Whittington, RICHARD, the apprentice's model, is supposed to have been born about 1358, youngest son of Sir William Whittington of Pauntley in Gloucestershire. His father dying, Richard set out for London at thirteen to push his fortune, and apprenticed himself to Sir John Fitz-Warren, a prosperous mercer, whose daughter he afterwards married. We find him a member of the Mercer's Company in 1392, the year after an alderman and sheriff. In 1397 he was chosen Mayor of London to fill the place of Adam Bamme who had died in his year of office, again in 1406, member of parliament for the city in 1416, and in 1419 for the third time mayor. He was knighted by Henry V., and died in the spring of 1423, and by his will rebuilt Newgate and St Michael's Church, connecting also a college and an almshouse with it, while he also restored St Bartholomew's Hospital, gave a library to Grey Friars, and provided drinking fountains.
See the Rev. Sam. Lysons' Model Merchant of the Middle Ages (1860), and Besant and Rice's Sir Richard Whittington (1881). Mr Lysons defends the famous traditional story of the beginning of Dick Whittington's good-fortune being the lucky sale of the cat he had committed to a friendly sailor to a Moorish king sorely distressed with rats and mice. He refuses to hear of the explanation that he traded with cats (three-masted vessels of about 500 tons) and sea-coal. But even if the modern story and the representation of the cat goes back to the 16th century, its historical character is still not proved. And unfortunately the main elements of the story are familiar in German, Italian, Russian, and Danish folklore. But none need doubt the other part of his romantic history, of how when a poor boy awcary of London he had made up his mind to fly, but was arrested on Highgate Hill by a merry peal from Bow Bells which rang to his ears 'Turn again, Whittington, Lord Mayor of London.'