WHITE, William (1606-c.1661), of Bashall, Mitton, and Bishopthorpe, Yorks.

White belonged to a cadet branch of a family that had risen to prominence in Hampshire and the adjoining counties in the Tudor period.39Vis. Hants (Harl. Soc. lxiv), 81-3. His great-great-grandfather had represented Hampshire in the Parliaments of the mid-sixteenth century, his great-grandfather had sat for the Wiltshire constituency of Downton in 1555 and 1558, and his grandfather, John White, had been returned for Clitheroe, in Lancashire, in 1589.40HP Commons 1509-1558, ‘Thomas White II’; ‘Thomas White IV’; HP Commons, 1558-1603, ‘John White’. John White may have been elected on the interest of the duchy of Lancaster, and it was probably no coincidence that by the end of Elizabeth’s reign he and his son (William White’s father) had become tenants of the duchy at Duffield, in Derbyshire.41HMC Rutland, i. 341; D. Lysons, S. Lysons, Magna Britannia, v. p. clxvi; HP Commons 1558-1603, ‘John White’.

White was still a minor when his father died in 1619, and his wardship was purchased by his mother.42WARD9/162, f. 350. In about 1629, he married a daughter and co-heir of Thomas Talbot, whose estate at Bashall lay just a few miles across the Yorkshire border from Clitheroe. Described on the marriage licence as of Pentrich, Derbyshire, White subsequently made Bashall his principal residence.43‘Paver’s marr. lics.’ ed. Clay, 89. In 1639, having borrowed money by statute staple, he purchased the other half of the Bashall estate from his sister-in-law for £3,800.44LC4/202, ff. 18v, 54, 95, 129v, 130v, 131, 220, 270; WARD9/575, p. 121; Coventry Docquets, 717. At the same time as he was enlarging his estate near Clitheroe, he began playing a greater role in the town’s affairs, serving as out-bailiff for the borough in 1638-9. He stood as a candidate at Clitheroe in the elections to the Long Parliament in the autumn of 1640, but came a distant fourth on a poll, receiving just eleven votes.45Supra, ‘Clitheroe’.

White’s addition to the West Riding bench in 1638 may well be evidence of his association by this point with Pennine Yorkshire’s leading godly family, the Fairfaxes of Denton – a connection that laid the foundation of his public career.46C231/5, p. 311. In October 1640, he was a signatory to the Yorkshire county indenture returning Ferdinando 2nd Baron Fairfax (Sir Ferdinando Fairfax*) and Henry Belasyse to the Long Parliament.47C219/43/3/89. And he was acting as Fairfax’s agent in London by November, when Philip Wharton, 4th Baron Wharton, informed Fairfax that White solicited his affairs ‘with great diligence’.48Sl. 1519, f. 16. As the kingdom moved towards civil war, White emerged as a leading figure in the Fairfax interest in the West Riding, joining Lord Fairfax, Sir Thomas Fairfax* and other Yorkshire parliamentarians in August 1642 in a ‘protestation and declaration’ to the Commons against the issuing of the commission of array at the York assizes.49Rushworth, Historical Collns. v. 649. The following month he was a signatory to the Yorkshire ‘treaty of pacification’ – an abortive attempt by the Fairfaxes and their friends among the West Riding royalists to keep the county neutral in anticipation of a decisive battle in the south. The other signatories on the parliamentarian side included Sir Thomas Fairfax, Sir Thomas Mauleverer* and Thomas Stockdale*.50A. Woolrych, ‘Yorkshire’s treaty of neutrality’, HT vi. 696-704. White’s decision to side with Parliament was evidently closely linked to his intimacy with the Fairfaxes, whose godly religious sympathies he almost certainly shared.

By early 1643, White was in London, acting as financial agent for Lord Fairfax’s northern army – an office that required him to liaise closely with the Committee of Safety* and its successor, the Committee of Both Kingdoms*.51SP28/264, ff. 260-1; SP46/108, ff. 12, 13, 31; WO47/1, ff. 12, 12v, 57v; CJ iii. 1b, 75b, 79b, 82b, 106a, 135a, 155b, 187a, 236b, 244a, 406a, 627a; iv. 74a, 183b; v. 49b, 173a; LJ vii. 564a; viii. 423b, 584b; Fairfax Corresp. ed. Bell, i. 41-2, 183; CSP Dom. 1641-3, p. 466; 1644, pp. 34, 82, 88, 130, 198, 296, 340, 510, 514; 1644-5, pp. 197, 285, 380, 563. With his rents and £800 of his goods in the hands of the northern royalists, he was compensated by Parliament in July 1643 with the clerkship of assize for the Oxford circuit – an office reputedly worth £500-£600 a year.52CCAM 827; CJ iii. 161b; Holles Mems. (1699), 135. By April 1644, he had been appointed a colonel in the northern army, and in June he was named by Lord Fairfax as one of his commissioners to treat with the royalists for the surrender of York. White played an important role on Fairfax’s staff during the Marston Moor campaign, but there no evidence that he saw active service during the first civil war.53CSP Dom. 1644, pp. 130, 224, 225, 257, 266; Holles Mems. 135; Jones, ‘War in north’, 406-7. Although his regiment was disbanded in July 1645, he continued to be styled ‘Colonel White’ for the remainder of his career.54Jones, ‘War in north’, 406-7.

White was returned as a ‘recruiter’ for the West Riding borough of Pontefract in the autumn of 1645 on the interest of Lord Fairfax and Sir Thomas Fairfax, who were high steward of the Honor of Pontefract and governor of Pontefract Castle respectively.55Supra, ‘Pontefract’. He was named to his first committee on 22 November and soon emerged as one of the most active of the Yorkshire MPs. Between entering the House late in 1645 and the Presbyterian ‘riots’ of July 1647 he was named to almost 40 committees, the majority of which related to Parliament’s northern affairs, the supply and regulation of its armies (particularly in the north), Anglo-Scottish relations, the improvement of parliamentary revenues and rewarding the Fairfaxes and their adherents – among them, the army preacher Hugh Peters.56CJ iv. 351b, 360a, 414b, 417a, 422a, 461a, 472b, 481b, 525a, 538b, 539a, 540a, 552a, 570b, 666b, 674b, 682a, 708a; v. 8b, 21b, 167a. Although White took the Covenant within a few months of entering the House (31 Dec. 1645), he was involved in the Commons’ efforts to reduce the Scottish military presence in northern England – a campaign that the Scots saw as a direct attack on their political interests. He and the markedly anti-Scots trio of Sir John Evelyn of Wiltshire, Richard Barwis and Francis Thorpe were appointed managers of a conference with the Lords on 24 January concerning the Scots’ forces at Newark, which the Commons were keen to represent to the Lords as ill-disciplined and in need of reducement.57CJ iv. 417a, LJ viii. 122b; D. Scott, ‘The ‘northern gentlemen’, the parliamentary Independents, and Anglo-Scottish relations in the Long Parliament’, HJ xlii. 362. Likewise, on 20 March and 9 June, White was named to committees to draw up declarations stating the House’s ‘complaints and jealousies’ against the Scots.58CJ iv. 481b, 570b. When the Commons learnt early in May that Charles had fled to the Scottish army, White was so disturbed by this news that he was reported by the Scots as saying that he thought that Parliament had ‘no enemy now but the king’s person’.59NAS, Clerk of Penicuik mss, GD 18/3110 [The permission of Sir John Clerk of Penicuik is needed before this reference can be published]; Harington’s Diary, 26; CJ iv. 540a. The Presbyterian grandees Denzil Holles described White as one of Independent faction’s ‘small prophets’ and, with Francis Allein*, a key figure in the financial administration of the New Model army.60Holles Mems. 134-5.

Yet although White was aligned with the Independent interest in the Commons, he was a less partisan figure than most of the MPs with whom the Scots and Holles identified him. Unlike some of the more hard-line Independents, he attended the House regularly during May 1647, at the height of the Presbyterian ascendancy at Westminster that spring.61CJ v. 166a, 167a, 168b, 170b, 171b, 181a. Moreover, he was named second to the committee set up on 12 May for raising £200,000 for paying off the New Model army – a measure that the Presbyterians hoped would undermine the Independents’ military power base and thereby clear the way for a moderate settlement with the king.62CJ v. 168b; I. Gentles, New Model Army, 153. Later the same month, White wrote to Sir Thomas Fairfax, the commander of the New Model, urging him to comply with the Commons’ votes for disbanding the army. White acknowledged that this would endanger the kingdom’s ‘liberty’, but argued that the consequences of disobeying Parliament would result either in a Scottish invasion or the return of the king upon his own terms. He advised Fairfax that if he encountered any opposition from the army he should come to Parliament ‘to preserve them with your advice’ for ‘quieting’ the soldiers.63Clarke Pprs. i. 103-4.

The summer crisis of 1647 put White in a difficult position, torn between his duty to the House and his loyalty to the Fairfaxes. On 12 June, the Commons appointed White and Lord Fairfax’s son-in-law Sir Thomas Widdrington as commissioners to the army in the hope that they would help smooth relations between Parliament and Sir Thomas Fairfax’s officers.64CJ v. 209a, 212a; LJ ix. 262a; Clarke Pprs. i. 132, 148. It is likely that White was still at Fairfax’s headquarters when a Presbyterian mob took control of the Houses on 26 July, and hence he was not among the signatories to the engagement of those Members who had fled London to the army for protection.

White’s attitude towards the army’s enemies seems to have hardened after the July 1647 Presbyterian ‘riots’ at Westminster. From 18 August – when he was named to a committee for declaring void all the legislation passed during the Presbyterians’ brief counter-revolution – he received a series of appointments for answering the needs of the soldiers and generally furthering the cause of the Independent interest.65CJ v. 278a, On 9 September, he was added to the Army Committee for preparing an ordinance to appoint this body’s successor and new treasurers-at-war; on 23 September, he brought in a paper concerning the taking and auditing of the soldiers’ accounts; and on 13 October, he chaired a committee of the whole House to consider how to satisfy army arrears and provide for its future pay.66CJ v. 298b, 314b, 332a. Over the next two months he chaired this committee on nine further occasions and made several reports from it concerning supply for the army.67CJ v. 336b, 348a, 349b, 352b, 354b, 365b, 369b, 371a, 373a, 376a, 432a. He was also named in first place to ad hoc committees for satisfying the soldiers’ arrears, for representing the army’s grievances to the House, for drafting legislation for disbanding supernumeraries and for preparing a response to the army’s complaints over pay.68CJ v. 339a, 376b, 377a, 377b, 396a, 400a, 414b; Rushworth, Historical Collns. vii. 928, 942. In a more obviously partisan vein, he was joined with the prominent Independent MPs William Pierrepont, Sir Peter Wentworth and Henry Marten on 12 November to examine Thomas Westrowe* concerning the king’s escape from Hampton Court.69CJ v. 357a. A leading figure in pushing through legislation for removing obstructions on the sale of bishops’ lands – most of the proceeds of which went towards paying the soldiery – he made his first purchase of former church property in March 1648, acquiring the archbishop’s palace at Bishopthorpe, near York.70CJ v. 334a, 366b, 370b, 371b, 460b; vi. 81b; Col. Top. et Gen. i. 6. In 1651, the committee for reformation of the universities (which would take on much of the work for settling a godly ministry) assigned to White and Richard Darley* the responsibility of providing ‘a godly and able preacher’ at Bishopthorpe, ‘where Colonel White ... doth reside’.71LPL, Sion L40.2/E16, pp. 685-6.

White was granted leave of absence on 29 February 1648 and does not appear to have resumed regular attendance at Westminster until the autumn.72CJ v. 474a, 543b, 570a; vi. 34b. His whereabouts and activities during the second civil war are not known, although he may have been the Colonel White who raised the regiment of Lancashire horse that Fairfax ordered to the relief of Cockermouth in October 1648.73Rushworth, Historical Collns. vii. 1283. Having apparently returned to the House by mid-October, White resumed a prominent role in justifying the House to the army, particularly on the vexed questions of pay and arrears.74CJ vi. 47a, 60b, 67a, 69b, 78a, 81a, 83b, 87a. That he was not entirely happy with the army’s increasingly militant stance is suggested by his appointment with John Swynfen and other moderates on 27 and 29 November to write to Fairfax in an effort to overturn orders for replacing Colonel Robert Hammond with the radical officer Colonel Ewer as the king’s custodian on the Isle of Wight.75CJ vi. 88b, 91b; Gentles, New Model Army, 276-7. Nevertheless, White retained his seat at Pride’s Purge, and on 11 December he was listed among 30 or so MPs who were ‘downright for the army’.76Mercurius Elencticus no. 55 (5-12 Dec. 1648), 532 (E.476.4); Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 38 (12-19 Dec. 1648), sig. Ddd4v (E.476.35). Three days later (14 Dec.), he reportedly joined Oliver Cromwell, Henry Ireton, Henry Marten, Thomas Scot I and 13 other Members who voted against re-admitting those MPs who had been secluded at Pride’s Purge but against whom there was no charge.77Mercurius Elencticus, no. 56 (12-19 Dec. 1648), 539 (E.476.36). He was still signing warrants of the committee for removing obstructions on the sale of bishops’ lands on 26 December.78LPL, COMM Add 1, f. 45. Thereafter, however, he seems to have abandoned the House, and he took no recorded part in the king’s trial and execution.

Like Widdrington and other members of the Fairfax interest, White demonstrated a less than wholehearted commitment to republican rule. He evidently did not make his dissent to the 5 December 1648 vote – that the king’s answers at Newport were a sufficient ground for a settlement – until the spring of 1649, for it was not until 14 May that he was admitted to the House.79CJ vi. 208b. Writing to the Speaker from Bashall on 1 March, he had pleaded ill health as the reason for his failure to attend the Rump, ‘having been lately sick of a fever at York ... and not yet perfectly recovered’. But he had also implied that there were doubts at Westminster as to his loyalty to the new regime, for he called upon the Speaker ‘and many other very worthy Members’ as witnesses to

my argument, upon the question for the satisfactoriness of the king’s answers to the [Newport] propositions [late Nov.-early Dec. 1648], that I was far from approving them satisfactory and am no less unsatisfied with that question that they are a ground [for a settlement], though I was not in the House when the question was put [on 5 Dec.] ... and shall (God willing) manifest my dissent unto it, as is required, at my coming up...which shall be so soon as my health and strength will permit.80Bodl. Tanner 57, f. 544.

White was named to only 12 committees in the Rump, all but two of them in the period between May 1649 and February 1650.81CJ vi. 213a, 217b, 218b, 219b, 225b, 228b, 229b, 231a, 239b, 352a; vii. 49b, 115a. Most of these appointments concerned either the management of public finances, naval administration, rewarding Sir Thomas Fairfax, or propagating the gospel. Away from the floor of the House, he was active on at least two of the Rump’s standing committees – the Committee of Navy and Customs and the committee for excise. He continued to sign Navy Committee warrants until at least November 1652.82CJ vi. 219b; Bodl. Rawl. C.386, unfol.; Belvoir, QZ.5, f. 45. Although he retained his place on the West Riding bench and assessment commission after 1648, he played no conspicuous part in local government under the Rump. His apparent misgivings at the political direction taken in England in 1648-9 did not deter him from acquiring further church lands or purchasing crown rents.83Add. 21417, f. 162; Add. 21418, f. 42; C54/3655/28; SP28/288, ff. 48, 56; Col. Top. et Gen. i. 125. His support for the army-dominated commonwealth that emerged after the fall of the Rump in 1653 was sufficiently doubted that he was apparently required to re-take the Engagement abjuring monarchy and the Lords.84CSP Dom. 1653-4, p. 62.

White seems to have retired from both national politics and local government between 1652 and 1659, and he should not be confused with Colonel Francis White, who sat for Tewkesbury in the second protectoral Parliament. The Yorkshire Colonel White did not resume his political career until the winter of 1658-9, when he was elected to Richard Cromwell’s Parliament. His constituency was almost certainly Clitheroe, although there is no official record that the borough returned Members to this Parliament.85Supra, ‘Clitheroe’. However, there can be no doubt that the ‘Colonel White’ referred to in the Commons Journal and by the parliamentary diarist Thomas Burton was the former Yorkshire MP. Several of White’s speeches betray his intimacy with northern affairs and figures.86Burton, Diary, iii. 311; iv. 309, 311, 419, 420. Furthermore, four of his nine committee appointments in this Parliament were related to northern issues.87CJ vii. 600b, 622b, 623b, 634b, 637a, 638a, 639a, 641a. He contributed frequently in debate, where he generally supported the republicans’ view of the protectoral settlement as a threat to the people’s liberties. In a debate on 7 February 1659 on the bill recognising Richard Cromwell as protector, he spoke for half an hour against the bill, urging the House to settle ‘fundamentals before you settle any single person, else you will leave them to danger and uncertainty … It is dangerous to swerve from the fundamentals. Witness [the] major-generals’. The law, he declared, was the government of the nation, and sovereignty should not be hereditary but vested only in a person or persons by way of ‘trust and office’ and with such limitations as the Commons thought fit to impose.88W.A.H. Schilling, ‘The Parliamentary Diary of Sir John Gell, 5 Feb.-21 Mar. 1659’ (Vanderbilt Univ. MA thesis, 1961), 33-4; Burton’s Diary, iii. 116; Henry Cromwell Corresp. 447-8. Similarly, on 14 February, he argued that the protector’s oath of government was not a sufficient guarantee of the people’s liberties. Again he cited the case of the major-generals as well as other ‘high-prerogative’ infringements of the law under the ‘extravagant power’ of the Instrument of Government.89Wilts. RO, 9/34/3, pp. 121-2; Burton’s Diary, iii. 264-5; Schilling, ‘Gell Diary’, 72-3.

White’s close links with the republican interest are clear from his recommendation on 17 February 1659 that the prominent Yorkshire commonwealthsman, Adam Baynes, be appointed to a committee for accounts, despite the fact he received a state salary as an excise commissioner. Another Yorkshire republican, John Lambert – Baynes’s patron – then moved that Baynes be left out of the committee and that White be nominated in his place.90Burton’s Diary, iii. 311. That same day (17 Feb.), White supported the republican grandee Sir Henry Vane II in urging that ‘the sword … be placed in the people, so that there shall be no danger of delinquents being protected [by Richard Cromwell or the court]’.91Burton’s Diary, iii. 316. The next day (18 Feb.), he again aligned with the republicans in arguing that the House should establish its supremacy in the legislative process before proceeding to discuss the Cromwellian Other House.92Burton’s Diary, iii. 337. At the end of this debate he was a minority teller with Robert Brewster in support of a motion to resolve the nature of the protector’s negative voice before that of the constitution of Parliament ‘as to the two Houses’.93CJ vii. 605b; Burton’s Diary, iii. 345.

White reserved some of his most trenchant criticism of the Humble Petition and Advice for the powers and composition of the Other House. He repeatedly urged the Commons to limit the authority of the Other House before transacting any business with it, and he argued that the new lords (particularly the army officers) were compromised by their dependence upon the protector for ‘profit and interest’.94Burton’s Diary, iii. 369, 415, 540, 560, 589-90; iv. 39-40, 277, 288, 292, 293, 354-5, 370-1, 375; Schilling, ‘Gell Diary’, 154. In a long speech on this theme on 5 March, he was adamant that if salaried officials were allowed to sit in the Other House then the people’s rights and liberties would be jeopardised. The Commons was the father of the Other House, he insisted, and thus had a right to determine its authority and membership.95Burton’s Diary, iv. 39-40; Schilling, ‘Gell Diary’, 173-4. He seemingly parted company with commonwealthsmen on 29 March, when he called for the re-admission of the old peers. However, it is possible that he was employing another of the filibustering tactics favoured by the government’s opponents, for he later declared that the old peers would never re-enter the Other House while it was occupied by Cromwellian appointees.96Burton’s Diary, iv. 294, 375. On 5 April, White was once again aligned with the commonwealthsmen in criticising the wording of a declaration for a fast, which they thought would constitute a de facto recognition of the Other House and the unbounded powers of the protector. White urged that the declaration be laid aside until the Commons had ‘done right to the people and bounded your chief magistrate’.97Burton’s Diary, iv. 337-8. Later that same day (5 Apr.), he was a minority teller with a royalist enemy of the protectorate, Henry Cary, 4th Viscount Falkland, against including the words ‘both Houses’, as opposed to simply ‘Parliament’, in the declaration.98CJ vii. 626a. On 8 April, he was a minority teller with another crypto-royalist, Sir William Doyly, against employing MPs as messengers to the Other House.99CJ vii. 632b.

White was equally forthright in condemning another pillar of the protectoral constitution – the representation of Scotland and Ireland at Westminster. The republicans regarded Members sent from Scottish and Irish constituencies as little better than Cromwellian placemen, and White seems to have agreed. ‘If you admit them to sit’, he insisted, ‘it is destructive to the very foundation of this House’ and to the people’s liberties.100Burton’s Diary, iv. 97, 232; Schilling, ‘Gell Diary’, 258. Speaking on 17 March, he argued that the Scottish and Irish MPs had ‘no foundation at all, neither by Petition and Advice, nor any other law. I hope, on their own ingenuity [honesty], they will withdraw’.101Burton’s Diary, iv. 165-6; Schilling, ‘Gell Diary’, 191. White and Vane were minority tellers on 21 March against putting the question of whether the Scottish Members should continue to sit in the House, and when the main question was put the pro-Cromwellian majority prevailed once again.102CJ vii. 616b; Burton’s Diary, iv. 219.

The suspicion with which White evidently viewed some the government’s supporters in the House did not extend to some of its enemies in the country at large. He joined MPs of various political persuasions on 26 February 1659 in calling for the release of the Fifth Monarchist, John Portman.103Burton’s Diary, iii. 495. And on 16 March, he moved for the release of the Yorkshire republican officer Major-general Robert Overton, who had been imprisoned for over four years without trial.104Burton’s Diary, iv. 153. At the same time, White favoured tough measures against the perceived agents of Cromwellian ‘tyranny’. Following a report from the committee of grievances on 12 April that William Boteler* had abused his authority as a major-general, White urged that he be removed from civil and military office and proceeded against in law.105CJ vii. 636; Burton’s Diary, iv. 404-5, 407, 411-12. White was named first to a committee set up that day (12 April) for preparing an impeachment against Boteler and to consider what course of legal action should be taken against him ‘and other delinquents’.106CJ vii. 637a.

White almost certainly welcomed the army’s dissolution of the third protectoral Parliament on 22 April 1659, and he would emerge as one of the most active members of the restored Rump. Between May and October 1659, he was a teller in four divisions and was named to 49 committees – a marked contrast to his low tally of appointments during the first four years of the Rump.107CJ vii. 683b, 717b, 734a, 744a. It would appear that his fears for the people’s liberties under the protectorate had galvanised him in support of the commonwealth; and indeed, he seems to have supported the voiding of all legislation that had been passed since the Rump’s dissolution in April 1653.108CJ vii. 656b, 661b, 795a. His main field activity in the restored Rump was the management and improvement of the commonwealth’s finances, and his most important appointment in this respect was to a standing committee set up on 9 May for inspecting the treasuries, collecting customs and excise and for improving public revenues.109CJ vii. 647b. White seems to have chaired this committee as well as several ad hoc committees on the Rump’s finances, making numerous reports from these bodies and as a commissioner for customs and excise and for bringing in arrears of revenue.110CJ vii. 648b, 662b, 666b, 667a, 676a, 676b, 687a, 690a, 691b, 694a, 702b, 709b, 713a, 730b, 731a, 739a, 745b, 787a, 790a, 793b, 797a; A. and O. ii. 1277, 1350. He also chaired a committee set up on 26 September for preparing legislation to continue the customs, excise and other revenues.111CJ vii. 786b.

Securing the commonwealth militarily (as well as financially) was another of White’s priorities, it seems. The council of state sought his assistance in ‘examining of such persons as have been lately secured upon suspicion that they are dangerous to the peace of the commonwealth’.112Bodl. Rawl. C.179, p. 255. And he was included on a series of committees for settling and maintaining the county militia and for trying and sequestering the estates of the Rump’s enemies.113CJ vii. 664a, 694b, 717a, 729a, 742a, 748b, 751b, 757b, 765b, 766a, 767b, 768a, 789a. On 26 July, he was a majority teller with Henry Marten on whether to amend the wording of a bill for settling the militia; and on 22 August, he was ordered to pen a letter to General Lambert, congratulating him on suppressing Sir George Boothe’s* royalist-Presbyterian rising.114CJ vii. 734a, 765b, 766b. This and several other assignments in the Rump suggest that White retained an interest in northern affairs.115CJ vii. 706b, 723a, 744a, 780a. Nevertheless, if his appointments reveal any regional bias it is towards London. White had spent most of the 1640s in the capital, where he had rented a house in Covent Garden.116Add. 21417, f. 2v; Stowe 1058, f. 85v. In July and August 1659, and again in February 1660, the Rump assigned White lodgings in Whitehall, and it regularly enlisted his services on business concerning the City’s government, security and commercial life.117Bodl. Rawl. C.179, pp. 176, 178, 188, 319; CSP Dom. 1659-60, pp. 27, 94, 348; CJ vii. 656b, 663a, 664a, 705a, 717a, 720b, 751a, 763b.

White’s political alignment in the restored Rump is hard to read and may well have shifted according to the issue in question. In a division on 14 June 1659 in response to a major petition from the west country for the abolition of tithes, White and the republican grandee Sir Arthur Hesilrige were tellers against having the question of ‘how a more equal and comfortable maintenance may be settled for the ministry, and satisfaction of the people, than by tithes’ referred to a committee of the whole House rather than to a smaller, ad hoc committee that the radicals might more easily dominate or which would be better suited to producing swift results. The opposing tellers, Carew Ralegh and Sir William Brereton, won the division only with the Speaker’s casting vote. Neither White nor Hesilrige were opponents of a publicly-maintained ministry, and it is puzzling that they appeared to favour the more radical line on this occasion. Perhaps they simply set higher store than did Ralegh and Brereton in preserving the unity of the republican interest – which was threatened by divisions on the issue of tithes – than in establishing a strong Presbyterian church.118CJ vii. 683b; R. Hutton, The Restoration, 47, 49. That White was concerned at sectarian infiltration into public office is suggested by his tellership with his fellow Yorkshireman Sir John Bourchier on 14 July against appointing the prominent Quaker, George Bishop, to the Bristol militia commission.119CJ vii. 717b. White and Bourchier won the division from Sir Henry Vane II and Henry Neville, two ardent advocates of toleration for all Protestants.

White sided with Sir Arthur Hesilrige’s civilian republican faction during the last months of 1659 and was among several of Sir Arthur’s allies who were returned the thanks of the House on 29 December – following the Rump’s final restoration – for having ‘acted in the service of Parliament during the time of its late interruption’.120CJ vii. 799a. White’s popularity with his fellow Rumpers was such that on 31 December he was elected a councillor of state.121CJ vii. 800b. In the House itself, he again received numerous appointments concerning army pay and the state of public finances, and he chaired (and made frequent reports from) successive committees for inspecting the treasuries and for continuing the customs and excise.122CJ vii. 797a, 797b, 798b, 799a, 800a, 804b, 816a, 818a, 822a, 826a, 828b, 831a, 833a, 846a, 848a, 850b, 851a, 856a, 857a, 866a; Add. 4197, ff. 123, 126, 128. Late in December 1659, he was made a customs and excise commissioner – an appointment that was renewed on 7 March 1660.123A. and O. ii. 1353, 1424. He helped to prepare legislation establishing a new Army Committee and treasurers-at-war, and he was involved as a teller, and possibly in committee, in the selection of new admiralty commissioners.124CJ vii. 798b, 799a, 808b, 811a, 824a, 825b. The vetting and selection of state administrators, local officials and parliamentary representatives was evidently another of his specialties, for he was included on committees to nominate army committeemen, treasurers-at-war, commissioners of the great seal, judges, justices of the peace and members of the London Common Council and to determine the qualifications for future MPs and those electing them.125CJ vii. 799a, 803a, 806a, 807a, 821a, 824a, 838b.

As a close associate of Thomas Lord Fairfax, White was apparently well known to General George Monck* by early 1660, which may well explain his enlistment in the House’s attempts to involve the general more fully in the commonwealth’s proceedings.126Clarke Pprs. iv. 251. On 16 February, White reported amendments to a bill for replacing the so-called ‘oath of abjuration’ – requiring MPs and councillors to renounce the ‘pretended title of Charles Stewart and the whole line of the late King James and of every other person as a single person, pretending...to the crown of these nations’ – with a simple engagement against monarchy and House of Lords. But Monck scrupled to take this engagement as he had the oath, thereby excusing himself from attending the council of state.127CJ vii. 806b, 845a; Baker, Chronicle, 678; Complete Prose Works of John Milton ed. R. A. Ayers, vii. 163, 173. It was at Monck’s request that Hesilrige brought White to a meeting that the general arranged on 18 February between leading Rumpers and some of the secluded Members in an attempt to reach a political compromise acceptable to both groups.128Clarke Pprs. iv. 264; Baker, Chronicle, 687. Unlike Hesilrige and his closest allies, White continued to attend the House in the weeks immediately following the re-admission of the secluded Members on 21 February.129CJ vii. 847b, 848a, 850b, 851a, 856a, 857a, 866a. He received his last appointment in the Long Parliament on 14 March, two days before it was finally dissolved.130CJ vii. 875a.

In the elections to the 1660 Convention, White was again returned for Clitheroe. He figured prominently in the drafting of legislation for the excise and on the bill of indemnity, but was unseated on 16 July after the elections committee had reported against the right of the Clitheroe freemen to vote.131HP Commons, 1660-90, ‘William White’. He was omitted from all local commissions after the Restoration and seems to have retired quietly to Bashall.

White died at some point between making his will in September 1660 and it being entered in probate late in November 1661. His place of burial is not known. Having died without issue, he left the bulk of his estate to his third cousins, the Ferrers of Baddesley Clinton, in Warwickshire. He charged his estate with an annuity of £400 for his wife and made bequests totalling £470.132Borthwick, Wills in York Registry, Prerogative wills, Sept. 1662. None of White’s immediate family sat in Parliament.