WHITE, RAWLINS or RAWLYN (fl. 1485?-1555), one of the only three Marian martyrs in Wales -

the others were bishop Robert Ferrar and William Nichol of Haverfordwest, of whom nothing further seems to be known. White, a fisherman (from c. 1535) at Cardiff, is first heard of in the Ministers' Accounts of 1541-2, when he was the tenant of a half-burgage in the street extending from the West Gate as far as the wall of the town in front of ' le slauterhouse in Hom'by ' (= Womanby), i.e. in the modern Westgate Street. In the 1542-3 Ministers' Accounts he holds a 'farm' of five 'hengis' (hang-nets) in Roath manor. He was married, and had children. Though himself illiterate, he had learnt by heart passages of the Bible read out to him by one of his sons, and had become a Protestant. For this, he was arrested, and imprisoned at Chepstow and at Cardiff; persistent and kindly efforts were made by Anthony Kitchin, the bishop of Llandaff, to get him to recant his opinions, but he refused, and was burnt at the stake at Cardiff, 'about March,' 1555, says Foxe. A modern memorial-tablet on Bethany chapel, Cardiff, gives the date as 30 March, but this precise dating is rather suspect - it would seem odd that White and bishop Ferrar, in widely distant corners of Wales, should have died on exactly the same day; for that matter, even the year has been queried, and it may have been 1556. According to Foxe, White was 70 'or thereabouts' at the time of his death.

Author

• Emeritus Professor Robert Thomas Jenkins, (1881 - 1969)

Sources

• J. Hobson Matthews (ed.), Cardiff Records (1898–1911), i, 213, 235-and v, 475 sqq., which reproduces the account in Foxe's The Book of Martyrs. Being a History of the Persecution of the Protestants

Additional Links

• Wikidata: Q13130946

Published date: 1959

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