Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/White, Richard (1604-1687)
WHITE, alias Johnson, RICHARD (1604–1687), devotional writer, was born in the diocese of Winchester, of poor Roman catholic parents, in 1604, and entered the English College at Douay in 1623, when he adopted the name of Johnson, which he retained for the rest of his life. He was ordained priest on 23 Feb. 1629–30. On 23 May 1630 he was sent from Douay to assist Stephen Barnes as confessor of the English Augustinian canonesses of St. Monica's at Louvain. He acted in that capacity for twenty years, and for thirty-six years after Barnes's death he was principal confessor to the community. He died in the convent on 12 Jan. 1686–7.
He left in manuscript a large number of devotional treatises, most of which were lost at the time of the French Revolution. One of them, entitled ‘The Suppliant of the Holy Ghost: a Paraphrase of the “Veni Sancte Spiritus,”’ was printed at London in 1878, 8vo, under the editorship of the Rev. Thomas Edward Bridgett, who appended to it two other treatises, believed to have been also written by White, entitled ‘A Paraphrase of the Pater Noster’ and ‘Meditations on the Blessed Sacrament.’
[Memoir by Bridgett; Records of the English Catholics, i. 23.]