Life
He was the third son of John Kettell, gentleman, of King's Langley, Hertfordshire. He was nominated to a scholarship at Trinity in 1578 by Lady Elizabeth Paulet of Tittenhanger, the widow of Sir Thomas Pope, founder of the college. One of his contemporaries and friends at Trinity was Edward Hoby. Kettell was elected Fellow in 1583. He graduated B.A. 1682, M.A. 1586, B.D. 1594, and D.D. 1597, and, after filling various college offices, was elected president in 1599, on the death of Arthur Yeldard. Among those who as students were under his care while he was either tutor or president were the bishops Gilbert Sheldon, Henry Glenham, William Lucy, Gilbert Ironside, and Robert Skinner; also Sir John Denham, James Harrington, Edmund Ludlow, Henry Ireton, George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore and Cecilius Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore, William, Earl of Craven, and Sir Henry Blount. He rebuilt the college hall, and added attics or 'cocklofts ' to the old Durham College quadrangle, of which the east side still remains. About 1620 he built for the stone house in Broad Street which is still known as Kettell Hall, an investment of his own which later came to the college.
Kettell was one of the older heads of houses who disliked William Laud's high-handed reforms. He saved the old paintings in the college chapel from the puritan commissioner, William Fiennes, 1st Viscount Saye and Sele. Outside Oxford Kettell held the rectory of Garsington, which was attached to his office of president, and was private chaplain to Sir Francis Walsingham's widow and to Thomas Bilson, Bishop of Winchester. John Aubrey, who was admitted to Trinity in 1642, and knew Kettell in his old age, narrates many anecdotes.
Kettell died about 17 July 1643, and was buried at Garsington on 5 August. Aubrey states that 'he had two wives, if not three, but no child,' and that his second wife was the widow of Edward Villiers of Hothorpe, Northamptonshire, whose daughter Elizabeth married George Bathurst, and was the mother of Ralph Bathurst, president of Trinity College; but there are probably some inaccuracies here. His wife was buried at Garsington in 1624, and an infant daughter in 1606.
Read more about this topic: Ralph Kettell
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Aim above morality.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Undershaft: Alcohol is a very necessary article. It heals the sick—Barbara: It does nothing of the sort. Undershaft: Well, it assists the doctor: that is perhaps a less questionable way of putting it. It makes life bearable to millions of people who could not endure their existence if they were quite sober. It enables Parliament to do things at eleven at night that no sane person would do at eleven in the morning.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“For, as it is dislocation and detachment from the life of God, that makes things ugly, the poet, who re-attaches things to nature and the Whole,—re-attaching even artificial things, and violations of nature, to nature, by a deeper insight,—disposes very easily of the most disagreeable facts.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)