the Cluniac priory of Longueville, near Rouen, where he died on 4 May 1618.
White was a frank, open-minded man, with a singular winning way, which gained him many friends. Dauntless and warm-hearted, his generous nature led him into impetuous actions which caused difficulties a more prudent man would have escaped. It is perhaps open to question whether he would have succeeded so well as he did had he not had the help of such men as John Roberts (1576–1610) [q. v.] and John (Leander) Jones to supply the deficiencies of his character. The only known portrait is reproduced in the ‘Downside Review,’ vol. xvii., from the original in possession of Miss Berkeley of Spetchley.
[Dodd's Church History, vol. iii.; Tierney, vols. iii. iv. v.; Lewis Owen's Running Register; Weldon's History (MS.) and Chronological Notes; Ely's Certaine Briefe Notes; Reyner's Apostolatus Benedictinorum in Anglia; Maihew's Trophæa; A reply to Fr. Parsons's Libel, by W. C.; Records of the English Catholics, i. ii. Brit. Mus. Add. MS. 21203; Cotton MS. Plut. ciii. E. 14; Taunton's English Black Monks of St. Benedict; Gasquet's Henry VIII and the English Monasteries; R. B. Camm's A Benedictine Martyr; Downside Review, vols. xvi. and xvii.; Ampleforth Journal, ii., and various manuscripts quoted from the archives of the diocese of Westminster, the old chapter, the Stonyhurst (jesuit) collections, the registers of the college of Valladolid, and manuscripts from Monte Cassino and Silos.]
WHITE, JOHN (1590–1645), parliamentarian, commonly called ‘Century White,’ was the second son of Henry White of Henllan (now written Hentland), in the parish of Rhoscrowther, Pembrokeshire, where he was born on 29 June 1590. His mother was Jane, daughter of Richard Fletcher of Bangor, who appears to have been a near relative of Richard Fletcher [q. v.], bishop of London (Dwnn, Her. Visitations, i. 129, and cf. p. 161; Phillipps, Pedigrees of Pembrokeshire, pp. 131, 139). White was descended from a family of wealthy merchants of that name which had been closely identified for many generations with the town of Tenby. One of them, Thomas White (d. 1492), who was six times mayor of that town between 1457 and 1481, aided the earls of Richmond and Pembroke to escape from Tenby to Brittany after the battle of Tewkesbury (1471), and was in turn rewarded by receiving from the former, after he had ascended the throne, a grant of all his lands in the neighbourhood of Tenby (Laws, Little England beyond Wales, pp. 216, 226; cf. Owen, Pembrokeshire, i. 30). Thomas's brother, John White, was mayor seven times between 1482 and 1498. Their tombs, with recumbent figures—‘beautiful works of art,’ in a good state of preservation—are in Tenby church (Fenton, pp. 450–2; Norris, Tenby; Laws, pp. 233–4; Arch. Cambr. 4th ser. xi. 130).
John White, who, with his elder brother, Griffith, matriculated at Jesus College, Oxford, on 20 Nov. 1607 (Foster, Alumni Oxon. 1500–1714), proceeded thence to the Middle Temple, where he was called to the bar in 1618, and became autumn reader or bencher in 1641. White is said to have been a puritan from his youth. In 1625 he and eleven others formed themselves into a committee known as the feoffees for impropriations. A large fund was speedily raised by voluntary contributions for the purpose of buying up impropriate tithes, so as to make a better provision for a preaching ministry. Their proceedings were, however, attacked by Peter Heylyn [q. v.], and in 1632 William Noye [q. v.], at the instigation of Laud, exhibited an information against them in the exchequer chamber. On 11 Feb. 1632–3 the court decreed the dissolution of the feoffment and the confiscation of all its funds and patronage to the king's use, while the feoffees appear to have been censured in the Star-chamber (Heylyn, Cyprianus Anglicus, 1668, pp. 210–12; Gardiner, Hist. of England, vii. 258, quoting Exchequer Decrees, iv. 88). It was probably during this time that White had occasion to appear before Laud as counsel about a benefice, and when that business was done Laud ‘fell bitterly on him as an underminer of the church.’
On 26 Oct. 1640 White was returned to parliament for Southwark, his colleague being Edward Bagshaw [q. v.] (Members of Parliament, i. 494). When, in the following month, it was decided that there should be a grand committee of the house to inquire into the immoralities of the clergy, White was at once elected its chairman, and he also presided over an acting sub-committee for considering how to replace the scandalous ministers by puritan preachers. When another committee was appointed in December 1642 to relieve plundered ministers, its proceedings got interwound with the previous one, White being at the head of the whole agency. According to an opponent (Thomas Pierce, The New Discoverer Discover'd, 1659, p. 140), it was White's boast that ‘he and his had ejected eight thousand churchmen in four or five years;’ but according to a recent estimate (Masson) the committee during its whole existence ejected no more than about sixteen hundred. With the view
