John Kenyon (patron)

John Kenyon (1784–1856) was an English verse-writer and philanthropist, now known as a patron of Robert Browning.

He was born in Trelawny Parish, Jamaica, where his father owned extensive sugar plantations; his mother was a daughter of John Simpson of Bounty Hall in the same parish, also a sugar planter. Both parents died while Kenyon was a boy at Fort Bristol School, Bristol. Thence he went for a time to Charterhouse School, and after some dabbling in experimental science at William Nicholson's Philosophical Institute, in London's Soho, went in 1802 to Peterhouse, Cambridge. He left Cambridge without a degree in 1808, married, and settled at Woodlands, between Alfoxden and Nether Stowey in Somerset.

Rich and unmotivated, Kenyon spent his life in society, as a "wealthy and generous dilettante", and a gastronome friend of Philip Courtenay the reputed epicure. He received money under the Slave Compensation Act 1837 for the Chester Estate, Trelawny Parish, Jamaica, inherited from his brother-in-law, and left £180,000 at his death. He died after a long illness at Cowes on 3 December 1856, and was buried in the vault belonging to his wife's family in Lewisham churchyard.

Kenyon published:

In Somerset, Kenyon made the acquaintance of Thomas Poole. Through Poole he encountered Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, Robert Southey, and Charles Lamb. His life became an ever-widening circle of men of letters.

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