[2] He was given leave of absence by his college for five years in 1496-7 that he might attend William Blount, 4th Baron Mountjoy, as chaplain and confessor, on the continent.
Soon afterwards he became chaplain to Richard Foxe, bishop of Winchester; and William Roper, in his Life of More, reports that in 1504 he encouraged Thomas More in his resistance to Henry VII's exactions.
A speech against Foxe ascribed to Whitford may be apocryphal, but the closeness of his friendship with More is attested by a letter written from 'the country,' 1 May 1506, by Erasmus during his second visit to England.
It states that Whitford used to affirm Erasmus and More to be 'so alike in wit, manners, affections, and pursuits, that no pair of twins could be found more so.'
At the eventual dissolution of the monastery he obtained a pension and an asylum for the rest of his days in the London house of the Barons Mountjoy.