h? Then he would naturally ever
afterwards refer to the sale of the cat, the first venture of his own,
as the beginning and foundation of his fortune. But you must believe
about the cat whatever you please. The story has been told of other men.
There was a Portuguese sailor, named Alphonso, who was wrecked on the
Coast of Guinea. He carried a cat safely ashore and sold her to the
King for her weight in gold: with this for his first capital he rapidly
made a large fortune. Again, one Diego Almagro, a companion of Pizarro,
bought the first cat ever taken to South America for 600 pieces of
eight. And the story is found in Persia and in Denmark, and I dare say
all over the world. Yet I believe in its literal truth.

In the year 1378 Whittington's name first appears in the City papers. He
was then perhaps twenty-one--but the date of his birth is uncertain--and
was already in trade, not, as yet, very far advanced, for his assessment
shows that as yet he was in the lowest and poorest class of the
wholesale Mercers.

31. WHITTINGTON.

PART II.

For nearly fifty years after this Whittington leads an active, busy,
prosperous life. It was a distracted time, full of troubles and
anxieties. A Charter obtained in 1376, two or three years before he
began business, was probably the real foundation of Whittington's
fortune. For it forbade foreign merchants to sell by retail. This meant
that a foreign ship bringing wine to the port of London could only
dispose of her merchandise to the wholesale vintners: or one bringing
silk could only sell it to wholesale mercers. The merchants, no doubt,
intended to use this Charter for the furtherance of their own shipping
interests.

This important Charter, presented by the King, was nearly lost a little
after, when there was trouble about Wycliffe. The great scholar was
ordered to appear at St. Paul's Cathedral before the Archbishop of
Canterbury and the Bishop of London, to answer charges of heresy. He
was not an unprotected and friendless man, and he appeared at the
Cathedral under the protection of the powerful John of Gaunt, Duke of
Lancaster, son of King Edward III. The Bishop of London rebuked the Duke
for protecting heretics, so the Duke, enraged, threatened to pull the
Bishop out of his own church by the hair of his head. The people outside
shouted that they would all die before the Bishop should suffer
indignity. John of Gaunt rode off to Westminster and proposed that the
of