vided; an epitaph in somewhat obscure Latin verse, describing him as ‘flos mercatorum’ and ‘regia spes et pres,’ is preserved by Stow (iii. 5). His tomb is said (ib.) to have been rifled for treasure in the reign of Edward VI by the parson of the church, who abstracted the lead in which the body was lapped. It was replaced under Mary, but the tomb perished with the church in the great fire of 1666. Whittington's executors were instructed by his will to sell the house he lived in close by the church with other property in the city, and expend the proceeds on masses for the souls of himself, his wife, his father and mother, and all others to whom he was bound. The old house in Hart Street, off Mark Lane, which used to be traditionally known as Whittington Palace, would seem therefore to have no claim to that distinction. There are several engravings of this house, which was pulled down early in the present century (Gent. Mag. 1796, lxvi. ii. 545; Lysons, p. 76).
Whittington married (Monasticon, vi. 746) Alice, daughter of Sir Ivo Fitzwaryn, a knight of considerable landed property in the south-western counties, who on several occasions represented Dorset and Devon in parliament, by his wife Matilda or Maud Dargentein, one of the coheiresses of the well-known Hertfordshire family in which the office of royal cupbearer was hereditary (Hutchins, i. 327–8, iv. 174; Clutterbuck, ii. 541–2). She must have predeceased her father, who died on 6 Sept. 1414 and was buried in Wantage church, where his tomb remains, for he left only one daughter, Alianor, who became his heir (ib.; Ashmole, ii. 235; Wylie, iii. 65). Apparently Whittington had no issue by her.
The only portrait of Whittington at all likely to be authentic is the illumination at the beginning of the copy of the ordinances for his hospital at Mercers' Hall which represents him on his deathbed surrounded by his executors and bedesmen. It is engraved in the works of Malcolm (iv. 515), Lysons, and Besant. The face is long, thin, and smooth shaven. It has little or nothing in common with the portrait engraved by Renold Elstracke [q. v.] early in the seventeenth century. The chain of office in the latter is of sixteenth-century design, and the original picture was probably a work of that age. In the first impressions of the engraving Whittington's right hand rested upon a skull, but popular taste compelled Elstracke to substitute a cat in the remainder, and the former are now excessively rare (Granger, Biographical History, i. 63). The engraving in its second shape is reproduced in Lysons and the ‘Antiquarian Repertory’ (ii. 343). Malcolm mentions a small portrait at Mercers' Hall, which has since disappeared, in which he appeared as a man of about sixty ‘in a fur livery gown and a black cap such as the yeomen of the guard now wear,’ and with a black-and-white cat on the left-hand side. The inscription, ‘R. Whittington, 1536,’ suggests the possibility of its being an adaptation of a portrait of Robert Whittington [q. v.], the grammarian. The present portrait at Mercers' Hall is modern. It was engraved in Thornton's ‘New History, Description and Survey of London’ (1784).
Whittington was a good type of the mediæval city magnate. There had no doubt been more distinguished mayors of London. He played a less prominent part in the affairs of the kingdom than Sir John de Pulteney [q. v.] or Sir John Philipot [q. v.], and there is nothing to show that his contemporary reputation extended beyond the city. The chroniclers of his time who wrote in the country never mention him by name. But his commercial success, unusually prolonged civic career, and great loans to the crown seem to have impressed the imagination of his fellow-citizens if we may accept the evidence of his epitaph and the allusion to him in Gregory's ‘Chronicle’ (p. 156), written not long after his death, as ‘that famos marchant and mercer Richard Whytyndone.’ In a sense, too, he was the last of the great mediæval mayors, for the outbreak of the wars of the roses ushered in a period far less favourable to municipal magnates. Yet he would hardly have been permanently remembered had not his benefactions—mostly posthumous—associated him with some of the most prominent London buildings, and one of the few mediæval foundations in the city which survived the Reformation. As that of the rebuilder of the chief prison and the founder of the principal almshouse in London, Whittington's name was a household word with the Londoners of the sixteenth century, when many of the scanty facts of his life had already been forgotten.
Childless, and surviving his wife, Whittington was free to devote his wealth to public and pious objects. He arched over a spring on the bank of the city ditch, and inserted a public ‘boss’ or water-tap in the wall of St. Giles, Cripplegate (Stow). This or a similar one at Billingsgate gave Robert Whittington [q. v.], the grammarian, his nickname of ‘Boss’ (Lysons, p. 52). In his last mayoralty Whittington defrayed great part of the cost of the new library of the Greyfriars, on the north side of what was long the great cloister of Christ's Hospital (Chron. of
