Born probably at Weymouth, Dorset, White wrote her first pamphlet, A Diligent Search amongst Rulers, Priests, Professors, and People in May 1659, seemingly for local distribution. It was radical in tone: "All you high and loughty [lofty] ones, you fruitless branches, you will the Lord cut down with the Sword of his power."Quoted in The Emergence of Quaker Writing. Dissenting Literature in Seventeenth-Century Literature, ed. Thomas N. Corns and David Loewenstein (London: Frank Cass, 1995), p. 89. It also describes how Dorothy White was briefly imprisoned for interrupting a local Anglican service. Catie Gill, "White, Dorothy (d. 1686?)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, UK: OUP, 2004) Retrieved 18 December 2015. It was printed in the same year.A Diligent Search amongst Rulers, Priests, Professors, and People; and a warning to all sorts high and low, that are out of the doctrine of Christ, and fear not God Put forth by Dorothy White living in Waymouth (London, 1659). British Library Integrated Catalogue: Retrieved 20 March 2012.
