The statue of Richard Whittington on the Royal Exchange in London. “Seest thou a man diligent in his business? He shall stand before kings; he shall not stand before mean men.” See Proverbs 22:9. Whittington stood before five kings: he was born when Edward III was on the throne, survived the turmoil of Richard II’s deposition in 1399, worked amicably with long-standing client Henry IV and his son Henry V (who knighted him), and lived to see the accession of Henry VI. He had little impact on the politics of the day, but earned himself a truly legendary reputation as a man with the Midas touch who in gentle defiance of Scripture was also lavish in his generosity towards even the meanest of citizens.
Part 1 of 2
This year [1406] a worthy citizen of London, named Richard Whittington, mercer* and alderman,* was elected mayor of the said city, and bare that office three times.*
This worshipful man so bestowed his goods and substance to the honour of God, to the relief of the poor, and to the benefit of the common weal, that he hath right well deserved to be regestered in the book of fame. First, he erected one house or church in London to be a house of prayer, and he named the same after his own name Whittington’s College, and so it remaineth to this day.*
And in the same church, besides certain priests and clerks, he placed a number of poor aged men and women and builded for them houses and lodgings, and allowed unto them wood, coal, cloth, and weekly money to their great relief and comfort. He also builded for the ease of the mayor of London and his brethren, and of the worshipful citizens at the solemn days of their assembly, a chapel adjoining to the Guildhall, to the intent they should ever before they entered into any of their affairs first to go into the chapel, and by prayer to call upon God for assistance.
* A mercer is a dealer in textile fabrics, especially fine cloth such as silk or velvet. In 1406, Richard Whittington supplied a wedding dress in pearls and cloth of gold for Henry IV’s daughter Philippa, who married the King of Denmark, Norway and Sweden. It cost £248 10s 6d, or over £200,000 today.
* An alderman is a member of a local council, junior to the Mayor. In the UK, the role has mostly fallen into disuse, but the City of London still has aldermen, and candidates for Lord Mayor are restricted to aldermen who have been Sheriff of the City.
* The year 1406 saw Richard Whittington (?1354-1423) elected Lord Mayor of London for the second time. The first was in 1397, and the third and last time was in 1419. Each term lasted one year. Whittington had also been appointed to the role earlier in 1397 by King Richard II after the holder, goldsmith Adam Bamme, died in office, so as modern scholars do John Stow (?1525-1605) counted four terms in his Survey of London (1598). Whittington had come up to London sometime before 1379, the first year for which there is record of his activity there.
* “His executors” John Stow tells us “with his goods founded and built Whittington College, with almshouses for thirteen poor men, and divinity lectures to be read there for ever. They repaired St Bartholomew’s hospital in Smithfield; they bare half the charges of building the library there, and they built the west gate of London, of old time called Newgate, &c.” Whittington had funded the rebuilding of his parish church, St Michael Paternoster Royal, in 1409. Now St Michael’s became a collegiate church administered by a team of five clergy as The College of St Spirit and St Mary. St Michael’s was consumed in the Great Fire of 1666, and with it all trace of the graves of Richard and his wife Alice. The present building dates back to 1694.
Précis
Sixteenth-century chronicler Richard Grafton recorded that when Sir Richard Whittington died in 1423, the former Lord Mayor of London’s Will established an almshouse for thirteen destitute men and women, annexed to his parish church. The chapel at the Guildhall was also Whittington’s gift, founded in the hope that the Aldermen would make their deliberations in an atmosphere of prayer. (58 / 60 words)
Part Two
A photograph of Sir Richard Whittington’s Will. “There have been many other benefactors to the City,” wrote Besant and Rice, “but none so generous, so just, and so far-seeing.” The public needed water so he supplied drinking fountains. Prisons and hospitals were cramped and foul, so he enlarged them. Ignorance compounded the evils, so he established schools and libraries (it was not his fault that, a century afterwards, the Duke of Somerset borrowed the entire stock of the Guildhall library, and failed to return it on or before the date shown). He built chapels so the aldermen would not forget they answered to a higher Power, and provided food, clothing and shelter for men and women fallen on hard times.
HE also builded a great part of the east end of the Guildhall, beside many other good works that I know not.*
But among all other I will shew unto you one very notable, which I received credibly by a writing of his own hand, which also he willed to be fixed as a schedule to his last will and testament, the contents whereof was that he willed and commanded his executors as they would answer before God at the day of the resurrection of all flesh, that if they found any debtor of his that ought* to him any money, that if he were not in their consciences well worth three times as much, and also out of the debt of other men, and well able to pay, that then they should never demand it,* for he clearly forgave it, and that they should put no man in suit* for any debt due to him.
Look upon this, ye aldermen, for it is a glorious glass.*
* In 1397, Whittington negotiated the repurchase of City lands confiscated by Richard II five years earlier. In 1413, he raised funds for repairs to the nave of Westminster Abbey. He helped fund the Siege of Harfleur in 1415 during Henry V’s Agincourt campaign (in which his nephew Guy fought). In 1420, at the marriage of Henry V and Catherine of Valois, the Lord Mayor threw £60,000 of the King’s bonds onto the banquet bonfire, some £50m in today’s money. Thomas Byttering’s setting of the hymn En Katerine Solennia was almost certainly written for the wedding, at which Whittington would be present as Mayor of London: you can hear it in the video that follows below.
* Ought is an obsolete past form of owe, equivalent to owed.
* That is, the executors should ask a debtor to repay his debts to the estate only if he had total wealth of at least three times the debt, had paid off all his debts to other people, and could readily raise the funds. Whittington left £7,000 to charity (about £3m today), some of which went on civic building works, including (as mentioned above) Whittington College and its almshouses, repairs to St Bartholomew’s Hospital and a library in the Guildhall, and also some of the first public drinking fountains.
* That is, the executors may request well-to-do debtors to pay up, but they must not initiate a civil action against anyone.
* “Alas, good Master Grafton!” wrote Thomas Keightley (1789-1872). “I fear it is a glass in which but few aldermen have ever dressed themselves.”
Précis
Grafton added one other act of Whittington’s that especially pleased him. In an instruction fixed to his Will, the four-time Lord Mayor ordered his executors not to bring any of his debtors to court, and to ask money only of those who could easily pay. Whittington, said Grafton, was a very mirror of the ideal City alderman. (57 / 60 words)
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