Whitehead wrote: 1. ‘The Enmity between the Two Seeds,’ London, 1655, 4to. 2. ‘A Reproof from the Lord,’ London, 1656, 4to. 3. ‘A Manifestation of Truth,’ 1662, 4to; this was in answer to ‘Folly and Madness made Manifest’ (Ashmolean Library), by William Fiennes, lord Saye and Sele, which Whitehead had received in manuscript. 3. ‘Ministers among the People of God (called Quakers) no Jesuits,’ 1683, 4to. Other fugitive pieces are in ‘The Written Gospel Labours of that Ancient and Faithful … John Whitehead,’ London, 1704, 8vo; preface by William Penn.
[Fox's Journal, pp. 267, 304, 305, 428; Chalk's Life and Writings of Whitehead, 1852; Smith's Cat. ii. 909–15; Besse's Sufferings, i. 75, 76, 331, 347, 348, 349, 355–7, 360, 479, 482, 523, 525, 528, ii. 98, 107, 139, 143; Poulson's Hist. of Holderness, ii. 103, for an engraving of Owstwick Meeting House; Whiting's Memoirs; Whitehead's Christian Progress, p. 23. Two original letters to George Fox are in the Swarthmore MSS.]
WHITEHEAD, JOHN (1740?–1804), physician and biographer, was born about 1740, apparently at Dukinfield, Cheshire, of humble parents who had left the old dissenting congregation to join the Moravians (1738). He had a classical education. Early in life he became connected with the movement of the Wesleys, having been converted by a methodist preacher, Matthew Mayer of Stockport (Tyerman, John Wesley, 1870, ii. 474). He acted as a lay preacher at Bristol. Leaving this vocation, he married and set up in Bristol as a linendraper. Being successful he removed to London, where he joined the Society of Friends, became a speaker in that body, and conducted a large boarding-school at Wandsworth. Barclay the brewer offered him a life annuity of 100l. to travel with his son on the continent; he accepted. At Leyden he entered as a medical student on 16 Sept. 1779 (when his age is given as thirty-nine), and graduated M.D. on 4 Feb. 1780. On the death (19 Jan. 1781) of John Kooystra, M.D., he became physician to the London dispensary, through the influence of John Coakley Lettsom [q. v.] He was admitted a licentiate of the College of Physicians on 25 March 1782. In 1784 the Friends pushed his candidature as physician to the London Hospital; he was returned as elected on 28 July, but the election was declared not valid, one vote being bad through a slight informality. He attended the Wesleys as their medical adviser. John Wesley thought him second to no physician in England, and was anxious for his return to methodism. He left the Society of Friends in 1784 and again became a methodist; he would have quitted his medical practice, and devoted himself entirely to the ministry, if Wesley would have given him ordination. He preached the funeral sermon for Wesley, which went through four editions in 1791, 12mo, and realised 200l., which he handed over to the society.
Wesley left his papers to Thomas Coke [q. v.], Whitehead, and Henry Moore (1751–1844) [q. v.], giving them full discretion, as his literary executors, to deal with them as they thought fit. The three agreed to bring out a life of Wesley, but to await the appearance of a promised life by John Hampson [q. v.] This life, mainly written and in great part printed before Wesley's death, was really the work of Hampson's father (also John Hampson), who had left methodism from disappointment at not being included in the ‘legal hundred,’ constituting the conference under Wesley's ‘deed of declaration’ of 1784. At a meeting of preachers James Rogers proposed, and the executors agreed, that Whitehead, being the man of most leisure, should write the life, and receive a hundred guineas for it; for this purpose he was entrusted with all Wesley's papers. Hampson's ‘Life’ was published at Sunderland in June 1791. On 6 July Whitehead issued ‘Proposals’ for printing by subscription ‘a full, accurate, and impartial’ life of Wesley, remarking that ‘nothing has yet been published which answers to any one of these characters.’ With the proposals was printed a document signed (21 June) by Wolff, Horton, and Marriott, Wesley's general executors, soliciting Whitehead to write the life. At the conference (opened at Manchester on 26 July) the arrangement was confirmed and Whitehead placed on the book committee. Moved by his friends, who represented that the work would realise a large sum, Whitehead now claimed the copyright and half the profits. Then began a wrangle about his custody and use of Wesley's papers. On 9 Dec. 1791 the quarterly circuit meeting removed him from the list of preachers; subsequently the authorities at City Road chapel withheld his ticket of membership. Cooke and Moore at once undertook a life of Wesley, without access to his papers, which Whitehead denied them. The work, mainly by Moore, was begun in January and completed in February 1792; published on 2 April, it had the authority of conference; two editions of ten thousand copies each were disposed of within the year. At the conference of July and August 1792, Whitehead was called upon to submit the papers
