Peter White

Life
b. Waterford; Jesuit in 16th c. Ireland; grad. Oriel College, Oxford; author of Epitomiae copiae Erasmi and works on rhetoric and the speeches of Cicero; he taught Richard Stanyhurst, Luke Wadding and Peter Lombard at Kilkenny Grammar School; there is an early biography in Richard Ryan, Biographia Hibernica: Irish Worthies (1821), Vol. II, pp.628. RR

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Commentary

Richard Stanihurst (Historie of Ireland, [in Holinshed, 1577 - Chap. on Kilkenny), on the grammar school founded at Kilkenny by Pierce or Peter Butler Earl of Ormond and Ossaroy [Ossery] and his wife Margaret Fitzgerald: ‘Out of,which schoole haue sprouted such proper ympes through the paneifull diligence and laboursome indistury of a famous lettered man M. Peter White (sometyme fellow of Oriall colledge in Oxford, and schoolemaister in Kilkenny) as generally the whole weale publike of Ireland, and especially sourthern partes of that Island are greatly therby furthered. This gentlemans methode of trayning vp youth was rare and singuler, framying the education according to the scholers vaine. If he found him free, he would bridle hym like a wyse isocrates from his booke; if he perceiued hym to be dull, he would spur hym forwarde; if he vnderstoode that he were the woorse for beating, he would win him with rewardes; finally, by interlacing study wyth recreation, sorrow with mirth, payne with pleasure, sowernesse with sweetnesse, roughnesse with myldnesse, he had so good successe in schooling his pulis, as in good sooth I may boldly byde by it, that in the realme of Ireland was no Grammar schoole so good, in English, I am well assured, no better.’

Alice Stopford Green, The Making and Undoing of Ireland, 1200-1600 (London: Macmillan 1909): ‘There was already a school at Waterford — (probably the same as the later free-school in Christ-church yard)’ where the scholars were as 1550. numerous as poor, and apparently made their own candles, since the town ordered that no freeman nor foreigner shall sell no wax to scholars? There the heirs of the O’Sullivan territory were sent to learn English,’ and for generations the children of the Irish gentry round came to be fostered or boarded with the merchants, their cousins and friends, and to learn Irish geography and history. One Fagan, bachelor of arts in Oxford, was schoolmaster there. [5] Peter White, himself a Waterford man, educated at Oxford and a Fellow of Oriel, being called to his native town as dean, and then ejected from the deanery for his religion, continued to teach school there [Ware’s Irish Writers, p.95] beloved by all the Irish, “a man very well learned ... by whose [368] industry and travail a great part of the youth of his country and of the country of Dublin have greatly profited in learning and virtuous education.”! In forty years of devoted labours till near the end of the century he sent out a long line of brave patriots, learned scholars, and eminent divines. One of his most famous pupils, Peter Lombard, born in Waterford, of a leading merchant family, went thence to study philosophy at Louvain, and ‘‘when he proceeded master of art there was chosen Primus universitatis by the uniform consent of the four principals, which preferment did happen to none in such consenting wise in many years before.’ (pp.367-68; for the years 1500-60.)

Bibl. citations in notes incl. Smith's Waterford, 189; H.M.C., Rep. X, App. V, pp.327 & 307; C.S.P. 1587, 342, 344; and Hol[inshed], VI, p.59: ‘The houses that gave mayors and bailiffs to the town gave to it also its great schoolmasters and scholars of genius — Devereux, White, Lombard, Fagan, Quemerford. Among these names it would seem probable from the history of the Whites, that the name had been taken by an Irish family after the Act of 1464.’

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W. B. Stanford, Ireland and the Classical Tradition (IAP 1976; 1984), Peter White, appointed to Kilkenny grammar school by Sir Piers Butler, 1538; native of Waterford, fellow of Oriel Coll., Oxon; his pupil Richard Stanihurst, who praised him highly in his Description of Ireland, to which we owe much of our information about Irish scholars in the 16th c. The passage quoted by Stanford describes a carrot-and-stick method of ‘this lucky schoolmaster of Munster’ in classical education, to the effect that ‘in the realm of Ireland was no grammar school so good, in England, I am well assured, none better.’ See J. Browne, Transactions of the Kilkenny Arch. Soc., i. (1849-51), 221-29; Stanihurst, Description of Ireland, Chap. 7. Other students were Luke Wadding and Peter Lombard; see Millet (Rome 1964).

[ There is no ODNB on Peter White. ]

Notes

Namesake: Peter White [Vicar of Eaton], author of A godlye and fruitefull sermon against idolatrie: vvherein the foolishe distinctions and false interpretations of the seconde commandement, and other scriptures pretended by the Papists, are plainly and fully confuted: preached the .xv. daye of Ianuarie. 1581. in the parrishe church of Eaton Sooken, within the countie of Bedforde, by P.W. minister and preacher in that place. (At London : Imprinted by Frauncis Coldocke, 1581), [44]pp.; An ansvveare vnto certaine crabbed questions: pretending a reall presence of Christ in the Sacramente: latelie propounded by some secret papist, to the great troubling of the consciences of the simple, together with a Discouerie of the Iesuiticall opinion of Iustification, guilefully vttered by Sherwyne at the time of his execution. Gathered & set foorth by Peter Whyte, ... Seene and allowed according to the Queenes Maiesties iniunctions. (London: imprinted by Iohn Wolfe and Henry Kirkham, & are to be sold at his shop at the little north doore of S. Paule, [1582]), [5], 3, 9-44; [8],41 lvs.; 8°.

Others of the name
Peter White [tutor aboard HM] A memorable sea-fight ... Or, A narrative of all the principall -+QWEassages, which were transacted in the Downes, in the year, 1639, betweene Antonio De Oquendo ... and Martin van Tromp (London: Printed by T. Forcet [for] Andrews Burrell 1649).

Peter White [publisher], Paddy & Thomas: a conversation between two Irishmen (London: Printed by P. White, ...; and sold by F. Collins, ...; and J. Nisbet ..., [18--]), pp., 16cm., ill. [woodcut title vignette; colophon: ‘... for the Religious Tract Society’]; A Conversation at a Country Wake: proper to be distributed at wakes, fairs, and races, &c.. (London: Printed by P. White ... ; sold by F. Collins, ...; and J. Nisbet, ... [18--]), 8pp., 1 ill.; 16cm.; The history of William Black, the chimney-sweeper [18--]; and The reward of pious confidence: as illustrated in several interesting cases [18--].

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