“For three and forty years John White was the honoured pastor of the combined parishes of Holy Trinity and St. Peter in Dorchester, and during that period, without neglecting his cure of souls, he found time to take part in many affairs in the outside world. On the one hand, he watched the development of the Puritan movement, becoming by degrees more and more absorbed, then taking an active part ; at last he found himself swept into the current which he had vainly striven to keep within its ancient bounds.
“On the other hand, he was instrumental in establishing that colony in the New World which developed into the great Commonwealth of Massachusetts, yet his efforts in that direction have not been fully recognised, nor has the importance of the settlements undertaken under his auspices been properly understood because their history has been involved in obscurity.
“It has been declared frequently that the Cape Ann plantation was merely an offshoot of the Plymouth colony, but on the contrary, it was established in direct opposition to that settlement, for the purpose of providing a refuge for those who disapproved of the system adopted by the Pilgrim Fathers.
“The successive settlements on the North Shore and at the “bottom of the Bay” are all connected by the thread of John White’s interest in them, and the fostering care he bestowed upon them.”
John White was born in 1575 in the village of Stanton St. John in Oxfordshire. He was educated at Winchester and New College Oxford, where he graduated with a BA in 1597 and MA in 1600. He was appointed rector of Holy Trinity Church Dorchester in 1606 and developed a fine reputation as a preacher with “great gravity and presence” and as a staunch, widely respected puritan.
In Dorchester, he was seen as a great reformer – changing the town into a model for social welfare. The Great Fire of Dorchester in 1613 caused enormous damage. White led the effort to raise the funds to rebuild the town.
White through his close association with a Dorchester merchant, Richard Bushrode, who carried out trade for fish and animal pelts in New England, came to see that New England offered refuge for people being persecuted for their religious beliefs. He formed the Dorchester Company with a large group of local investors and sent settlers to Cape Ann in 1623. He was also very active with the successor company, the New England Company that sent further settlers to New England in 1628.
A royal charter was sought to formalize that settlement. It was granted in 1629 to a new company, the Massachusetts Bay Company, with significant new investors and settlers under the leadership of John Winthrop. White continued to remain active and was greatly respected by Winthrop.
After the English Civil War broke out in 1642, White, a parliamentarian, was summoned to London to join an assembly for the “settling of the Government of the Church”. He returned to Dorchester in 1646 and died in 1648.