WHITEHEAD, PAUL. 



WHITELOCKE, BULSTRODE. 



agree upon this high matter; but the inflammation of feeling which 

 their difference at first excited on both sides soon cooled down, and 

 although they never again acted in concert or association, their occa- 

 sional intercourse was renewed long before they left the world. 

 Whitefield, who felt that he was likely to go the first, always spoke of 

 Wesley as the man who ought to preach his funeral sermon; and 

 Wesley actually performed that office for his old friend. 



Whitefield lost his mother, in the seventy-first year of her age, in 

 December 1751. While he was in America in the spring of 1740, he 

 applied to two of his friends, a Mr. and Mrs. D. to ask if they would 

 give him their daughter to wife, at the same time telling them that 

 they need not be afraid of sending him a refusal ; " for I bless God," 

 said he in his singular epistle, " if I know anything of my own heart, 



I am free from that foolish passion which the world calls love 



But I have sometimes thought Miss E would be my helpmate ; 



for she has often been impressed on my heart." This attempt came 

 to nothing; but the next year, on the llth of November, he was 

 married in England to Mrs. James of Abergavenny, a widow of 

 between thirty and forty, who, he intimates, was neither rich nor 

 beautiful, but had become religious after having once lived like the 

 rest of the world. When his wife became pregnant, he announced 

 publicly that the child would be a boy, and become a preacher of the 

 gospel; he was right as to the sex, but the infant died at the end 

 of four months. His wife died in 1768 ; and one of bis friends, 

 Cornelius Winter, has recorded that Whitefield and she did not live 

 happily together, that " she certainly did not behave as she ought," and 

 that " her death set his mind much at rest." 



Whitefield himself, whose health had begun to give way about 1757, 

 died at Newbury Port, near Boston, in America, on tbe morning of 

 Sunday, the 30th of September 1770. His printed works, besides an 

 edition of Clarke's 'Commentary on the Bible/ which he published in 

 1759, consist principally of sermons, either printed from his own 

 manuscripts or taken down by reporters as delivered ; of a few con- 

 troversial tracts and other occasional pieces ; of a copious journal of 

 his life and labours, and of three volumes of letters, amounting to 

 1465 in all, and extending over the time from July 18, 1734, to within 

 a week of his death. A collection of his sermons, tracts and letters, 

 in 6 vols. 8vo, was published at London in 1771 : his journals, like 

 Wesley, he published in his own lifetime ; the second edition, with 

 considerable corrections, appeared in 1756. 



WHITEHEAD, PAUL, was the youngest son of Edmund White- 

 head, a tailor, of Castle Yard, Holborn, London, where he was born 

 6th of February 1710, o.s., being St. Paul's day, from which circum- 

 stance he is said to have derived his Christian name, ludicrously 

 unsuitable to his character, and made more memorably ridiculous by 

 his brother satirist Churchill's well known lines 



" May I (can worse disgrace on manhood fall ?) 

 I3e born a Whitehead and baptised a Paul ! " 



On leaving school he was placed as apprentice to a mercer in the 

 city ; but he afterwards found means, in what way is not explained, to 

 escape from this position, and to enter himself at one of the inna of 

 court as a student of the law. It does not appear that he was ever 

 called to the bar; but in 1735 he obtained wherewithal to live in 

 idleness, or without a profession, by marrying Anna, the only daughter 

 of Sir Swinnerton Dyer, Bart., of Spain's Hall, Essex, with whom he 

 received a fortune of 10,OOOZ. The lady, who did not live long, is 

 stated to have been young, but very homely in her person and little 

 better than an idiot. Two years before this he had published his 

 first poem, entitled ' State Dunces,' a satire upon the ministry, which 

 he inscribed to Pope, and which brought him both into notice with 

 the public and into favour with the opposition, then headed by the 

 Prince of Wales. This was followed, in 1739, by another piece, entitled 

 'Manners,' in the same strain, but written with so much more daring 

 that, on the motion of Lord Delawar, the author and his publisher, 

 Dodsley, were ordered to attend at the bar of the House of Lords, 

 and Whitehead found it necessary to abscond for a time. He was 

 now, along with Ralph (upon whom he had poured unsparing abuse 

 and contempt a few years before, in his ' State Dunces '), a Dr. Thom- 

 son, and others, one of the pack of literary lackeys kept about him 

 by Bubb Do<Hngton; and he distinguished himself by bis zealous 

 exertions in the cause of his patron, not only by his pen, but at elec- 

 tions and in other ways. Besides ' The Gymnasiad,' a diatribe against 

 boxing, which appeared in 1744, another satire against the govern- 

 ment, entitled ' Honour,' which he published about the same time, 

 and 'An Epistle to Dr. Thomson,' in 1755, were the principal pro- 

 ductions of this part of his life. Another of his patrons and boon 

 associates was the notorious Sir Francis Dashwood, afterwards Lord 

 de Despenser. Whitehead made one, with Dashwood, Sir Thomas 

 Stapleton, Wilkes, and others, in the infamous revelries of Medmen- 

 hain Abbey. In return Dashwood procured for him the household 

 place of deputy treasurer of the chamber, which is said to have been 

 worth 8001. a year, and which he held till his death. He spent his 

 latter days at a villa which he erected on Twickenham Common; but 

 he died at his lodgings in Henrietta-street, Covent-Qarden, London, 

 30th December 1774. His collected works nearly all the veriest 

 rubbish were published, in a 4to volume in 1777, by Captain Edward 

 Thomson, with a memoir of his life. 



WHITEHEAD, WILLIAM, was the son of a baker of Cambridge, 

 where he was born in 1715. The interest of Mr. Bromley, afterwards 

 Lord Montfort, who was one of the county members, procured him a 

 nomination to Winchester ; and after passing through that school, 

 where he had been only two years when his father died, he was 

 admitted a sizar at Claro Hall, Cambridge, in 1735, on one of the 

 scholarships founded by Mr. Thomas Pyke, who Lad, like Whit-head'a 

 father, been a baker in Cambridge, and had directed that they should 

 be given in preference to the sons of deceased members of that trade. 

 He was elected a Fellow of his college in 1742. In 1745 he became 

 tutor to the son of William, third Earl of Jersey, and about a year 

 after resigned his fellowship. In 1754 he went abroad with his pupil 

 and Viscount Nuneham, the son of Earl Harcourt. After spending a 

 summer at Rheims and a winter at Leipzig, they proceeded to Vienna, 

 and thence to Italy, returning through Switzerland, Germany, and 

 Holland, and reaching home in September 1756. During his absence 

 from England, Whitehead had, by the interest of his patrons, been 

 appointed to the patent place of secretary and registrar to the Order 

 of the Bath ; and the year after his return he was nominated to the 

 office of poet laureate, vacant by the death of Colley Cibber. Both 

 these offices he held till his own death, on the 14th of April 1788. 



Whitehead began very early to be known as a writer of verse ; and 

 his poems, consisting of epistles, tales, essays, odes, &c., were twice 

 collected and printed under his own direction, first in 1754 and again 

 in 1774 : a third edition was published by Mason, with a memoir of 

 the author, immediately after his death, in 1788 ; and they are also 

 inserted in Chalmers's edition of the 'English Poets,' 21 vols. 8vo, 

 1810. They are now however entirely neglected and forgotten. His 

 most esteemed production is his tragedy of ' The Roman Father ' 

 (founded hi part upon the 'Horace' of Corneille), which was first 

 brought out at Drury Lane in 1750, and long continued a stock play. 

 He is also the author of another tragedy called ' Creusa, Queen of 

 Athens,' first produced in 1754 ; of ' The School for Lovers,' a comedy, 

 in 1762 ; and of 'A Trip to Scotland,' a farce, brought out with con- 

 siderable success in 1770. 



WHITELOCKE, BULSTRODE, was born August 2, 1605, in 

 Fleet Street, London, the son of Sir James Whitelocke, who was a 

 judge of the Common Pleas, by Elizabeth, the daughter of Edward 

 Bulstrode. He was thus descended both by father and mother from 

 wealthy families. He was educated at Merchant Taylors' School in 

 London, and in March 1620 was entered at St. John's College, Oxford, 

 where Laud was then president, from whom he received kindness 

 which occasioned him subsequently to refuse to be one of the com- 

 missioners of the House of Commons appointed to draw up the 

 charges against him. He quitted the university without taking a 

 degree, and entered himself at the Middle Temple, where, under his 

 father's guidance, he acquired much skill in the common law, and made 

 considerable progress in other studies. He was chosen one of the 

 managers of the Royal Masque presented by the Temple to Charles I. 

 and his court at Whitehall in 1633. In November 1640 he was elected 

 member of the Long Parliament for Great Marlow in Buckingham- 

 shire, in which county he had considerable property, and one of his 

 earliest speeches was in defence of his father for having committed 

 Selden to prison in 1626, when accused of too great boldness of 

 speech in parliament. He was also appointed chairman of the com- 

 mittee for managing the impeachment of the Earl of Strafford. He 

 had thus early taken a decided part against the despotic measures of 

 Charles I. and his ministers, but tolerance and moderation ever formed 

 conspicuous traits in his character. He was an excellent specimen 

 of the intelligent country gentleman, who, though fixedly determined 

 not to submit to a tyranny, were yet unwilling to support violent 

 measures, though often compelled to act with their party in matters 

 they could not approve rather than break with them altogether. The 

 support of such men was eagerly sought by the. leading spirits of the 

 party, but their influence was not sufficient to control the direction of 

 the movement. In 1641, on the militia question Whitelocke con- 

 tended that the power was neither vested in the parliament nor the 

 king, but in both jointly. In 1642 he was appointed a deputy-lieute- 

 nant of Bucks and Oxon, and in conjunction with Hampden dispersed 

 the commissioners of array, assembled at Watlington. In October of 

 this year his house at Fawley Court, in Buckinghamshire, was rifled 

 by Prince Rupert, and garrisoned by the king's troops. Whitelocke 

 was present at the defence of Brentford in November 1642. In 

 January 1642-43 he was appointed one of the commissioners to treat 

 of peace at Oxford, and one of the lay members of the Assembly of 

 Divines, in which he opposed the pretensions of the Presbyterians, 

 and earnestly, but vainly, sought to bring about an accommodation 

 with the king. In 1644 he was made governor of Windsor Castle, 

 and again, with Hollis and others, a commissioner to treat with the 

 king at Oxford, where his desire for peace led him to make certain 

 secret propositions to the king, which were revealed, and brought him 

 into some danger. He opposed the self-denying ordinance, but when 

 Essex was about to bring accusations against Cromwell, he gave him 

 an early intimation of it, and thenceforward had much of his con- 

 fidence, lu April 1645 he became one of the commissioners of the 

 Admiralty, and caused the books and manuscripts at Whitehall to be 

 removed and taken care of. He was one of the commissioners for the 

 treaty of Uxbridge, and on August 6, 1645, supported in the House 



