Family and Education

b. c.1660, o.s. of Henry Whithed. educ. I. Temple 1678. m. bef. 1685, Anne, da. of Sir Anthony Keck, commr. of the great seal 1689-90, of Bell Yard, Chancery Lane, Westminster, 2s. 1da. suc. fa. 1684.1

Offices Held

Freeman, Lymington 1683; commr. for assessment, Hants 1689-90, Wilts. 1690; j.p. Hants ?1689-d., dep. lt. 1689-d.2

Biography

Whithed was reported to have joined the Prince of Orange by 17 Nov. 1688, and was returned for Stockbridge, the family borough, at the general election. He was a moderately active Member of the Convention, in which he was appointed to ten committees, including those to consider the relief of Huguenot refugees, to prepare reasons on the oaths of supremacy and allegiance, to report on defects in the Militia Acts, and to provide for security against Papists. He acted as teller in three divisions, opposing the motion of 15 Nov. 1689 for disabling his colleague William Strode II from standing again for Stockbridge in this Parliament. He made no recorded speeches, and did not vote for the disabling clause in the bill to restore corporations, although presumably a Whig. He was reelected in 1690, but died of smallpox on 17 Mar. 1693, and was buried at Tytherley. He was the last of the male line to sit in Parliament, but his daughter, who also inherited the Southwick estate of the Nortons, married the grandson of Alexander Thistlethwayte, and their second son Francis assumed the name of Whithed and was returned for Hampshire in 1747.3

Ref Volumes: 1660-1690

Author: Paula Watson

Notes

• 1. B. Whitehead, Hist. Whitehead Fams. 22.
• 2. C. St. Barbe, Lymington Recs. 191.
• 3. R. Morrice, Entering Bk. 2, p. 319; information from Mr G. H. Jones; Luttrell, iii. 53.