BUT what of Dick’s cat, meanwhile? It happened that Fitzwarren’s ship Unicorn put into harbour at the Barbary Coast,* where the court was afflicted by a plague of mice so bold that they stole meat right off the prince’s platter, and scuttled about his bed.* He offered half the Crown’s revenue to anyone who would rid him of the vermin. Dick’s cat made short work of them, and when the prince learnt she was pregnant no price was too high. So it was that when Unicorn docked at Blackwall, the ship was laden with gold and jewels.
Fitzwarren was a hard master, but fair. The cat was Dick’s investment, he said, and “God forbid I should keep from him the least farthing.” Dick was summoned from the kitchen, and in a daze ‘Mr Whittington’ was respectfully informed that he was now a wealthy man. At once he laid his heart at Alice’s feet.* Then he gave liberally to all the crew of the Unicorn. Last of all, he gave Cook £100 to get married.* And thus was Richard Whittington raised from scullion to thrice London’s mayor, by the venture only of a cat.*
* A now obsolete term for the coast of north Africa towards the western end of the Mediterranean Sea, named after the Berber population. At the time, much of that area was part of the Turkish Ottoman Empire; the term might encompass Tripoli, Algiers, Tunis and Morocco.
* Not unlike the rats of Hamelin. See The Pied Piper of Hamelin.
* Richard Whittington married Alice FitzWaryn (?-1411) in 1402, but when he was in his forties and had already served as Lord Mayor of London, not when he was just starting to make his way in London’s commercial life. It was an advantageous match: Alice and her elder sister Eleanor (b. 1375) were Sir Ivo’s only heirs.
* A more generous gift than it looks. In 1370, when Edward III was still on the throne and Dick would have been in his mid teens, £100 would have been the equivalent of about £50,000 today. Even in 1659, Thomas Heywood’s £100 would still have been worth over £14,000 in today’s money. See Measuring Worth. The real Richard Whittington’s first recorded investment, in 1379, was five marks (roughly equivalent to £3 6s, and some £2,900 today) contributed to a loan to the City authorities.
* So ran the epitaph in a copy of Heywood’s version of the tale, printed at Durham in 1730, and quoted by Wheatley:
HERE lies Sir Richard Whittington, thrice mayor,
And his dear wife, a virtuous, loving pair;
Him fortune rais’d to be belov’d and great
By the adventure only of a cat.
Let none who read of God’s great love despair,
Who trusts in Him of him He will take care;
But growing rich chuse humbleness, not pride,
Let these dead persons’ virtues be your guide.