Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 61.djvu/148

 misleading, as Whitlock's chronicle begins after 1347. Whitlock's manuscripts are preserved in the Bodleian Library (MSS. Nos. 770 and 865), and in the Cottonian manuscripts at the British Museum (Vesp. E. 16 and Cleopatra D. 9).

[Cooper's Athenæ Cantabr. i. 485; Harwood's Alumni Eton. p. 156; Tanner's Bibl. Brit.-Hib. 1798; Le Neve's Fasti Eccles. Anglicanæ; Simms's Bibl. Stafford. 1894; Harwood's Hist. of Lichfield, pp. 223, 246; Cole's Collections in Brit. Mus. Addit. MS. 5815, f. 10; Newcourt's Repert. Eccles. Londin. i. 615; Willis's Survey of Cathedrals, 1742, ii. 433, 461; Wharton's Anglia Sacra, 1691, vol. i. preface, p. xxxvi.] 

WHITMORE, GEORGE (d. 1654), lord mayor of London, was the third son of William Whitmore (d. 8 Aug. 1593), a London merchant, by his wife Anne (d. 9 Oct. 1615), daughter of Sir William Bond, an alderman of London. He was master of the Haberdashers' Company, and on 23 May 1609 became a member of the Virginia Company under the second charter. He served the office of sheriff of London in 1621–2, and was alderman of the ward of Farringdon Within from 2 June 1621 to 7 Nov. 1626, when he exchanged to Langbourne ward, of which he was alderman until May 1643. On 7 July 1626 he and his elder brother, Sir William Whitmore, received a grant of the manor of Bridgwater Castle, with Heygrove in Somerset (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1625–6, pp. 369, 569). In 1631 he was chosen lord mayor of London, and on 27 May 1632 he was knighted. The pageants which celebrated his entry into office are detailed in a pamphlet preserved in the Huth Library, entitled ‘Londons Ius Honorarium’ (London, 1631, 4to), compiled by Thomas Heywood (d. 1650?) [q. v.] (cf., Collectanea, iv. 267). On 5 May 1637 he was appointed a commissioner to carry out the statute of Henry VIII for encouraging the use of the long bow and suppressing unlawful games (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1637, p. 66).

Whitmore was an ardent loyalist, and on 25 Nov. 1641 the king passed through his grounds at Balmes in Hackney on his return from Scotland. In 1642 he was imprisoned in Crosby House as a delinquent (ib. 1641–3, p. 403), and, although he was shortly released, he was reimprisoned on 20 Jan. 1642–1643 for refusing to pay the taxes levied by parliament. His estate was sequestered for some time, but he finally obtained his discharge from the committee of sequestrations, and on 22 Oct. 1651 was commanded to lay his discharge before the committee for compounding (Cal. Comm. for Compounding, p. 491).

He died at Balmes on 12 Dec. 1654, and was buried at St. Mary Magdalen, Milk Street, on 6 Jan. He married Mary (1616–1657), eldest daughter of Richard Daniel of Truro. By her he had three sons—Charles, George, and William—and four daughters: Elizabeth, married to Sir John Weld of Willey; Anne, married to Sir John Robinson, lord mayor of London; Margaret, married to Sir Charles Kemys; and Mary.

[Boase and Courtney's Biblioth. Cornub. 1874; Brown's Genesis of the United States, 1890, i. 228, ii. 1052; Whitmore's Notes on the Manor and Family of Whitmore, 1856, pp. 8, 9; Robinson's Hist. and Antiq. of Hackney, 1842, i. 154–162; Courtney's Guide to Penzance, 1845, App. p. 80; Gent. Mag. 1826, i. 131; Pepys's Diary and Corresp. ed. Braybrooke, ii. 293, 377, iv. 442; Funeral Sermon by Anthony Farindon, appended to his Thirty Sermons, 1657.] 

WHITNEY, GEOFFREY (1548?–1601?), poet, the son of a father of the same name, was born at, or near, Coole Pilate, a township in the parish of Acton, four miles from Nantwich in Cheshire, in or about 1548. His family, probably sprung from the Whitneys of Whitney in Herefordshire, had been settled on a small estate at Coole Pilate since 1388. Educated at the neighbouring school of Audlem, he afterwards proceeded to Oxford, and then for a longer period to Magdalene College, Cambridge; but he seems to have left the university without a degree. Having adopted the legal profession, he became in time under-bailiff of Great Yarmouth. He held this post in 1580 (how much earlier is not evident), retaining it till 1586. In 1584 the Earl of Leicester, high steward of the borough, made an unsuccessful attempt to procure the under-stewardship for Whitney, but the place was given to John Stubbs [q. v.] After some litigation with the corporation, by which he seems to have been badly treated, the dispute was settled by a payment to the poet of 45l. (, Yarmouth, vol. ii.).

During his residence at Yarmouth Whitney appears to have had much intercourse with the Netherlands, and to have made the acquaintance of many scholars there. On the termination of his connection with the town, he proceeded to Leyden, ‘where he was in great esteem among his countrymen for his ingenuity.’ On 1 March 1586 he became a student in its newly founded university, and later in the year he brought out at Plantin's press his ‘Choice of Emblems,’ the book which has preserved his name from oblivion. Of the duration of his sojourn on the continent there is no evidence. He sub-