WHITE
,
RAWLINS
or
RAWLYN
(
fl.
1485?-1555
),
one of the only three Marian martyrs in Wales
—
the others were
bishop
Robert
Ferrar
(q.v.)
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 the
bishop of Llandaff
(
Anthony
Kitchin
, q.v.
) 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.
Bibliography:
-
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
.
Author:
Emeritus Professor Robert Thomas Jenkins, C.B.E., D.Litt., Ll.D.,
F.S.A., (1881-1969), Bangor
