of the raja is at Keonjhar (pop. 4532).
KEONTHAL, a petty hill state in the Punjab, India, with an area of 116
sq. m.; pop. (1901), 22,499; estimated revenue, £4400. The chief, a
Rajput, received the title of raja in 1857. After the Gurkha War in
1815, a portion of Keonthal, which had been occupied by the Gurkhas, was
sold to the maharaja of Patiala, the remainder being restored to its
hereditary chief. In 1823 the district of Punar was added to the
Keonthal state. The raja exercises rights of lordship over the petty
states of Kothi, Theog, Madhan and Ratesh.
KEPLER, JOHANN (1571-1630), German astronomer, was born on the 27th of
December 1571, at Weil, in the duchy of Württemberg, of which town his
grandfather was burgomaster. He was the eldest child of an ill-assorted
union. His father, Henry Kepler, was a reckless soldier of fortune; his
mother, Catherine Guldenmann, the daughter of the burgomaster of
Eltingen, was undisciplined and ill-educated. Her husband found
campaigning in Flanders under Alva a welcome relief from domestic life;
and, after having lost all he possessed by a forfeited security and
tried without success the trade of tavern-keeping in the village of
Elmendingen, he finally, in 1589, deserted his family. The misfortune
and misconduct of his parents were not the only troubles of Kepler's
childhood. He recovered from small-pox in his fourth year with crippled
hands and eyesight permanently impaired; and a constitution enfeebled by
premature birth had to withstand successive shocks of severe illness.
His schooling began at Leonberg in 1577--the year, as he himself tells
us, of a great comet; but domestic bankruptcy occasioned his
transference to field-work, in which he was exclusively employed for
several years. Bodily infirmity, combined with mental aptitude, were
eventually considered to indicate à theological vocation; he was, in
1584, placed at the seminary of Adelberg, and thence removed, two years
later, to that of Maulbronn. A brilliant examination for the degree of
bachelor procured him, in 1588, admittance on the foundation to the
university of Tübingen, where he laid up a copious store of classical
erudition, and imbibed Copernican principles from the private
instructions of his teacher and life-long friend, Michael Maestlin. As
yet, however, he had little knowledge of, and less inclination for,
astronomy; and it was with extreme reluctance that he turned aside from
the more promising career of the ministry to accept, early in 1594, the
vacant chair of that science at Gratz, placed at the disposal of the
Tübingen professors by the Lutheran states of Styria.
The best recognized function of German astronomers in that day was the
construction of prophesying almanacs, greedily bought by a credulous
public. Kepler thus found that the first duties required of him were of
an astrological nature, and set himself with characteristic alacrity to
master the rules of the art as laid down by Ptolemy and Cardan. He,
moreover, sought in the events of his own life a verification of the
theory of planetary influences; and it is to this practice that we owe
the summary record of each year's occurrences which, continued almost to
his death, affords for his biography a slight but sure foundation. But
his thoughts were already working in a higher sphere. He early attained
to the settled conviction that for the actual disposition of the solar
system some abstract intelligible reason must exist, and this, after
much meditation, he believed himself to have found in an imaginary
relation between the "five regular solids" and the number and distances
of the planets. He notes with exultation the 9th of July 1595, as the
date of the pseudo-discovery, the publication of which in _Prodromus
Dissertationum Cosmographicarum seu Mysterium Cosmographicum_ (Tübingen,
1596) procured him much fame, and a friendly correspondence with the two
most eminent astronomers of the time, Tycho Brahe and Galileo.
Soon after his arrival at Gratz, Kepler contracted an engagement with
Barbara von Mühleck, a wealthy Styrian heiress, who, at the age of
twenty-three, had already survived one husband and been divorced from
another. Before her relatives could be brought to countenance his
pretensions, Kepler was obliged to undertake a journey to Württemberg to
obtain documentary evidence of the somewhat obscure nobility of his
family, and it was thus not until the 27th of April 1597 that the
marriage was celebrated. In the following year the archduke Ferdinand,
on assuming the government of his hereditary dominions, issued an edict
of banishment against Protestant preachers and professors. Kepler
immediately fled to the Hungarian frontier, but, by the favour of the
Jesuits, was recalled and reinstated in his post. The gymnasium,
however, was deserted; the nobles of Styria began to murmur at
subsidizing a teacher without pupils; and he found it prudent to look
elsewhere for employment. His refusal to subscribe unconditionally to
the rigid formula of belief adopted by the theologians of Tübingen
permanently closed against him the gates of his _alma mater_. His
embarrassment was relieved however by an offer from Tycho Brahe of the
position of assistant in his observatory near Prague, which, after a
preliminary visit of four months, he accepted. The arrangement was made
just in time; for in August 1600 he received definitive notice to leave
Gratz, and, having leased his wife's property, he departed with his
family for Prague.
By Tycho's unexpected death (Oct. 24, 1601) a brilliant career seemed to
be thrown open to Kepler. The emperor Rudolph II. immediately appointed
him to succeed his patron as imperial mathematician, although at a
reduced salary of 500 florins; the invaluable treasure of Tycho's
observations was placed at his disposal; and the laborious but congenial
task was entrusted to him of completing the tables to which the grateful
Dane had already affixed the title of _Rudolphine_. The first works
executed by him at Prague were, nevertheless, a homage to the
astrological proclivities of the emperor. In _De fundamentis astrologiae
certioribus_ (Prague, 1602) he declared his purpose of preserving and
purifying the grain of truth which he believed the science to contain.
Indeed, the doctrine of "aspects" and "influences" fitted excellently
with his mystical conception of the universe, and enabled him to
discharge with a semblance of sincerity the most lucrative part of his
professional duties. Although he strictly limited his prophetic
pretensions to the estimate of tendencies and probabilities, his
forecasts were none the less in demand. Shrewd sense and considerable
knowledge of the world came to the aid of stellar lore in the
preparation of "prognostics" which, not unfrequently hitting off the
event, earned him as much credit with the vulgar as his cosmical
speculations with the learned. He drew the horoscopes of the emperor and
Wallenstein, as well as of a host of lesser magnates; but, though keenly
alive to the unworthy character of such a trade, he made necessity his
excuse for a compromise with superstition. "Nature," he wrote, "which
has conferred upon every animal the means of subsistence, has given
astrology as an adjunct and ally to astronomy." He dedicated to the
emperor in 1603 a treatise on the "great conjunction" of that year
(_Judicium de trigono igneo_); and he published his observations on a
brilliant star which appeared suddenly (Sept. 30, 1604), and remained
visible for seventeen months, in _De stella nova in pede Serpentarii_
(Prague, 1606). While sharing the opinion of Tycho as to the origin of
such bodies by condensation of nebulous matter from the Milky Way, he
attached a mystical signification to the coincidence in time and place
of the sidereal apparition with a triple conjunction of Mars, Jupiter
and Saturn.
The main task of his life was not meanwhile neglected. This was nothing
less than the foundation of a new astronomy, in which physical cause
should replace arbitrary hypothesis. A preliminary study of optics led
to the publication, in 1604, of his _Astronomiae pars optica_,
containing important discoveries in the theory of vision, and a notable
approximation towards the true law of refraction. But it was not until
1609 that, the "great Martian labour" being at length completed, he was
able, in his own figurative language, to lead the captive planet to the
foot of the imperial throne. From the time of his first introduction to
Tycho he had devoted himself to the investigation of the orbit of Mars,
which, on account of its relatively large eccentricity, had always been
especially recalcitrant to theory, and the results appeared in
_Astronomia nova_ [Greek: haitiologêtos], _seu Physica coelestis tradita
commentariis de motibus stellae Martis_ (Prague, 1609). In this, the
most memorable of Kepler's multifarious writings, two of the cardinal
principles of modern astronomy--the laws of elliptical orbits and of
equal areas--were established (see ASTRONOMY: _History_); important
truths relating to gravity were enunciated, and the tides ascribed to
the influence of lunar attraction; while an attempt to explain the
planetary revolutions in the then backward condition of mechanical
knowledge produced a theory of vortices closely resembling that
afterwards adopted by Descartes. Having been provided, in August 1610,
by Ernest, archbishop of Cologne, with one of the new Galilean
instruments, Kepler began, with unspeakable delight, to observe the
wonders revealed by it. He had welcomed with a little essay called
_Dissertatio cum Nuncio Sidereo_ Galileo's first announcement of
celestial novelties; he now, in his _Dioptrice_ (Augsburg, 1611),
expounded the theory of refraction by lenses, and suggested the
principle of the "astronomical" or inverting telescope. Indeed the work
may be said to have founded the branch of science to which it gave its
name.
The year 1611 was marked by Kepler as the most disastrous of his life.
The death by small-pox of his favourite child was followed by that of
his wife, who, long a prey to melancholy, was on the 3rd of July
carried off by typhus. Public calamity was added to private bereavement.
On the 23rd of May 1611 Matthias, brother of the emperor, assumed the
Bohemian crown in Prague, compelling Rudolph to take refuge in the
citadel, where he died on the 20th of January following. Kepler's
fidelity in remaining with him to the last did not deprive him of the
favour of his successor. Payments of arrears, now amounting to upwards
of 4000 florins, was not, however, in the desperate condition of the
imperial finances, to be hoped for; and he was glad, while retaining his
position as court astronomer, to accept (in 1612) the office of
mathematician to the states of Upper Austria. His residence at Linz was
troubled by the harsh conduct of the pastor Hitzler, in excluding him
from the rites of his church on the ground of supposed Calvinistic
leanings--a decision confirmed, with the addition of an insulting
reprimand, on his appeal to Württemberg. In 1613 he appeared with the
emperor Matthias before the diet of Ratisbon as the advocate of the
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