The main road from Clevedon to Kingston Seymour trends sharply inland, passing the little village of Kenn. Seaward the flat and featureless lands spread to an oozy shore; Kenn itself, an insignificant village, standing beside a sluggish runnel of the same name. From this place sprang the Ken family, which numbered among its members the celebrated Bishop of Bath and Wells, who owed his preferment from a subordinate position at Winchester to his having, while there, refused to give up his house for the accommodation of Nell Gwynne. Charles the Second was a true sportsman. He respected those who were true to themselves, whether it were an unrepentant highwayman, whom he could pardon and fit out with a telling nickname; or a Church dignitary whose conscience forbade him to curry favour by housing a King’s mistress. So, in 1684, when a choice was to be made of a new Bishop of Bath and Wells, the King declared that no one should have it but “the little black fellow that refused his lodging to poor Nelly.”