Life
The son of Thomas Whitby, rector (1631-7) of Rushden, Northamptonshire, then rector of Barrow-on-Humber, Lincolnshire, he was born at Rushden on 24 March 1638. After attending school at Caster, Lincolnshire, he became in 1653 a commoner of Trinity College, Oxford, matriculating on 23 July, when his name is written Whitbie. He was elected scholar on 13 June 1655, graduated with a Bachelor of Arts on 20 April 1657, M.A. on 10 April 1660, and was elected fellow in 1664. In the same year he came out as a writer against Roman Catholic doctrine, attacking Serenus Cressy. He was answered by John Sergeant, to whom he replied in 1666. Seth Ward, bishop of Salisbury, made him his chaplain in 1668, giving him on 22 October the prebend of Yatesbury, and on 7 November the prebend of Husborn-Tarrant and Burbage.
In 1669 he became perpetual curate of St. Thomas's and rector of St. Edmund's, Salisbury. He next wrote on the evidences (1671). On 11 September 1672 he was installed precentor at Salisbury, and at once accumulated B.D. and D.D. (13 September) He resumed his anti-Catholic polemics in 1674, and continued to publish on this topic at intervals till 1689.
Whitby's reputation suffered by his anonymous publication, late in 1682, of The Protestant Reconciler, a plea for concessions to nonconformists, with a view to their comprehension. A fierce paper war followed, in which Lawrence Womock, David Jenner, and Samuel Thomas took part. In contemporary pamphlets Whitby, nicknamed Whigby, was unfavourably contrasted with Titus Oates; ironical letters of thanks were addressed to him, purporting to come from Anabaptists and others. The University of Oxford in convocation (21 July 1683) condemned the proposition 'that the duty of not offending a weak brother is inconsistent with all human authority of making laws concerning indifferent things,' and ordered Whitby's book to be burned by the university marshal in the schools quadrangle. Seth Ward extorted from Whitby a retractation (9 October 1683); and he issued a second part of the Protestant Reconciler, urging dissenters to conformity.
In 1689 Whitby wrote in favour of taking the oaths to William and Mary. He took a small part in the Socinian controversy by publishing (1691) a Latin tract on the divinity of Christ. On 14 April 1696 he received the prebend of Taunton Regis.
Whitby suffered in his later years from failing sight, and employed an amanuensis; otherwise he retained his faculties, including a tenacious memory. He was at church the day before he died; and returning home fainted and died the night following, on 24 March 1726, his eighty-eighth birthday.
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