Sir John White's (1558–1625) was a government official in the Kingdom of England. Sir John was twenty-two when he succeeded his father, Thomas White, as High sheriff of Nottinghamshire.
Contents
Marriage
Sir John White was married at the age of 32 to Dorothea Harpur, daughter of John Harpur of Swarkston. Sir John's father-in-law was "one of the most considerable gentlemen in Derbyshire." The Harpur pedigree can be traced for 14 generations before Dorothy, Lady White, beginning with Richard Harper, temp. Henry I. Dorothea White's grandmother, on her father's side, was Jane Finderne, heiress of Finderne. Of the house of Finderne, Burke writes- "The hamlet of Finderne, in the Parish of Mickleover, about four miles from Derby, was the chief residence of a family who derived their name from the place of their patrimony for nine generations,. From the times of Edward I to those of Henry VIII, when the male line became extinct and the estate passed, by the marriage of the heiress to the Harpurs, the house of Finderne was one of the most distinguished in Derbyshire. Members of it had won their spurs in the Crusades and also at the Cressy, and the Agincourt. Their territorial possessions were large as the Findernes were High Sheriffs, and were occasionally rangers of Needwood Forest, and also custodians of Tutbury Castle. Finderne originally erected temp. Edward I and restored and enlarged at one of the quaintest and largest mansions in the Midlands at different periods. The present Church had rows of monumental brasses and altar tombs, all memorials of the Findernes. Local legend says that the Findernes brought the so-called Finderne Flower back from the Holy Land by Sir Geoffrey Finderne.
Knighthood
At Greenwich, on 9 June 1619, King James I knighted Sir John White.
Family
In 1615, Sir John's second son, Richard White, died at age nineteen and was buried at Tuxford. His third son, Gervase, also died young. His eldest, Thomas, succeeded his father. Sir John had one daughter, Anne, who married (at a date not known) John Welby of Moulton, in Lincolnshire, one of the same family of Welby into which the previous generation had married. She died sometime prior to 1634 and left only one daughter, Mary, who died young.
In 1623, Sir John was High sheriff of Nottinghamshire. Two years later, in 1625, he died on Christmas Day at age sixty-seven. In his times the execution of the Queen of Scots, the dispersal of the Armada, the Gunpowder Plot, the discoveries of Galileo, the assassination of Henry IV of France, and the Puritan colonisation of New England took place.
Lady White erected, in the family burial place in Tuxford church, " a fair tomb" of alabaster, in memory of her husband, leaving a space in the inscription for the date of her own death which has never been inserted. This is likely because of her grandson, who was in inheritance when it took place, was more remiss than her children.
The inscription is as follows:
"HIC JACET JOHANNES WHITE, MILES, FILIUS ET HAERES THOMAE WHITE, ARMIG. SERVI QUONDAM PHILIPPI ET MARIAE, REGIS ET REGINAE ANGLIAE ET AGNETIS CECILL, SORORIS WILLIELMI CECILL BARONIS DE BURGHLEIGH SUMMI ANGL. THESAURII QUI QUIDEM JOHANNIS OBIIT IN FESTIUM NATIVITATIS DOMINO ANNO 1625.
DOROTHEA UXOR CHARISSIMA PRAEDICTI JOHANNIS WHITE FILIA IOHANNIS HARPUR DE SWARKESTONE IN COM. DERB. MILITIS IN PIAM POSTERITATIS MEMORIAM ET SPEM CERTAM FUTURAE RESURRECTION MONUMENTUM HOC POSUIT. OBIIT DIE ANNO."
Which roughly translates to:
"Here lies John White, soldier, son and heir of Thomas White, Esquire, servant of Philip and Mary, king and queen of England and Agnes Cecill sister of William Cecill Baron of Burghley, Lord Treasurer of England, John died on Christmas Day of 1625. Dorothea, the dearly beloved wife of the said John White, son of John Harpur on Swarkeston in Com. Derby. in loving memory and in certain hope of the resurrection, was this monument created. Died this year."