♂John White

John White (died between 1616 and 1618) was a gentleman of Stanton St John, in Oxfordshire, and the father of John White^W, the Dorchester minister who helped to obtain the charter of the Massachusetts Bay Company. He was the twelfth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his daughter Martha White.

Family

John is said to have come from a Hampshire family, a son of John White of Timsbury and his wife Mildred Weston, of a branch descended from a younger brother of the Whites of Southwick. John White married Isabel Bawle, probably a daughter of John Bawle of Lichfield, in Staffordshire. The family was at Stanton St John by January 1575: their son John is said to have been baptized there on 6 January 1574/5. Six of their children are known: three sons, Josiah, John and Stephen, and three daughters, Mary, Martha and Elizabeth.

His daughter Martha married William Cooke, the vicar of Crediton, in Devon, at Stockton, in Wiltshire, on 27 April 1597, and the register there named her as the daughter of John White of Stanton St John, gentleman. The rector of Stockton, John Terry, was the husband of her sister Mary. When William Cooke made his will in February 1614/5, £100 of Martha’s marriage portion was still in the hands of “Mr John White my father in lawe”.

Will and death

John made his will on 30 September 1616, “in this time of mine health”, and asked to be buried in the parish church of Stanton, wherever his executor thought fit. He left £6 13s 4d to the poor of the parish, “where I dwell”, £40 to his eldest son Josiah, £20 to his son John, £20 each to his eldest daughter Mary Terry and his daughter Martha Cooke, and £10 to his daughter Elizabeth Gardner. His sisters Avis Summers and Alice Cannon were left 10 shillings for a ring and 40 shillings.

He also left £10 to New College^W, at Oxford, to be spent on two pieces of plate “for the use of the fellowes, & students in the same Colledge”. The will does not say what tied him to the college. Everything else went to his son Stephen, his sole executor, and his sons-in-law John Terry and Thomas Gardner were named overseers, with 40 shillings each for their pains. John White’s will of 30 September 1616 names no wife, so Isabel had most likely died by then.

He died before 26 September 1618, when Stephen proved the will at Oxford. The inventory of his goods came to £684 8s 10d.

Notes

Sources

The will, dated 30 September 1616 and proved at Oxford on 26 September 1618, is known from the transcription published by the Oxfordshire Family History Society; the original is partly damaged, and its gaps were filled from the register copy. His death falls between those two dates. The Stockton marriage entry (“Martha White filia Joh’is White de Stanton St. Joh’is i com. Oxon. gen.”) and William Cooke’s will are printed by Harold F. Porter, Jr., “Mr. William Cooke, Father-in-Law of Mr. William Walton of Marblehead, Massachusetts,” New England Historical and Genealogical Register 142 (1988): 361-368.

His parentage, his marriage and the list of his children come from the pedigree of “White of Dorchester” in W. Harry Rylands, ed., Pedigrees from the Visitations of Hampshire (Harleian Society 64, 1913), pp. 229-230, which calls him “John White of Stanton St John in ye County of Oxford” and his wife “Isabell da. of John Bawle of Litchfeild”. The pedigree is a compiled source, not a parish record. His mother’s first name, Mildred, and the baptism of his son John on 6 January 1574/5 come from Michael Russell’s compiled pages on the White family for the Dorset online parish clerks.

Date of death

An online family tree gives his death as 30 September 1618. That joins the day and month of the will to the year of the probate.