WHITE, Francis (1563/4-1638)

White’s father was vicar of St Neots, Huntingdonshire, and latterly also of the neighbouring parish of Eaton Socon, Bedfordshire, for 40 years until his death in 1615. Five of his sons entered the ministry, including the future bishop, who studied at Caius College, Cambridge, during the headship of the civil lawyer Thomas Legge. In 1583 a group of fellows accused Legge of crypto-Catholicism, several of whom resigned after their cause was defeated. It is possible that White’s departure in 1587 was linked to this controversy, although the Arminian views he espoused later in life suggest otherwise.22 CCEd; C. Brooke, Hist. Gonville and Caius Coll. 84-92. In 1587 White was presented to the rectory of Broughton Astley, Leicestershire by Sir Henry Grey^* (later 1st Lord Grey of Groby), which he held for the next 35 years before passing it to his son, also named Francis.23 CCEd; C58/26. White should not be confused with another namesake, an MA and graduate of Magdalen College, Oxford, who in 1619 dedicated the published text of a Paul’s Cross sermon to Mary, Lady Hunsdon, mother of Henry Carey^*, 4th Lord Hunsdon (later 1st earl of Dover). It was almost certainly the Oxford man who held a stipendiary lectureship at St Paul’s between 1619 and 1623, which he resigned to take up a fellowship at Magdalen; at least one contemporary, the Paul’s Walker John Chamberlain, conflated the two.24 F. White, Londons Warning, sig. A3-4v; Al. Ox.; Chamberlain Letters, ii. 439.

While White’s own career stagnated, his brother John was appointed chaplain to Thomas Ravis^*, bishop of London in 1607. In the following year John published The Way to the True Church, in refutation of a work by the Jesuit John Percy alias Fisher, who responded in three works published in 1612 and 1614.25 C58/11; P. Milward, Religious Controversies of the Jacobean Age, 143-6; PROB11/135, ff. 136v-7v. John White died in 1615, but two years later Francis White took up the challenge on his brother’s behalf, in The Orthodox Faith and way to the Church Explained. In the epistle which he dedicated to his diocesan, Richard Neile^*, bishop of Lincoln (later archbishop of York), he asserted that ‘contentions in religion produce many evils’, and freely acknowledged that some Catholics ‘confess that we believe and hold the foundation, the sum of piety, or main and vital matter of religion’. The question of papal supremacy, he insisted, was the chief stumbling block to agreement: ‘no doubt other doctrinal controversies are subtly kept on foot to be a stalking horse for this’. His tone was less polemical than that of his brother, or indeed of most controversialists of the day, and it seems likely that he had been influenced by Arminian theology, which sat well with the preferences of his diocesan, one of the leading anti-Calvinists among the Jacobean episcopate. The open expression of such views at a time when they were provoking civil unrest in the Low Countries was risky, but White’s focus on the iniquity of the papal supremacy was calculated to please King James.26 F. White, The Orthodox Faith (1617), sigs. *2v, *5v; A. Milton, Catholic and Reformed, 183, 236, 280. He was more cautious when he took his doctorate at Cambridge in the following year, expounding the orthodox Calvinist position that ‘predestination to grace is not on account of works foreseen’.27 N. Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, 44.

In the spring of 1622 White, by then a royal chaplain, participated in a semi-private disputation with ‘Fisher the Jesuit’ [Percy], who had recently scored a success at court in converting the countess of Buckingham – mother of the royal favourite, George Villiers^*, marquess (later 1st duke) of Buckingham – the purpose of which conference was to prevent further defections once the Spanish Match came to fruition. The Protestant disputants were chosen carefully: White’s earlier clash with Percy clearly qualified him for this task; while his partner, the newly appointed bishop of St Davids, William Laud^* (later archbishop of Canterbury), offered a similarly nuanced critique of Catholic polemic.28 Works of Abp. Laud ed. J. Bliss, iii. 138-9; Chamberlain Letters, ii. 439; T. Birch, Ct. and Times of Jas. I, ii. 313-14; White, Reply to Jesuit, sig. b3v. Much of the debate was about the ‘visibility’ of the Protestant churches before Luther, but the king ended the proceedings by posing nine questions which forced Percy to defend his own Church. Early reports, as was usual for such polemical clashes, disagreed over the outcome, but the disputation achieved the king’s primary aim, as the countess conformed, at least temporarily.29 White, Reply to Jesuit, sig. b3-5; Milward, 224-7; Stuart Dynastic Policy and Religious Pols. 1621-5 ed. M.C. Questier (Cam. Soc. 5th ser. xxxiv), 175, 182, 216; Chamberlain Letters, ii. 451. The garbled account in J. Hacket, Scrinia Reserata (1693), i. 172, apparently refers to the 1622 conference.

White could justifiably expect some reward for his services, but the first preferment he acquired thereafter – the London rectory of St Peter’s, Cornhill, to which he was instituted in August 1622 – had been granted him by the London corporation two years earlier.30 LMA, Reps. 34, ff. 389v-90v, 595v-6. However, a month later the king appointed him dean of Carlisle, a post which had been held by laymen for the past 60 years, and was clearly intended as a sinecure.31 CSP Dom. 1619-23, p. 447; Birch, ii. 330; Chamberlain Letters, ii. 451; Fasti, xi. 14-15. He participated in another disputation held in London in June 1623, when he and Daniel Featley, chaplain to George Abbot^*, archbishop of Canterbury, debated the visibility of the Protestant churches with Percy and another Jesuit, John Sweet. This conference was held before a large audience at the London house of Sir Humphrey Lynde^‡. Once again, the Protestant participants claimed to have carried the day, but Percy insisted that his adversaries had failed to identify Protestants during the centuries before the Reformation.32 Add. 28640, f. 22; Birch, ii. 408-9; Chamberlain Letters, ii. 507; J. Ussher, Works, xv. 193.

White had originally intended to publish an account of his 1622 disputation, but his plans altered as the king took a personal interest in his labours. The tract which appeared in April 1624 – underlining Buckingham’s role as a defender of the Protestant cause – addressed Percy’s manuscript response to the king’s nine questions, which elicited two further ripostes from the Jesuit in 1625-6.33 Milward, 224-7; Birch, ii. 435; Works of Abp. Laud, iii. 145; White, Reply to Jesuit, sigs. b3-5; Bodl., Tanner 73, f. 437; Hacket i. 173. White’s continued role in these controversies helps to explain why he was selected by the executors of his distant relation Dr Thomas White, rector of St Dunstan-in-the-West, London, to play a leading role in Sion College, a foundation for preachers which the rector had endowed in his will of October 1623.34 Pearce, 7, 10-13.

One of the consequences of the ‘Blessed Revolution’ in foreign policy which took place in the 1624 Parliament was that the Commons mounted an attack upon English Arminianism. White’s new tract, dedicated to the king, was untouched, but the New Gagg for an Old Goose, by Richard Montagu^* (later bishop of Chichester) provoked significant controversy. This was because Montagu answered Catholic attacks on the Synod of Dort (1618-19) by observing that the five Calvinist doctrinal points there agreed had never been formally adopted by the Church of England. Archbishop Abbot was delegated to investigate Montagu’s writings, and at the king’s command, he assigned White to supervise Montagu’s next book, Appello Caesarem. White apparently took his task seriously, putting his ‘hand to every particular’, and, with his approval, the king allowed the work to be published by royal authority. However, its appearance in 1625, shortly after James’s death, provoked further outcry, as it amplified rather than qualified Montagu’s controversial views.35 Tyacke, 125-8, 146-51; Cosin Corresp. ed. G. Ornsby (Surtees Soc. lii), 37, 74-5, 78-9; J. Cosin, Works, iii. 41. On 11 and 17 Feb. 1626, at the start of a fresh Parliament, Robert Rich^*, 2nd earl of Warwick persuaded Buckingham (now a duke) to hold a conference to resolve these doctrinal differences at his London mansion, York House. Thomas Morton^*, bishop of Coventry and Lichfield (later bishop of Durham) and Dr John Preston, master of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, argued the Calvinist case, while Dean White, along with two of Neile’s associates, John Buckeridge^*, bishop of Rochester and John Cosin^†, a prebend (and later bishop) of Durham, defended Montagu. Contemporary accounts of the debates were fiercely partisan, but it is clear that White, having been given little time to prepare, was wrong-footed on several occasions. He denied, for instance, that he had any responsibility to defend the New Gagg. It also emerged that the text of the Appello that he had approved had been altered by Montagu before it went to press. Under pressure from Preston, he gave up trying to defend Montagu’s stance on perseverance in faith.36 Works of Abp. Laud, iii. 182; T. Birch, Ct.and Times Chas. I, i. 86; Cosin, Works, iii. 29, 39, 41, 48; LPL, ms 935/3; Tyacke, 174.

In the aftermath of the York House Conference, while Montagu suffered further attacks in Parliament and in print, White ingratiated himself with Buckingham, acting as an intermediary in negotiations with Lionel Cranfield^*, 1st earl of Middlesex, over payment of the fine imposed at the latter’s impeachment in 1624.37 Tyacke, 153-7; Kent Hist. and Lib. Cent. U269/1/Oo89, 173; M. Prestwich, Cranfield, 487. Middlesex paid his contacts well. This may have assisted White in the quest for preferment, which had stalled in 1624, when he had been one of several candidates recommended to Prince Charles (Stuart^*, prince of Wales) for the deanery of York, to avert the nomination of the dissolute John Scott; at the time, he would have struggled to afford such a promotion.38 Harl. 7000, f. 177; Hacket, i. 206-7. White proved more successful in October 1626, when he was nominated to the vacant bishopric of Carlisle (although the Cambridge don Samuel Ward heard he had been obliged to sell his books to help raise the money needed to buy his place). In the absence of Archbishop Abbot (who was too ill, or perhaps too dismayed), Neile performed the consecration at Durham House, while Cosin preached the sermon. The congregation emerged to discover that an anonymous bystander had pinned a message to a nearby doorway: ‘is an Arminian now made bishop? And is a consecration translated from Lambeth to Durham House?’39 Birch, Ct. and Times Chas. I, i. 179; Ussher, xv. 369.

In October 1627 White discussed the likelihood of a fresh Parliament with Laud, now bishop of Bath and Wells: ‘some must be sacrificed’, he said, adding bluntly that Laud ‘was as like as any’. White attended the Lords almost every day of the 1628 session – at prayers on the afternoon of 9 Apr. he was the only bishop in the House – but he left little trace on its proceedings. He was included on the committee for the apparel bill, and was twice named to consider drafts of the bill to enfranchise copyholders on the crown estate of Bromfield and Yale, Denbighshire. In addition, he was appointed to three private bill committees.40 Works of Abp. Laud, iii. 206; Lords Procs. 1628, pp. 112, 120, 182, 256, 678, 684, 699.

Durham House had the pick of preferments during the summer of 1628, which included the elevation of Montagu to the bishopric of Chichester. Neile, Buckeridge and White were all at Croydon for Montagu’s consecration when the news of Buckingham’s assassination arrived on 24 August. White’s timely discussion of Arminian tenets in a Christmas sermon at court earned him a promotion to the bishopric of Norwich, but when Montagu’s books were suppressed on the eve of the 1629 parliamentary session, White is said to have preached a recantation sermon at Paul’s Cross.41 Works of Abp. Laud, iii. 208; Kent Hist. and Lib. Cent. U269/1/CB105 (Herman to Middlesex, 16 Jan. 1628/9); Diary of John Rous ed. M.A.E. Green (Cam. Soc. lxvi), 37. In early February 1629, when the Lords received a complaint of malpractice against Isaac Singleton, archdeacon of Carlisle, White avouched that he could be ‘vexatious’. He missed the roll-call on 9 Feb., the day of his consecration as bishop of Norwich.42 LJ, iv. 24a, 25a; Fasti, xi. 19.

White succeeded George Montaigne^*, late archbishop of York, as king’s almoner at Michaelmas 1628, in which capacity his attendance was regularly expected at court; in June 1630 he assisted Laud, now bishop of London, at the baptism of Prince Charles (Stuart^†, later Charles II].43 AO1/393/67; Ceremonies of Chas. I ed. A. Loomie, 88-90. He succeeded Buckeridge as bishop of Ely, a diocese worth almost £2,000 p.a., in December 1631, but spent most of his time at Ely House in Holborn. On Christmas day 1632 he and Laud preached ‘sharp invectives against some points of popery’, even quoting Calvin with approval, which briefly raised hopes of a fresh Parliament.44 CSP Dom, 1631-3, p. 297; Birch, Ct. and Times Chas. I, ii.213-14. His sojourn in London allowed him to attend the court of High Commission regularly, while he also found time to write a tract in defence of the 1633 Book of Sports, which Neile, now archbishop of York, circulated in the northern province.45 Reps. of Cases in Star Chamber and High Commission ed. S.R. Gardiner (Cam. Soc. n.s. xxxix), 184-5, 228-30, 254-5; CSP Dom. 1634-5, pp. 176, 258, 326, 549; 1635, pp. 119, 613; 1635-6, pp. 128-9, 199; F. White, A Treatise of the Sabbath-Day (1635). White’s annual reports on his diocese, required by the king from 1631, were brief and uninformative, but the articles issued for his diocesan visitations focus on ceremonial, a typically Laudian priority. At Ely he attempted to curb the length of puritan sermons, and stressed the importance of catechism as an alternative, but made no practical attempts to enforce Laud’s altar-rail policy.46 Works of Abp. Laud, v. 322, 328, 334, 342, 349; Vis. Articles and Injunctions of the Early Stuart Church I ed. K. Fincham (Church of Eng. Rec. Soc. i), pp. xix-xxii.

White died at Ely House on 25 Feb. 1638, and was buried in St Paul’s Cathedral; no will or administration has been found. He was swiftly replaced at Ely by Matthew Wren^†, a much more active diocesan, who complained that his predecessor had wasted 1,000 loads of wood from the episcopal estates.47 LPL, Reg. Laud I, f. 306v; Strafforde Letters ed. W. Knowler (1739), ii. 152; Works of Abp. Laud, v. 357.