Richard Whittington: Difference between revisions

Sir Richard Whittington (sometimes Richard Whytyngdone) (c. 1354–1423) was a medieval merchant and politician, and the real-life inspiration for the pantomime character Dick Whittington. Sir Richard Whittington was Three Times Lord Mayor of London and a Member of Parliament. He was also a sherriff of London and also made a knight by the King. He had a statue in front of a building that was made while he was Mayor. In his lifetime he financed a number of public projects, such as drainage systems in poor areas of medieval London, and a hospital ward for unmarried mothers. He bequeathed his fortune to form the Charity of Sir Richard Whittington, which nearly 600 years later, continues to assist people in need.^[1]

He was born in Gloucestershire, at Pauntley in the Forest of Dean, although his family originated from Kinver in Staffordshire, England, where his grandfather Sir William de Whittington was a knight at arms.^[2] His date of birth is variously given as in the 1350s and he died in London in 1423. However, he was a younger son and so would not inherit his father's estate as the eldest son might expect to do. Consequently he was sent to the City of London to learn the trade of mercer. He became a successful trader, dealing in valuable imports such as silks and velvets, both luxury fabrics, much of which he sold to the Royal and noble court from about 1388. There is indirect evidence that he was also a major exporter to Europe of much sought after English woollen cloth such as Broadcloth. From 1392 to 1394 he sold goods to Richard II worth £3,500 (equivalent to more than £1.5m today).^[3] He also began money-lending in 1388, preferring this to outward shows of wealth such as buying property. By 1397 he was also lending large sums of money to the King.^{[citation needed]}

In 1384 Whittington had become a Councilman. In 1392 he was one of the city's delegation to the King at Nottingham at which the King seized the City of London's lands because of alleged misgovernment. By 1393, he had become an alderman, as well as a member of the Mercers' Company. When Adam Bamme, the mayor of London, died in June 1397, Whittington was imposed on the city by the King as Lord Mayor of London in 1397 to fill the vacancy with immediate effect. Within days Whittington had negotiated with the King a deal in which the city bought back its liberties for £10,000 (nearly £4m today).^[3] He was elected mayor by a grateful populace on 13 October 1398.

The deposition of Richard II in 1399 did not affect Whittington and it is thought that he merely acquiesced in the coup led by Bolingbroke. Whittington had long supplied the new king, Henry IV, as a prominent member of the landowning elite and so his business simply continued as before. He also lent the new king substantial amounts of money. He was elected mayor again in 1406 and in 1419, becoming a living legend in the process. In 1416, he became a Member of Parliament, and was also in turn influential with Henry IV's son, Henry V, also lending him large amounts of money and serving on several Royal Commissions of oyer and terminer. For example, Henry V employed him to supervise the expenditure to complete Westminster Abbey. Despite being a moneylender himself he was sufficiently trusted and respected to sit as a judge in usury trials in 1421. Whittington also collected revenues and import duties. A long dispute with the Company of Brewers over standard prices and measures of ale was won by Whittington^{[citation needed]}.

In his lifetime he donated much of his profit to the city and left further endowments by his Will. He financed:

• the rebuilding of the Guildhall
• a ward for unmarried mothers at St Thomas' Hospital
• drainage systems for areas around Billingsgate and Cripplegate
• the rebuilding his parish church, St Michael Paternoster Royal
• a public toilet in the parish of St Martin Vintry that was cleansed by the River Thames at high tide
• most of Greyfriars library.

He also provided accommodation for his apprentices in his own house. He passed a law prohibiting the washing of animal skins by apprentices in the River Thames in cold, wet weather because many young boys had died through hypothermia or in the strong river currents.

Whittington died in March 1423. In 1402 (aged 52) he had married Alice, daughter of Sir Ivo FitzWarin (or Fitzwarren) of Wantage in Berkshire (now Oxfordshire), but she predeceased him in 1411. They had no children. In the absence of heirs, Whittington left £7,000 in his will to charity, in those days a large sum, with a modern-day equivalence of about £3m.^[3] Some of this was used to

• rebuild Newgate Prison and Newgate and accommodation in it for the Sheriffs and Recorder which is the forerunner of that in the Old Bailey
• build the first library in Guildhall (the ancestor of the modern Guildhall Library)
• repair St Bartholomew's Hospital
• the creation of his 'college' i.e. almshouse and hospital originally at St Michael's
• install some of the first public drinking fountains

The almshouses were relocated in 1966 to Felbridge near East Grinstead. Sixty elderly women and a few married couples currently live in them. The Whittington Charity also disburses money each year to the needy through the Mercers' Company.

The Whittington hospital is now at Archway in the London Borough of Islington and a small statue of a cat along Highgate Hill further commemorates his legendary feline.

Despite knowing three kings (though five reigned during his life), there is no evidence that he was knighted. In the town of Bishop's Stortford he owned a lot of land^{[citation needed]}. This explains why in the town there is a school called Richard Whittington Primary School and a road called Whittington Way.

Dick Whittington (also Dick Wittington) is a character in a British story that was adapted to the stage beginning in 1605 and became popular as a pantomime subject in the 19th century, called Dick Whittington and His Cat, very loosely based on Richard Whittington. There are several versions of the traditional story, which tells how Dick, a boy from a poor family, sets out for London to make his fortune, accompanied by, or later acquiring, his cat. At first he meets with little success, and is tempted to return home. However, on his way out of the city, whilst climbing Highgate Hill from modern-day Archway, he hears the Bow Bells of London ringing, and believes they are sending him a message. There is now a large hospital on Highgate Hill, named the Whittington Hospital, after this alleged episode. A traditional rhyme is associated with this episode, as follows:

Turn again, Whittington,

Once Lord Mayor of London!

Turn again, Whittington,

Twice Lord Mayor of London!

Turn again, Whittington,

Thrice Lord Mayor of London!

On returning to London, Dick embarks on a series of adventures. In one version of the tale, he travels abroad on a ship, and wins many friends as a result of the rat-catching activities of his cat; in another he sends his cat and it is sold to make his fortune. Eventually he does become prosperous, marries his master's daughter Alice Fitzwarren (the name of the real Whittington's wife), and is made Lord Mayor of London three times (the historical Whittington was elected Lord Mayor four times).

There is no evidence that Whittington kept a cat, and as the son of gentry he was never very poor. Whittington may have become associated with a thirteenth-century Persian folktale about an orphan who gained a fortune through his cat.^[4] The gifts left in Whittington's will made him well known. By 1605 most of the legend had developed and appeared in a play, The History of Richard Whittington, of his lowe byrth, his great fortune. Some^[who?] have suggested that one of the most popular legends about Whittington — that his fortunes were founded on the sale of his cat, who was sent on a merchant vessel to a rat-beset Eastern emperor — originated in a popular early engraving of the lord mayor in which his hand rested on a cat. Modern analysis ^{[citation needed]} of the engraving reveals that the oddly-shaped cat was in fact a later replacement for what had originally been a skull, a popular prop for illustrations of the period. Whether the engraving gave rise to the legend or the reverse is uncertain.

• The History of Sir Richard Whittington by T. H. (1885), from Project Gutenberg

• Nine part radio play from BBC Radio Gloucestershire
• The History of Whittington, as collected by Andrew Lang in The Blue Fairy Book (1889)
• Dick Whittington and His Cat. London: Jarrold, 1900
• "Who Was Dick Whittington?" Museum of London 17 December 2006 (Free educational program: Storytelling)Event details
• Dick Whittington and His Cat as retold by Rohini Chowdhury