The History of Sir Richard Whittington | Page 5

September 13, 1709 (No. 67), is a list of great men to be entered in the Temple of Fame, and in the subsequent No. 78 is printed the following letter from a Citizen:--
"Mr. Isaac Bickerstaff, Sir, Your Tatler of September 13 I am now reading, and in your list of famous men desire you not to forget Alderman Whittington, who began the world with a cat, and died worth three hundred and fifty thousand pounds sterling, which he left to an only daughter three years after his mayoralty. If you want any further particulars of ditto Alderman, daughter, or cat, let me know, and per first will advise the needful, which concludes, Your loving Friend, LEMUEL LEGER."
"I am credibly informed that there was once a design of casting into an opera the story of Whittington and his Cat, and that in order to it there had been got together a great quantity of mice; but Mr. Rich, the proprietor of the playhouse, very prudently considered that it would be impossible for the cat to kill them all, and that consequently the princes of the stage might be as much infested with mice as the prince of the island was before the cat's arrival upon it; for which reason he would not permit it to be acted in his house."--Spectator (No. 5, March 6, 1711).
The Rev. Samuel Pegge brought the subject of Whittington and his Cat before a meeting of the Society of Antiquaries in 1771, but he could make nothing at all of the cat. There is no record of the inquiry in the Archaeologia, but it is mentioned in a letter from Gough to Tyson, 27 Dec. 1771 (Nichols's Literary Anecdotes, vol. viii. p. 575). Horace Walpole was annoyed at the Society for criticising his "Richard III." and in his Short Notes on his Life he wrote--"Foote having brought them on the stage for sitting in council, as they had done on Whittington and his Cat, I was not sorry to find them so ridiculous, or to mark their being so, and upon that nonsense, and the laughter that accompanied it, I struck my name out of their book."
Foote brought out his comedy of The Nabob at the Haymarket Theatre in 1772. Sir Matthew Mite, the hero of the piece, is elected a member of the Society of Antiquaries, and delivers an address on Whittington and his Cat in which he gave the following solution of the difficulty:--"The commerce this worthy merchant carried on was chiefly confined to our coasts. For this purpose he constructed a vessel which for its agility and lightness he aptly christened a cat. Nay, to this our day, gentlemen, all our coals from Newcastle are imported in nothing but cats. From thence it appears that it was not the whiskered four-footed, mouse-killing cat that was the source of the magistrate's wealth, but the coasting, sailing, coal-carrying cat; that, gentlemen, was Whittington's cat."
We may now pass from the fictitious to the real Richard Whittington, and although this is not the place for a life of the distinguished citizen, which may be found elsewhere, it will be convenient to set down in order the chief incidents of his career.
Richard Whittington was the third son of Sir William Whittington, knight, of Pauntley, Gloucestershire, and it is assumed, by some writers, that he was born in or about the year 1360. We must, however, place his birth at an earlier date, for his name appears in the city Letter Book_, H, fol. 110_a, (as Richard Whyttingdone), in the second year of Richard II. (A.D. 1379), as a contributor of five marks towards a loan to the city authorities; about four-fifths of the subscribers contributing the same, which is the lowest figure among the contributions.[2] This is the first appearance of Whittington's name in the city books. William, the eldest son, succeeded to the family property of Pauntley, but, dying without issue, the estate went to Robert, the second son, who became high sheriff of the county in 1402, and again in 1407. Pauntley remained in the family as late as 1546.
Nothing is known of Richard's early life, either as to when or how he came to London. He appears to have married Alice, daughter of Hugh Fitzwarren, and probably he was originally apprenticed to his father-in-law, whose name appears in all the versions of his history.
The second appearance of Whittington's name in the city books is in 8 Richard II., when he was one of the eight common councilmen for Coleman Street ward. In 11 Richard II. he is named as becoming surety to the chamberlain in the sum of ten pounds towards providing money for defence of the city. In the following year he appears to have been no longer a member for Coleman Street ward. On