By the publication of ‘A Bride-Bvsh; or a Direction for Married Persons. Plainely describing the Dvties common to both, and peculiar to each of them’ (London, 1619, 4to; republished 1623; Bristol, 1768, 12mo; translated into Welsh, Llanrwst, 1834, 8vo), in which he propounded that ‘the sin of adultery or wilfull desertion dissolveth the bond and annihilateth the covenant of matrimonie,’ Whately raised a storm of opposition in the church. He was convened before the high commission, but, retracting his propositions on 4 May 1621, was dismissed. To the second edition of ‘The Bride Bush’ (1623) he appended an address to the reader ‘from him that had rather confesse his owne error than make thee erre for company;’ and again in ‘A Care Cloth’ he denied his former opinion. Whately died at Banbury on 10 May 1639. He was buried in the churchyard under a raised monument, now destroyed, but the remarkable inscription is preserved by a copy made on 13 July 1660 (Harl. MS. 4170).
The people of Banbury held Whately in high esteem, a fact referred to ironically by Richard Corbet [q. v.], successively bishop of Norwich and Oxford, in his ‘Iter Boreale,’ written about 1625, where he says, referring to the neglected condition of the church:
If not for God's, for Mr. Wheatlye's sake,
Levell the walkes; suppose these pitt falls make
Him spraine a lecture, or misplace a joynt
In his long prayer, or his fiveteenth point.
Whately's engraved portrait is prefixed to the posthumous volume of sermons issued by his executors, Henry Scudder and Edward Leigh.
By his wife, Martha Hunt (buried at Banbury on 10 Dec. 1641), Whately had two sons—William (d. 24 Jan. 1647), perhaps identical with William Whately, mayor of Banbury; and Thomas, vicar of Sutton-under-Brailes, Warwickshire, whence he was ejected in 1662; he afterwards preached at Milton, Woodstock, and Long Combe, Oxfordshire, and was buried at Banbury on 27 Jan. 1698 (Calamy, ed. Palmer, iii. 350). An engraved portrait is prefixed to his ‘Prototypes.’
Whately was also author of: 1. ‘The Redemption of Time,’ London, 1606, 12mo. 2. ‘A Caveat for the Covetous,’ London, 1609, 12mo. 3. ‘The New Birth,’ London, 1618, 4to; 2nd edit. 1622, 4to. 4. ‘God's Husbandry,’ London, 1622, 8vo; republished London, 1846, 12mo. 5. ‘A Pithie, Short, and Methodicall opening of the Ten Commandements,’ London, 1622, 8vo. 6. ‘Mortification,’ London, 1623, 4to. 7. ‘Charitable Teares,’ London, 1623, 4to. 8. ‘A Care-Cloth; or a Treatise of the Cvmbers and Troubles of Marriage,’ London, 1624. 9. ‘Sinne no more,’ London, 1628, 4to (a rare sermon, preached upon the occasion of a fire which on Sunday, 2 March 1628, destroyed almost the whole of Banbury town). 10. ‘The Poore Man's Advocate,’ London, 1637, 8vo. 11. ‘The Oyle of Gladness, or Comfort for Dejected Sinners,’ London, 1637, 8vo. 12. ‘Prototypes’ (posthumous), London, 1640, fol.; 2nd edit. 1647, fol.
Whately's library, catalogued by Edward Millington (London, 1683, 4to), was sold at Bridge's coffee-house in Pope's Head Alley on 23 April 1683; but Scudder tells us that, although a great reader, Whately did not own many books, having the run of a bookseller's shop in Banbury.
[Scudder's Life of Whately, prefixed to ‘Prototypes;’ Wood's Athenæ Oxon. ed. Bliss, ii. 638; Brook's Lives of the Puritans, ii. 436; Fuller's Worthies, ii. 220, 232; Mede's Works, 3rd ed. fol. 1672, p. xxxvii; Beesley's Hist. of Banbury, containing the best account of him; Durham's Life of Robert Harris, 1660; Granger's Biogr. Hist. ii. 190; Macray's Reg. Magd. Coll. ii. 195; Bodleian Catalogue; Clarke's Marrow of Ecclesiastical History, 1675, p. 460.]
WHATTON, WILLIAM ROBERT (1790–1835), surgeon and antiquary, son of Henry Whatton, by Elizabeth, daughter of John Watkinson, was born at Loughborough, Leicestershire, on 17 Feb. 1790. He was admitted a member of the Royal College of Surgeons on 16 March 1810, and settled at Manchester about 1816, where he was afterwards surgeon to the Royal Infirmary. In January 1822 he joined the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, and was elected librarian in 1828. To the ‘Memoirs’ of that society he contributed in 1824 ‘Observations on the Armorial Bearings of the Town of Manchester and on the Descent of the Baronial Family of Gresley’ (printed for the author, Manchester, 4to). He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society on 5 June 1834, and was F.S.A. of London and Edinburgh. To ‘Archæologia’ (xxx. 595) he sent an ‘Account of the Discovery of an Ancient Instrument of Brass at Rochdale,’ and to ‘Archæologia Scotica’ (iv. 1) an interesting paper on certain furniture at Speke Hall, Lancashire. In 1828 he wrote ‘The History of Manchester School,’ and in 1833 ‘A History of Chetham Hospital and Library,’ which together form the third volume of Hibbert-Ware's ‘Foundations in Manchester.’ He projected a work on the worthies of Lancashire; but when Edward Baines [q. v.] announced his
