Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 61.djvu/75

 plead his cause with Burghley (ib. No. 3509). He succeeded in clearing himself of the charges preferred against him by Snagg; but returning to Ireland, and being reinstated in his office, he found a bitter enemy in Sir Henry Wallop [q. v.], who protested strongly against a concordatum of a thousand marks that had been allowed him (Cal. State Papers, Irel. Eliz. ii. 223). He was with the army under Sir William Pelham [q. v.] in Munster during the summer of 1580, corresponding regularly the while with Burghley, to whom he sent Dr. Sanders's ‘sanctus bell, and another toy after the manner of a crosse supporting a booke,’ discovered at Castle Island (ib. ii. 236), from which it may be inferred that so far as his religion was concerned there was nothing to find fault with. His misadventure in the matter of the cess did not prevent him generously pleading the cause of Chief-justice Nicholas Nugent [q. v.] to Burghley (ib. ii. 300), and it was probably owing to this circumstance that he was fiercely denounced by Wallop as ‘a solicitor for all traitors’ (ib. ii. 415). Even his successful management of Fiagh MacHugh, the O'Conors, and Kavanaghs, as reported by the council, received from Wallop a sinister interpretation. ‘The cawse,’ he wrote to Walsingham, ‘that moved him to apprehend the bad fellowes we comende him for in owr joynt letter, grywe by menes that I dyd openly in counsell, the end of the last terme, charge him upon his evell delynge with us bothe in impoynyng and crosynge owr doynges, that he was a comon advocate for traytors and evell men, that he never apprehendyd, or cawsed to be apprehended, anye traytor, rebell, or evell dysposed parson, nor ever woulde come to the examynatyon or araynement off any traytor or conspyrator’ (ib. ii. 428). It might have been deemed by Wallop sufficient pledge for his loyalty that he was the author (ib. iv. 292) of the extraordinary trial by combat in September 1583 between Teige MacGilapatrick O'Conor and Conor MacCormack O'Conor (Cal. Carew MSS. ii. 361), in which both combatants lost their lives.

With the arrival of Sir John Perrot as deputy in 1584 White's prospects improved. From Perrot he received the honour of knighthood at his taking the oath in Christ Church on 21 June. His gratitude naturally inclined him to take the part of the lord deputy in the many disputes in which the latter was involved almost from the beginning of his government. But neither his gratitude nor his admiration of Perrot's good qualities blinded him to the defects in his character (cf. Cal. State Papers, Irel. Eliz. iii. 138). Going the Leinster circuit in the autumn of the same year (1584), White caused forty-eight of the hundred and eighty-one prisoners sent up for trial to be executed, and in the fulfilment of his duty even ventured to visit the redoubtable Fiagh MacHugh O'Byrne in his fastness of Ballinacor, ‘where law never approached’ (ib. ii. 531). In December he was sent down into Connaught in order to investigate the charges of extortion preferred against the late governor, Sir Nicholas Malby [q. v.], and on 15 July 1585 was appointed a commissioner for compounding for cess in that province (ib. ii. 542; Cal. Fiants, No. 4745). In September 1586 he and Sir Lucas Dillon attended the lord deputy thither, greatly to the annoyance of Sir Richard Bingham [q. v.], who confidentially described them as ‘fit instruments’ in Perrot's hands to discover anything against him (ib. iii. 182). Dillon besought Burghley not to let ‘the place of our birth scandalise our faithful service;’ but the fact that they were regarded as wholly subservient to Perrot rendered any cordial action between them and the English section in the council impossible. Everything that White did was misinterpreted. His account of the quarrel between the lord deputy and Marshal Bagenal in the council chamber, though certainly the fairest, was impugned, and an attempt even made to deprive him of the custody of Duncannon Fort, which formed part of his estate at Dunbrody, under the pretence that ‘it was unmeet that the same should be put into the hands of any of this country's birth’ (ib. iii. 449). Perrot's successor, Sir William Fitzwilliam, shared the general prejudice against him, alleging that neither he nor Sir Lucas Dillon would set their hand to any letters ‘wherein Sir John Perrot is mentioned not to their liking’ (ib. iv. 116). In 1589 he was included in the commission for effecting a pacification with the Burkes, whom the alleged arbitrary conduct of Bingham had caused to revolt. In announcing the ill-success of their efforts to Burghley, he remarked that there was a general inclination to lay the blame on Bingham; for himself, he afterwards inclined to take Bingham's part in the matter, as being in his opinion ‘altogether inclined to follow the mildest course’ (ib. iv. 161, 263, 276). Shortly afterwards he was involved in the revelations of Sir Denis O'Roughan in the charge of high treason preferred against Perrot, and Fitzwilliam, who was apparently too glad of an excuse for removing him, caused him in June 1590, though extremely ill, to be placed under restraint, at the same time taking effective