Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/White, William (1604-1678)
WHITE, WILLIAM (1604–1678), divine, was born of humble parentage at Witney, Oxfordshire, in June 1604. He matriculated from Wadham College, Oxford, on 13 July 1621, graduated B.A. on 25 Feb. 1625 and M.A. on 27 June 1628. In 1632 he became master of Magdalen College school, from which post he was ejected by the parliamentary commissioners in 1648. Several of his pupils there became eminent. Through the influence of Brian Duppa [q. v.], bishop of Salisbury, he obtained about the same time the rectory of Pusey, Berkshire, which Wood says he kept ‘through the favour of his friends and the smallness of its profits.’
After the Restoration, about 1662, the rectory of Appleton was conferred upon him by the efforts of Thomas Pierce [q. v.], president of Magdalen College and a former pupil of White. He kept both livings until his death, at Pusey, on 31 May 1678. He was buried on 5 June in the chancel, where a flat stone records his death. By his will, dated 25 Oct. 1677, he left to his only daughter, Elizabeth, houses and lands at Bampton and West Weale, subject to a charge of 5l. to be paid to the vicar of St. Mary's, Oxford, and his successors, for a catechism at evening prayer. The house which he had erected at Pusey he bequeathed to a son. White wrote several works in Latin under the name of ‘Gulielmus Phalerius.’ One, ‘Via ad Pacem Ecclesiasticam,’ London, 1660, 4to, is in the British Museum. Three others are mentioned by Wood.
[Foster's Alumni Oxon. 1500–1714; Wood's Athenæ Oxon. iii. 1167; Burrows's Visitation, p. 514; Gardiner's Register of Wadham, p. 62; Bloxam's Hist. of Magd. Coll. iii. 158.]