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Rt. Hon. Sir John Henry Kennaway, Bart., M.A., P.C. [Obituary]

Trans. Devon. Assoc. vol. 52, (1920), pp. 41-43.

by

Maxwell Adams (General Secretary)

Prepared by Michael Steer

The Obituary was read at the Association’s July 1920 Totnes meeting. Sir John was essentially an English Conservative Party politician. He was MP for East Devon from 1870- 85, when the constituency was abolished by the Redistrbution of Seats Act. He was then MP for the new Honiton constituency from 1885 until the 1910 general election. He was made a Privy Counsellor in 1897 and appointed CB in the 1902 Coronation Honours. A potted biography together with a caricature of his likeness, and a copy of the Kennaway coat of arms is available in Wikipedia. This obituary, from a copy of a rare and much sought-after journal can be downloaded from the Internet Archive. Google has sponsored the digitisation of books from several libraries. These books, on which copyright has expired, are available for free educational and research use, both as individual books and as full collections to aid researchers.

Sir John Kennaway, who joined the Association in 1872, died on the 7th September, 1919 in his eighty-third year.
Late in the eighteenth century Richard and John Kennaway, second and third sons of an Exeter merchant, left home for Bengal and were shipwrecked at the mouth of the Ganges. Both were saved and entered the service of the East India Company, one in a civil and the other in a military capacity. John, in 1780, was given a commission as Captain by General Sir Eyre Coote, and served in the Carnatic during the invasion of Hyder Ali, and in 1788, while aide-de-camp to the Marquis Cornwallis, was sent as envoy to the Court of Hyderabad, in which he was eminently successful and soon afterwards concluded a treaty of alliance with the Nizam against Tippoo Sultan, for which services he was created a baronet in 1791, and a year later adjusted a definite treaty of peace with Tippoo Sultan.
After a long sojourn in India both brothers returned to England. Richard never married, but Sir John married and purchased the Escot estate near Ottery St. Mary. The original mansion was built by Inigo Jones, and had long been the seat of the Yonge family. This was burnt to the ground, and the second baronet, before erecting a new house, built the present little Escot Church where the family, servants, and tenants worship and lie buried. The building of the present mansion began in 1838 - thirty years after the fire - and the corner-stone is inscribed to the effect that the late Sir John, then a babe in arms, laid it.
Sir John Henry Kennaway, the elder son of the second baronet, who married Emily Frances, daughter of Thomas Kingscote of Kingscote in Gloucester, was born at Escot in 1837, and was educated at Harrow under Dr. Vaughan, and at Balliol College,- Oxford, where his room was next to Jowett's. He graduated M.A. and was called to the Bar at the Inner Temple in 1864 and went on the Western Circuit, the leaders of which were Coleridge, Karslake, Kingdon, and Kinglake. Subsequently, he went on a tour in Greece, the Crimea, and the Holy Land. At the close of the Civil War in America he visited that country, the outcome of which was his interesting work, entitled On Sherman's Track.
In 1870 Sir John entered Parliament as Conservative member for East Devon, and when the County was divided into single member constituencies Sir John took the Honiton division and Sir William Walrond the Tiverton. He retired from Parliament in 1910, having sat there for forty years without interruption, having, on the death of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, become "father of the House of Commons."
In 1873, on the death of his father, he succeeded to the baronetcy. In 1897 he was appointed a Privy Councillor, while at King Edward's Coronation he was made a C.B. in consideration of his eminent services as a Volunteer. For many years he was President of the Church Missionary Society, and of the London Society for Promoting Christianity among the Jews.
Sir John married in 1866 Fanny, daughter of Archibald F. Arbuthnot, and is succeeded in the baronetcy by his only son John, born in April, 1879.
Sir John was greatly honoured in his own county of which he was a Deputy-Lieutenant. To enumerate all the charitable religious and educational institutions which he supported would be to name nearly all in Devon.
The following is a sample of how his praises were sung by his adherents at election times: -

A fine, gert man 
Is our Sir Jan,
A gert, fine man is he: 
He has long been sent up to Parl-y-ment,
And he's good enough for we!

Neither State nor Church 
Will he leave in the lurch,
For loyal is our M.P.; 
He can speak out straight 
In any debate,
And he's good enough for we!

Then let every man 
Vote for our Sir Jan,
He's quite good enough for we