Thomas Ken - Ken's Reputation and Legacy

Ken's Reputation and Legacy

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; 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 20.