‘Catalogue of Ashmolean Manuscripts’ to David Whitehead, ‘doctor of Physick’ (Cat. MSS. Angliæ, i. 332; in Black, Cat. Ashmole MSS. col. 1319, the ascription is merely to ‘D. W.’)
[Authorities cited; Lansd. MS. 981 f. 113; Strype's Works (general index); Gough's Index to Parker Soc. Publ. passim; Whittingham's Brieff Discours, 1575; Wood's Athenæ, i. 396; Knox's Works (Bannatyne Club); Foxe's Actes and Mon.; Bale, ix. 91; Fuller's Worthies, ii. 12; Peter Martyr's Commentarius, 1568; Tanner's Bibl. Brit.-Hib. p. 762; Brook's Puritans, i. 170–4; Parkhurst's Ludicra, p. 114; Churton's Life of Nowell; Burnet's Hist. of the Reformation, ed. Pocock; Foster's Alumni Oxon. 1500–1714; Dixon's Hist. Church of England, iii. 238, 386, iv. 696.]
WHITEHEAD, GEORGE (1636?–1723), quaker, was born at Sun Bigs, parish of Orton, Westmorland, in 1636 or 1637, and educated at Blencoe free school, Cumberland, after which he taught as usher in two schools. When about fourteen he heard of the quakers, to whom he was chiefly attracted by observing how they were reviled by unprincipled people. The first meeting he attended was at Captain Ward's at Sunny Bank, near Grayrigg chapel, where he first heard George Fox [q. v.] His presbyterian parents, at first much grieved at his turning quaker, grew afterwards to love the society, of which his mother and sister Ann died members.
After ‘bearing his testimony’ against professional ministers in Westmoreland from 1652 to 1654, Whitehead started about August 1654 as an itinerant preacher through Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, and Cambridgeshire to Norwich. At Cambridge he met James Parnell [q. v.] At Norwich he visited Richard Hubberthorn [q. v.], a prisoner in the castle, and held meetings and public disputations; in spite of violent opposition and much contempt of his youth, many were converted to quakerism. In December 1654 he was haled out of St. Peter's Church for speaking after the sermon, and, being examined about water baptism, was imprisoned for more than eight weeks; soon after his discharge, in March 1655, he was again committed for visiting prisoners in Norwich Castle. In May he went to Colchester to see young Parnell in prison; in July, for defending a paper affixed to the church door of Bures, Suffolk, by his companion, he was committed for trial at Bury St. Edmunds. There he lay for three months; at the October sessions he was accused of being an idle wandering fellow, and fined 20l. On his refusal to pay he was remanded, and suffered much hardship in prison for fifteen months until his friends in London, especially one Mary Saunders, a waiting woman to Oliver Cromwell's wife, appealed to the Protector for an inquiry. Whitehead was examined on 22 May 1656, and again in June, but was not released until 16 Oct.
Worse treatment now befell him. At Saffron Walden he was set in the stocks, and at Nayland was condemned ‘to be openly whipped until his body be bloody.’ About May 1657 he went to the west of England, meeting Fox at Gloucester.
He now (1657), after three years' absence, returned to Sun Bigs, where many quakers had gathered, and large meetings were held winter and summer on crag sides or on the moors, until funds for building meeting-houses were forthcoming. He visited Swarthmore, Newcastle, Berwick, Alnwick, and Holy Island, the governor of which place—Captain Phillipps—and his wife both became quakers. Returning south, Whitehead was thrown into prison at Ipswich on the suit of a clergyman whom he had overtaken and discoursed with on the road. When sessions came he incensed the magistrates by pointing out the illegality of his accusation, and was sent back to gaol, whence he was only released, after four months, on the death of the Protector.
On 29 Aug. 1659 Whitehead held at Cambridge a public dispute with Thomas Smith, vicar of Caldecot and university librarian, who had already appeared as his opponent at a meeting in Westminster. Smith undertook to prove that Whitehead was a heretic. Whitehead displayed much skill in his reply, and in answer to Smith's two books, ‘The Quaker Disarm'd, or a True Relation of a late Public Dispute held at Cambridge’ (London, 1659, 4to), and ‘A Gagg for the Quakers,’ same place and date (replying to Henry Denne's ‘The Quaker no Papist,’ London, 1659, 4to), issued ‘The Key of Knowledge not found in the University Library of Cambridge, or a short Answer to a Foolish, Slanderous Pamphlet entituled “A Gagg for the Quakers,”’ London, 1660, 4to. This was only one of a long series of public disputes, usually culminating in literary effort, to which Whitehead was challenged at this time. Frequently they took place in the parish churches, sometimes in private houses. Thus, he was at Lynn on 15 Sept. 1659, and again on 13 Jan. 1660, appearing against Thomas Moor and John Horn, leaders of a small sect of Universalists or ‘Free willers,’ as Whitehead calls them. In reply to Horn he wrote ‘A briefe discovery of the dangerous Principles of John Horne and Thomas Moor, both
