In 1570 he was granted the manor of Leixlip, two castles, a water-mill, a salmon-weir, two fishing-places called the Salmon Leap, on the River Anna Liffey, Priortown Meade, and other demesne lands. Two years later he was made Master of the Rolls.
Sir Nicholas Whyte was succeeded by his son Andrew, whose son was again Sir Nicholas Whyte, Knt.
This Sir Nicholas held the manor of Leixlip upon the breaking out of hostilities in 1641. In company with Lord Dunsany, Patrick Barnwall, Sir Andrew Aylmer, and other chief men of the Pale, he surrendered himself to the Lords Justices Parsons and Borlace. This was done in obedience to the King’s proclamation to show that they had no part in the rebellion, but they were imprisoned in Dublin Castle and most inhumanly treated.
In the diary of Captain William Tucker he records going from Dublin to Naas in 1641 with the Marquis of Ormond, and sleeping a night in Leixlip Castle. He mentions that the owner, Sir Nicholas Whyte, was at the time a prisoner in Dublin.
In 1646 General Preston established his chief quarters in the fortress, and in November of that year the Confederate Catholics halted in their march on Dublin between Leixlip and Lucan. They were commanded by Generals Preston and Owen Roe O’Neill. The King’s secretary and minister, Digby, was at Leixlip with Preston.
Plots and counter plots among the Confederate commanders made the once formidable army of no avail. Owen Roe, fearing some treachery, threw a wooden bridge across the Liffey, as a flood had destroyed the permanent one, and withdrew his forces into Meath.
Sir Nicholas Whyte recovered his lands of Leixlip by a Decree of Innocence. He died in 1654, and was buried at Leixlip.
Various historians have confused the fortress popularly called Leixlip Castle with a stronghold of less note designated the “Black Castle” of Leixlip, situated at the eastern end of the town. Although still known as the “Black Castle” this building has been so modernised that its original fortified structure is not noticeable.
That some discrepancies as to ownership existed in the written history of Leixlip Castle was first noted in 1901, but it was not until the following year that Lord Walter FitzGerald, in a note in the _Journal of the Kildare Archæological Society_, gave an extract from “The Civil Survey” of James Peisley and Henry Makepeace of 1654, in which the “Black Castle” of Leixlip is mentioned as belonging to the Earl of Kildare and “one ruined castle” to Sir Nycholas White, thus establishing the fact that there were two distinct castles at Leixlip owned by different persons.