[18] A different Thomas Wells altogether (died c. 1552), of the Southampton customs house, was cousin to John's sister Agnes White of South Warnborough, and on terms with Dr Steward, Chancellor of Winchester.
The Warden of New College at that time, Dr John London (1526-1542), adhered strongly to traditional Roman Catholic observance, though by law obliged to accept the King as Supreme Head of the English Church and forbidden to make appeals to Rome.
"[22] White's personality no doubt evolved at Oxford partly by association with his eldest brother, Henry, who preceded him at New College, became Vice-Chancellor of the University for 1531, and was principal of the school of Canon Law.
Dr London wrote highly of him to John Gostwick, seeking ways to improve his income, since the Statute in Restraint of Appeals to Rome (1533) had deprived White of a lectureship.
"[28] "...Seven years I taught, the last day of which teachingBecame the first of my office of Wardenship.Fortune altered but lessened not my labours,And my cares were in no small respects increased..." John's elder brother Robert, a clothier, died at the end of 1533, and the Farnham estates went to his son Francis.
[32] When Henry White of Oxford died in 1538 he left John his De Vita Christi and Commentary on the Psalms by Ludolph of Saxony, the works of Origen, "and som other that likith him of divinitie and a psalter of fine velame covered with changeable sarcenet, and a gold ring with a red stone which I hadd of him."
According to a famous story he brought various large crucifixes crashing down in the middle of the night by a contrivance of ropes remotely operated:[40] the circumstances belong to around 1547, though Strype gives an earlier date.
White's book was first prepared for publication in Louvain in 1550 (to escape censure), and opened with his dedicatory verses to the Princess Mary as the sister and daughter of kings.
[51] His evidence served to cast both men in a favourable light: Gardiner "did cause maister White then Scholemaister, after byshop of Wynt., to make certain verses extolling the kinges supremacie against the usurped power of the Pope, encouraging also his scholers to do the lyke.
On 22 August 1553 (as Warden of St Mary's College, Winchester) he was appointed to the commission to hear and decide the petition of Edmund Bonner for his reinstatement as Bishop of London.
[62] The Epistle to Peter Martyr (then under house arrest) was prefixed, and the verse dedication to Princess Mary remained, although she was now Queen: "Et soror et regis proles generosa BritanniCaesareo salve ventre, Maria, sata."
[67] In July 1554, during the interim between his appointment as Bishop and his resignation as Warden, came the momentous (and for White, highly propitious) occasion of the marriage of Queen Mary to Philip II of Spain.
[69] "Amonges al others mayster Whyte, then Bishop of Lincolne (hys Poeticall vayne beyng dronken with ioy of the Maryage)," wrote John Foxe, "spued out certayne verses": he quoted from Whyte's verse genealogy showing that both Mary and Philip were descended from John of Gaunt,[70] and added the longer verse[71] which begins: "Nubat ut angla anglo, regina Maria PhilippoInque suum fontem regia stirps redeat,Noluit humani generis daemon vetus hostis.Sed deus, anglorum provida spes voluit..."[72] "That English queen Mary should marry the Englishman Philip,And the royal line of blood should return to its source,The devil wished not, ancient foe of humankind.But god, provident hope of the English, willed it... " (&c.) This may be from the book, or part of it, which John Pitts saw at Oxford, which he called "One Volume of Epigrams and other Poems", Nubat ut Hispano Regina.
It showed pairs of winged and garlanded youths (springing at the waist from scrollwork with animal-headed tendrils) supporting panels (surmounted by crowns) bearing the repeated motto "VYVE LE ROY" (i.e., May The King Live).
[1] The commissioners were to obtain a recantation and reconciliation with Rome, or else proceed to judgement for heresy, to strip them of their ecclesiastical dignities, excommunicate them and hand them over to the secular authorities for punishment.
He pronounced that Ridley had shown himself unwilling to recant on the court's terms, and condemned him with a major excommunication, to be cast out from all participation in the church and given over for punishment as a heretic.
Latimer's final answers to the articles were required and, these not varying from the previous day, White read his condemnation without more ado, and wound up the meeting with brisk efficiency.
Two days later Stephen Gratwick (who had lived in the Chichester diocese) was brought before White at St George the Martyr, Southwark, where the bishop interrogated him, attempting to draw him into his own jurisdiction.
In these public examinations, White repeatedly demanded that the prisoners should say whether Judas Iscariot had partaken of Christ's body at the Last Supper, and, having unworthily done so, was entered by Satan.
A deceiver of princes, a butcher of souls, a double-minded and perjured hypocrite, and an ambitious heretic, he had uplifted his god Mauzzin,[102] a dumb, dead and dry idol, the most pernicious of all, against the true, living and holy god: and in order that, as an architect of impious doctrine and a despiser of the most patent truth, he might defend loaf-worship against Peter Martyr, the most learned theologian of our time, he brings into the arena Jews, Egyptians, pagans, rabbis, satyrs, sumners, monks, women, popes, singers, heretics, and men like Eckius, Cochlaeus, Pighius, Hofmeister, Fisher, Gagnaeus and Gardiner, as well as Ganymedes and devils, with the boy Joliffe, and More's Utopia.
He preached at the funeral of the bishop of Rochester on 30 November 1558, and it was two weeks later, at the mass for Queen Mary on 14 December, that he gave offence to the new monarch by the words of his sermon.
[48] Sir John Harington takes up the story:"His text was out of Ecclesiastes IV.ii, Laudavi mortuos magis quam viventes, et feliciorem utroque judicavi qui nec dum natus est.
Then recovering himself, he said she had left a Sister to succeed her, a Lady of great worth also whom they were now bound to obey: for, saith he, "melior est Canis vivus Leone mortuo",[108] and I hope so shall raign well and prosperously over us, but I must say still with my Text, Laudavi mortuos magis quam viventes; for certain that is, Maria optimam partem elegit":[109] at which Queen Elizabeth, taking just indignation, put him in prison, yet would proceed no further then to his deprivation, though some would have made that a more haynous matter.
Bishops Thomas Watson and John White behaved themselves with some violence and insolence, if not issuing actual threats at the Conference, at least being disposed to consider the Queen's excommunication in that public audience.
[28][119] It appears that White prepared a monumental brass for himself which consisted of a large, full-length figure depicting himself frontally, wearing a cope richly decorated with pomegranates, marguerites and Tudor roses.
[4] The opening lines explain his fear that his name and honour will be cast away by others: "Hic tegor, hic post fata Whitus propono jacereScriptor Johannes carminis ipse mei.Sin alibi sors est putrescere qui meus essetTunc patior tumulus fiat ut alterius.Ne sine honore tenax sine nomine linqueret heresId timui exemplis turbor et inde novis.
"[28] "Here am I buried, here in death I propose to lie,I, John White, who write mine own memorial song.If it should be my lot, that elsewhere I shall rot,Then do I suffer my tomb to be for another.That a grasping successor should leave me no honour, no name,I have feared, and am by recent instances troubled."
As to the accuracy of the reconstruction of the figure, one large part of the original brass survives, showing most of the cope from the shoulders down to some way above the hem, and is preserved in the College collections.
[4] The principal manor of West Meon was granted, with others, to the Dean and Chapter of Winchester by Henry VIII in 1541, for the maintenance of six theology students each at Oxford and Cambridge.
The manors were compulsorily surrendered again in 1545,[123] and Hall Park was among those next granted to Thomas Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, which passed in 1550 to his son Henry, barely out of infancy.