By his will Whittington directed that the inmates of his college should pray for the souls of himself and his wife Alice, of Sir William Whittington, and his wife Dame Joan, of Hugh Fitzwarren and his wife Dame Malde, as well as for the souls of Richard II. and Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester, “special lords and promoters of the said Whittington.”
Whittington’s epitaph is preserved by Stow and is in Latin; yet the author of a Life of Whittington (1811) makes the following misstatement:—
“Record, however, has handed down to us the original epitaph, as it was cut on the monument of Sir Richard, by order of his executors; and, exclusive of its connection with the subject of these pages, it may be subjoined as a curious specimen of the poetry of an age which was comparatively with the present so entirely involved in the darkness of superstition and ignorance.
“Beneath this stone lies Whittington,
Sir Richard rightly named;
Who three times Lord Mayor served in London,
In which he ne’er was blamed.
He rose from indigence to wealth
By industry and that;
For lo! he scorned to gain by stealth