a market-town and municipal borough of England, in the county of Kent, 19 miles S.S.E. of Maidstone and 55 S.E. of London. It stands on a hill in the midst of a rich country, occupied chiefly by hop plantations. The church is large and handsome, chiefly in the perpendicular style. At the west end is a lofty tower, to which a beacon was formerly attached. The old saying that "Tenterden steeple was the cause of the Goodwin Sands," according to a story related by Bishop Latimer in one of his sermons, originated on an occasion when Sir Thomas Tenterden More was sent with a commission to investigate the cause of the formation of the Goodwin Sands, and obstruction of Sandwich harbour, when this sage opinion was propounded by one of the oldest inhabitants. But a different explanation of the saying is also given. There are in Tenterden places of worship for Wesleyan Methodists, Baptists, and Unitarians; national, British, and commercial schools, and an Athenæum. Weekly markets for corn, and an annual fair for cattle, wool, &c., are held here. Pop. 3901.

Charles Abbott, Lord, was the son of a barber, and was born at Canterbury on the 7th of October 1762. A writer in the Gentleman's Magazine describes his father as a "tall, erect, primitive-looking man with a large pigtail," who was often to be seen "going about with the instruments of his business under his arms, and attended frequently by his son Charles, a youth as decent, grave, and primitive-looking as himself." The turning point in the boy's fate was the year 1769, when he was entered a pupil at Canterbury school, then taught by the excellent Dr Osmond Beauvoir. Here, as ever afterwards during his life, he displayed the same talents and industry which gradually led to his being made a baron. He was calm, accurate, and steady; narrow-minded perhaps, but safe, sure, and exceedingly industrious. In 1779 he was captain of the school, and by the bounty of a few individuals he was enabled to enter Corpus Christi College, Oxford, in 1781. Here he distinguished himself much, and gained the prize in 1786 for a neat, lucid, elegant essay "On the Use and Abuse of Satire." He was admitted a fellow of his college, and took pupils. Abbott entered himself at the Inner Temple in 1788, and was called to the bar in 1795. Having chosen the Oxford circuit, he rapidly rose into great business. His income in a few years amounted to upwards of L8000. In 1802, he published his excellent Treatise on the Law relative to Merchant-Ships and Seamen, which has since gone through numerous editions. In 1816 he was made puisne judge in the court of Common Pleas. He was knighted shortly after, and succeeded Lord Ellenborough as chief-justice of the Court of King's Bench. In all his decisions on the bench he showed an anxiety to make his judgments agree with common sense. He was a man of facts, in short, of the true Oxford type as it figured in those days in the society of England, and was excessively fond of supporting the executive. Sir Charles Abbott was made a peer in 1827, by the title of Baron Tenterden. He took an active part in the business of Legislation, and had a principal share in a number of acts passed for the alteration and the improvement of the law. During the long vacation he amused himself by reading the classics, studying botany, and inditing Latin verses on flowers and plants. In these refined and elegant pastimes his taste must have attained to an exquisite degree of culture. When Sir James Scarratt on one occasion referred to the poetry of Byron, Southey, and Wordsworth, Lord Tenterden begged to observe that "for himself he was bred in too severe a school of taste to admire such effusions." He died on the 4th November 1832, leaving two sons and two daughters. (See Lord Campbell's Lives of the Chief Justices, vol. iii.)