William White was of the Leyden congregation.
He is wrongly called by
Davis a son of Bishop
John White, as the only English Bishop of that
name and time died a
bachelor. At White’s marriage, recorded
at the
Stadthaus at Leyden,
January 27/February 1, 1612, to Anna [Susanna]
Fuller, he is called
“a young man of England.” As he presumably
was
of age at that time,
he must have been at least some twenty-nine or
thirty years old at
the embarkation, eight years later. His son
Peregrine was born in
Cape Cod harbor. Mr. White died very early.
Susanna (Fuller) White, wife of William, and sister
of Dr. Fuller (?),
was apparently somewhat
younger than her first husband and perhaps
older than her second.
She must, in all probability (having been
married in Leyden in
1612), have been at least twenty-five at the
embarkation eight years
later. Her second husband, Governor
Winslow, was but twenty-five
in 1620, and the presumption is that
she was slightly his
senior. There appears no good reason for
ascribing to her the
austere and rather unlovable characteristics
which the pen of Mrs.
Austin has given her.
Resolved White, the son of William and Susanna White,
could not have been
more than six or seven
years old, and is set down by Goodwin and
others—on
what seems inconclusive evidence—at five.
He was
doubtless born at Leyden.
William Holbeck is simply named as “a servant”
of White, by Bradford.
His age does not appear,
but as he did not sign the Compact he was
probably “under
age.” From the fact that he died early,
it is
possible that he was
too ill to sign.
Edward Thompson is named by Bradford as a second “servant”
of Master
White, but nothing more
is known of him, except that he did not sign
the Compact, and was
therefore probably in his nonage, unless
prevented by severe
sickness. He died very early.
Master William Mullens (or Molines, as Bradford some
times calls him) is
elsewhere shown to have
been a tradesman of some means, of Dorking,
in Surrey, one of the
Merchant Adventurers, and a man of ability.
From the fact that he
left a married daughter (Mrs. Sarah Blunden)
and a son (William)
a young man grown, in England, it is evident
that he must have been
forty years old or more when he sailed for
New England, only to
die aboard the ship in New Plymouth harbor.
That he was not a French
Huguenot of the Leyden contingent, as
pictured by Rev. Dr.
Baird and Mrs. Austin, is certain.
Mrs. Alice Mullens, whose given name we know only
from her husband’s
will, filed in London,
we know little about. Her age was (if she
was his first wife)
presumably about that of her husband, whom she
survived but a short
time.