Among the city worthies of that time may be introduced Sir William Walworth, the slayer of Jack Cade; Sir William Sevenoke, the first known instance of the poor country lad of humble birth working his way to the front; he was also the first to found and endow a grammar-school for his native town; Sir Robert Chichele, whose brother Henry was Archbishop of Canterbury and founder of All Souls', Oxford; this Robert, whose house was on the site of Bakers' Hall in Harp Lane, provided by his will that on his commemoration day two thousand four hundred poor householders of the city should be regaled with a dinner and have twopence in money; Sir John Rainwell, who left houses and lands to discharge the tax called the Fifteenth in three parishes; Sir John Wells, who brought water from Tyburn; and Sir William Estfield, who brought water from Highbury. Other examples show that the time for endowing monasteries had passed away. When William Elsing, early in the fourteenth century, thought of doing something with his money, he did not leave it to the Franciscans for masses, but he endowed a hospital for a hundred blind men; and a few years later John Barnes gave the city a strong box with three locks, containing a thousand marks, which were to be lent to young men beginning business—an excellent gift. When there was a great dearth of grain, it was the Lord Mayor who fitted out ships at his own expense and brought corn from Prussia, which lowered the price of flour by one-half. In the acts of these grave magistrates one can read the deep love they bore to the City, their earnest striving for the administration with justice of just laws, for the maintenance of good work, for the relief of the poor, for the provision of water, and for education. Lollardism was nothing to them. What concerned them in religion was the luxury, the sloth, and the scandalous lives of the religious. Order they loved, because it is only by the maintenance of order that a city can flourish. Honesty in work of all kinds they loved, so that while they hated the man who pretended to do true work and proffered false work, it grieved and shamed them to see one who professed the life of purity wallow in wickedness, like a hog in mud. Obedience they required, because without obedience there is no government. As for the working-man, the producer, the servant, having any share in the profits or any claim to payment beyond his wage, such a thought never entered the head of Whittington or Sevenoke. They were rulers; they were masters; they paid the wage; they laid their hands upon the profits.
THE THAMES FRONT, A.D. 1540
Tradition—which is always on the side of the weak—maintains that the great merchants of the past, for the most part, made their way upward from the poorest and most penniless conditions. They came from the plough-tail or from the mechanic's shop; they entered the city paved with gold, friendless, with no more than twopence, if so much, in their pockets; they received scant favor and put up with rough fare. Then tradition makes a jump, and shows them, on the next lifting of the curtain, prosperous, rich, and in great honor. The typical London merchant is Dick Whittington, whose history was blazoned in the cheap books for all to read. One is loath to disturb venerable beliefs, but the facts of history are exactly the opposite. The merchant adventurer, diligent in his business, and therefore rewarded, as the wise man prophesied for him, by standing before princes, though he began life as a prentice, also began it as a gentleman. He belonged, at the outset, to a good family, and had good friends both in the country and the town. Piers Plowman never could and never did rise to great eminence in the city. The exceptions, which are few indeed, prove the rule. Against such a case as Sevenoke, the son of poor parents, who rose to be Lord Mayor, we have a hundred others in which the successful merchant starts with the advantage of gentle birth. Take, for example, the case of Whittington himself.
He was the younger son of a Gloucestershire country gentleman, Sir William Whittington, a knight who was outlawed for some offence. His estate was at a village called Pauntley. In the church may still be seen the shield of Whittington impaling Fitzwarren—Richard's wife was Alice Fitzwarren. His mother belonged to the well-known Devonshire family of Mansell, and was a cousin of the Fitzwarrens. The Whittingtons were thus people of position and consideration, of knightly rank, armigeri, living on their own estates, which were sufficient but not large.
For a younger son in the fourteenth century the choice of a career was limited. He might enter the service of a great lord and follow his fortunes. In that turbulent time there was fighting to be had at home as well as in France, and honor to be acquired, with rank and lands, by those who were fortunate. He might join the livery of the king. He might enter the Church: but youths of gentle blood did not in the fourteenth century flock readily to the Church. He might remain on the family estate and become a bailiff. He might go up to London and become a lawyer. There were none of the modern professions—no engineers, architects, bankers, journalists, painters, novelists, or dramatists; but there was trade.
Young Dick Whittington therefore chose to follow trade; rather that line of life was chosen for him. He was sent to London under charge of carriers, and placed in the house of his cousin, Sir John Fitzwarren, also a gentleman before he was a merchant, as an apprentice. As he married his master's daughter, it is reasonable to suppose that he inherited a business, which he subsequently improved and developed enormously. If we suppose a single man to be the owner of the Cunard Line of steamers, running the cargoes on his own venture and for his own profit, we may understand something of Whittington's position in the city. The story of the cat is persistently attached to his name; it begins immediately after his death; it was figured on the buildings which his executors erected; it formed part of the decorations of the family mansion at Gloucester. It is therefore impossible to avoid the conclusion that he did himself associate the sale of a cat—then a creature of some value and rarity—with the foundation of his fortunes. Here, however, we have only to do with the fact that Whittington was of gentle birth, and that he was apprenticed to a man also of gentle birth.
