♂John White

John White (buried 1 February 1579/80) was a man of Timsbury, in Hampshire, England, and the grandfather of John White^W, the Dorchester minister who helped to obtain the charter of the Massachusetts Bay Company. He was the thirteenth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his son John White (died between 1616 and 1618).

Family

John’s branch of the Whites is said to have been “discended of a yonger brother of White of Southwicke”, the Whites of Southwick, also in Hampshire. A modern compiled history of the family makes him the second son of Mark White of Timsbury and Leckford, and his father a brother of Dr John White^W, the Bishop of Winchester, who died in 1560.

John White married Mildred Weston, and they are said to have had seven children. Their eldest son, John, settled at Stanton St John, in Oxfordshire, where he lived as a gentleman and raised a family that included the Dorchester minister. Two of the daughters were probably Avis, who married a man named Summers, and Alice, who married a man named Cannon; their brother John remembered both in his will in 1616.

Mildred was buried on 8 January 1567. John outlived her. On 26 January 1579/80, at Timsbury, he made his will, asking to be buried in the churchyard there and naming his son John as sole executor; the will also names his son Walter and five daughters. He was buried on 1 February 1579/80, and the will was proved in the Archdeaconry Court of Winchester on 2 August 1580.

Notes

Sources

His place in the family rests on 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 Timsbury in the County of Hampshire discended of a yonger brother of White of Southwicke” and his wife “the Da: of .... Weston”, with her first name left blank. The pedigree was attested by William Ryley, Lancaster Herald, for his grandsons John White of Dorchester and Josiah White of Hornchurch. It is a compiled source, not a parish record. His burial date, his wife’s first name and burial, his father Mark White and the count of seven children come from Michael Russell’s compiled pages on the White family for the Dorset online parish clerks, which give the burial as “1st Feb. 1579/80”.

Mark White and the bishop

Russell makes John’s son “the grandson of Mark White of Timsbury and Leckford in Hampshire who was the brother of Dr John White (1511-1560)”, and names that Dr White as the Bishop of Winchester. Russell’s note on the marriage settlement of John’s daughter Avis, drawn from Frances Rose-Troup’s 1930 book on the Dorchester minister, calls Dr White the uncle of Avis and of her brother John; by the descent Russell gives, he was their great-uncle. The two statements do not agree, and neither is a record.

The daughters Avis and Alice

The will of his son John White of Stanton St John, dated 30 September 1616, leaves “my sister Avis Sum’ers” ten shillings “to be layd out in a ring” and “my sister Alice Cannon” forty shillings. In 1616 “sister” could also mean a sister-in-law. Rose-Troup, as Russell reports her, places Avis as a sister of the testator by blood. Alice is placed as a daughter of John and Mildred because she is not known among the children of the testator’s wife’s parents.

The will and probate

Frances Rose-Troup’s 1930 book prints the will in full (pp. 409-410). It is dated 26 January 1579/80 and made at Timsbury. It asks for burial in the churchyard there, makes his son John sole executor, and names his son Walter and five daughters. The daughters appear as Avys, Jone Smarte, Ellyn Knyghte, Alys and Syssley Gradyche. Matching them to Avis, Joan, Ellen, Alice and Cecily rests on those spellings, and the surnames Smarte, Knyghte and Gradyche look like married names, which is an inference. Together with the sons John and Walter, the five daughters match the seven children given above.

The same book gives the probate in the Archdeaconry Court of Winchester on 2 August 1580. The will, its date and its place are on record; the matching of spellings to the family list is an inference.

Not used

An online family tree gives John and Mildred a marriage at Timsbury in 1549, birth years for both and a list of eight children with dates, several of them earlier than that marriage. It cites no sources, and none of it is used here.