Definition of "whenas"

Tho, when-as all things ready were aright, / The Damzel was before the Altar ſet, / Being already dead with fearful fright.

1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book VI, Canto IX”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie

And indeed it is a greater blessing from God, more worthy so excellent a creature as man is, and a higher end to honour and sanctifie the league of marriage, whenas the solace and satisfaction of the minde is regarded and provided for before the sensitive pleasing of the body.

1643, John Milton, Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce

[…] and if ever I refused to do his bidding or loitered or took my leisure he beat me with his feet more grievously than if I had been beaten with whips. He ceased not to signal with his hand wherever he was minded to go; so I carried him about the island, like a captive slave, and he bepissed and conskited my shoulders and back, dismounting not night nor day; and whenas he wished to sleep he wound his legs about his neck and leaned back and slept awhile, then arose and beat me; whereupon I sprang up in haste, unable to gainsay him because of the pain he inflicted on me.

1885, Richard F. Burton, The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Night 557

Only this I marvelled, and other men have since, whenas I, in a ſubject ſo new to this age, and ſo hazardous to pleaſe, concealed not my name, why this author, defending that part which is ſo creeded by the people, would conceal his.

1645 March 4, J[ohn] M[ilton], Colasterion: A Reply to a Nameles Ansvver against The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce. Wherein the Trivial Author of that Answer is Discover’d, the Licencer Conferr’d with, and the Opinion which They Traduce Defended, [London]: [Printed by Matthew Simmons?]; republished in The Works of John Milton, Historical, Political, and Miscellaneous. Now More Correctly Printed from the Originals, than in Any Former Edition, and may Passages Restored, which have been hitherto Omitted. To which is Prefixed, an Account of His Life and Writings [by Thomas Birch]. In Two Volumes, volume I, London: Printed for A[ndrew] Millar, in the Strand, 1753, page 326