TEN 



lish divine, son of a clergyman in the diocese of Ely, who 

 was advanced by his own deserved reputation for piety, 

 charity, learning, and liberality, to tin- hi. on in 



the English church. He was Lorn at Cottcnliatn in Cam- 

 bridgeshire, educated in the grammar-school at Norwich, 

 from whence he passed to Corpus < 

 bridge, where he was admitted in lul.J. and look his 

 bach. ee in 1G.~>7. The university w;us then in 



the stale to winch it had hem brought by the parliamenlaiy 

 commissioners, and the turn of mind of TenUon not ac- 

 cording with what at that time was expected from persons 

 undertaking the ministry, he for a time turned to the study 

 of medicine ; but about 1G5U he was privately ordained in 

 the episcopal method then proscribed by the govern- 

 ment of the time. The ordination was performed at Rich- 

 mond in Surrey by Dr. Duppa. the expelled bishop of 

 Salisbury. The restoration of the king, and with it of the 

 . ipal church, soon following, he was made minister of 

 St. Andrew'.- church in Cambridge, in which situation he 

 gained much credit by his attention to his parishioners 

 during the time of the plague, in 1GG5. He had other 

 preferment in the country, as the church of St. Peter Man- 

 croft in Norwich, and the rectory of Holy well in Hunting- 

 donshire. This brings down his history to the year 1680, 

 when, being then doctor in divinity, he was placed on a 

 more conspicuous stage, being presented by King Charles 

 II. to the living of St. Martin's in the Fields. 



In this public situation he acted with great prudence, 

 and with a liberality which emulated the munificence of 

 the clerirr of earlier times, giving more than 300/. to the 

 poor of his parish in the time of the distress occasioned by 

 t he hard frost of 1G83. and endow inir a free-school, and build- 

 ing and furnishing a library. In 1085 he discharged the diffi- 

 cult duty of attending the duke of Monmouth previous to his 

 execution with singular discretion. In his politic! he was a 

 Whig, and favourer of the Revolution, and was accordingly 

 early marked out by King William for advancement in the 

 church. In HiK) he was made archdeacon of Londjon, and 

 in 1G!H bishop of Lincoln. This large diocese, which had 

 been too much neglected, he brought into order. In 1GU4, 

 on the death of Dr. Tillotson, he was made archbishop of 

 Canterbury, in which high dignity he remained for twenty 

 years. He died on the 14th of December, 1715, and was 

 interred in the parish church of Lambeth. 



A large account of his life was published soon after his 

 death, without the name of any author in the title-page, 

 but evidently written by a person possessed of good in- 

 formation, and who was fully sensible to his merits. He 

 speaks of him thus : ' And as he was an exact pattern of 

 that exemplary piety, charity, stcdfastness, and good con- 

 duct requisite' in a governor of the church, so perhaps 

 since the primitive age of Christianity nnd the time of the 

 Apostles there has been no man whose learning and 

 abilities have better qualified him to discharge and defend 

 a trust of that high importance.' 



The library winch he founded in the parish of St. Mar- 

 tin's still exists ; and he may be regarded as the founder 

 of the library in the cathedral church of St. Paul, having 

 presented two hundred and fifty pounds to make up four 

 hundred and fifty, which the dean and resident iaries irave 

 for the libraries of two clciirymcn bought by them in 1707. 

 His will contains many munificent bequests for charitable 

 and religions ohj. 



Archbishop lenison has left no writings behind him 

 which can be said to make part of the irem-ral literature 

 of the country, or to establish lor him a literary reputation. 

 Yet he published several treat connected with 



the rcliirions ai. controversies of Ins age. 



TEN N ANT. sMl 1 II SON. a distinguished chemist, was 

 born at Selby. in Yorkshire, November :), 17(il. and died 

 FcbiT.aiy .Mi Isl.-j. He was the only child of the Rev. 

 Ca! vert Tennant, of whom little i- known evept that la- 

 had been a Fellow of St. John' 



was ali icnd oi Dr. Rutherford, Regiun Prof' : <>i liivmity 

 in that University. 



While very young he gave many proofs of a particular 

 turn for chemistry and natural philosophy, and after 

 quitting school he n of completing his 



chemical studies under the immediate instruction of Dr. 

 'ley, who was then enjoying hii;li and deserved repu- 

 tation for the extent and variety of his di-covcnes m 

 pneumatic chemistry ; but this was found impractiea- 

 consequence of the previous engagements of Dr. Priestley. 



TEN 



In the year 1781 he went to Edinburgh with the inten- 

 tion of studying medicine. Of his companions, occupa- 

 tions, or studies while in Scotland, little is known, except 

 that heicccivcd instruction fiom Dr. Black : he did not 

 r continue long in that University, for in October. 

 17 s - he was admitted a member of Christ's College, Cam- 

 bridge, where he then began to reside. 



In the summer of 1784 he travelled into Denmark and 

 n, with the intention, partly of examining the 

 mines of (lie latter country, but chiefly with the view of 

 becoming personally acquainted with Sch. ..horn 



he had conceived a high degree of admiration, especially 

 on account of the simplicity of the apparatus which he cm- 

 ployed in his chemical researches. In a year or two after- 

 lie went to Paris, where he became acquaints! with 

 some of the eminent chemists: thence he went to Holland 

 and the Netherlands, after having recovered from a serious 

 illness with which he was seixed during his residence in 

 the French capital. 



In January, 1785, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal 

 Society, and in 17HG he left Christ's College and rein 

 to Emmanuel College ; in 1788 he took his deiri> 

 bachelor of physic, and soon after quitted Cambridge and 

 came to reside in London. In 17!)G he took a doctor's de- 

 gree at Cambridge, but as his fortune was independent, 

 he relinquished all idea of practice as a physician. In 

 1813 he was elected Professor of Chemistry at Cambridge, 

 having in the previous year delivered, with great su> 

 a few lectures on the principles of mineralogy to some of 

 his friends. 



In the month of September, 1814, Mr. Tennant went for 

 the last time to France, and on his return home on the 20th of 

 February, 1815, he arrived at Boulogne with Baron Bulow, 

 in order to embark there. They embarked on the 22nd, but 

 were forced back by the wind, and meant to embark again 

 in the evening : in the meantime they took horses and 

 went to see Bonaparte's pillar, about a league off, and 

 going off the road on their return to look at a small fort, 

 of which the drawbridge wanted a bolt, they were both 

 thrown, with their horses, into the ditch. Baron Billow 

 was merely stunned, but Mr. Tennant's skull was so 

 severely fractured, that he died within an hour after. 



The following character of Mr. Tennant is chiefly coj ied. 

 with some variations, from the ' Annals of Philosophy,' vol. 

 vi., and the writer of this brief notice, having well known 

 the subject of it, is able to testify to the accuracy of the 

 statements in all the more important particulars. 



Mr. Tennant was tall and slender in his person, with a 

 thin face and light complexion. His appearance, notwith- 

 standing some singularity of manners, and great negligence 

 of dress, was on the whole striking and agreeable. His 

 countenance in early life had been singularly engaging ; 

 and at favourable times, when he was in good health 

 still very pleasing. The general cast of his features was ex- 

 pressive, and bore strong marks of intelligence ; and seve- 

 ral persons have been struck with a general resemblance 

 in his countenance to the well-known portraits of Locke. 



Of his intellectual character, the distinguishing and fun- 

 damental principle was good sense ; a prompt and intuitive 

 perception of truth, both upon those questions in which 

 certainty is attainable and those which must be determined 

 by the nicer results of moral evidence. In quick penetra- 

 tion, united with soundness and accuracy of judgment, he 

 was perhaps without an equal. He saw immediately and 

 with gn-at distinctness where the strength of an argument 

 lay, and upon what points the decision was ultimately t o de- 

 pend ; and he was remarkable for the faculty of st at! nir the 

 of an obscure and complicated question very shortly, 

 and with great simplicity and precision. The calmness 

 and temper, as well as the singular perspicuity, which he 

 di played on such occasions, were alike admirable : and sel- 

 dom failed to convince the unprejudiced, and to discon- 

 cert or silence his opponents. He had a peculiar cast of 

 humour, which was heightened by a perfect gravity of 

 countenance, a quiet familiar manner, and a characte- 

 iMic simplicity of language. In consequence, principally, 

 of the declining state of his health, his talent for con- 

 versation was perhaps less uniformly conspicuous during 

 his latter years, but his mind had lost none of its vigour, 

 and he never failed, when he exerted himself, to dis- 



uliar powers. 



The ' Plu'losophical Transactions' contain eight papers by 

 Mr. Tennant : 1, ' On the Decomposition of Fixed Air,' 



