Project Gutenberg's The History of Sir Richard Whittington, by T. H.

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

Title: The History of Sir Richard Whittington

Author: T. H.

Editor: Henry B. Wheatley

Release Date: January 31, 2006 [EBook #17652]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HISTORY OF SIR RICHARD ***

Produced by Julie Barkley, Janet Blenkinship and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

_Chap-Books_

_and_

_Folk-Lore Tracts._

_Edited by_

_G.L. Gomme, F.S.A._

_and_

_H.B. Wheatley, F.S.A._

_First Series._

~V.~

THE HISTORY

OF

SIR RICHARD WHITTINGTON.

BY T. H.

EDITED, WITH AN INTRODUCTION,

BY

HENRY B. WHEATLEY, F.S.A.

LONDON:
PRINTED FOR THE VILLON SOCIETY.
1885.

~Introduction.~

The popular story of Whittington and his Cat is one in which a version
of a wide-spread folk-tale has been grafted upon the history of the life
of an historical character, and in the later versions the historical
incidents have been more and more eliminated. The three chief points in
the chap-book story are, 1, the poor parentage of the hero; 2, his
change of mind at Highgate Hill by reason of hearing Bow Bells; and, 3,
his good fortune arising from the sale of his cat. Now these are all
equally untrue as referring to the historical Whittington, and the
second is apparently an invention of the eighteenth century. When the
Rev. Canon Lysons wrote his interesting and valuable work entitled _The
Model Merchant_ he showed the incorrectness of the first point by
tracing out Whittington's distinguished pedigree, but he was loath to
dispute the other two. It is rather strange that neither Mr. Lysons nor
Messrs. Besant and Rice appear to have seen the work which I now present
to my readers, which is the earliest form of the life of Whittington
known to exist. This is printed from the copy in the Pepysian Library,
a later edition of which, with a few typographical alterations, will be
found in the British Museum library. This _History_ will be found to
differ very considerably from the later and better-known stor