Did Dick Whittington have a cat? he tale of Dick Whittington and his cat has passed into folklore and pantomime, but it is based on a real 14th-century merchant and mayor. Ballads and plays – the oldest known examples dating back to the early 17th century – describe an impoverished orphan making his fortune in London after his beloved cat is bought by a foreign king. He promptly marries his master’s daughter, Alice, and becomes Lord Mayor of London. he real Richard Whittington (c1350–1423 was the son of a Gloucestershire landowner. After training as a mercer in London, he made his name by supplying luxury textiles and lending money to the wealthy, including three successive kings: Richard II, Henry IV and Henry V. His wife was
indeed called Alice Fitzwarin and he was elected as mayor in 1397, 1406 and 1419 – but there's no mention in the records of a feline companion. his part of the story may derive from other folklore traditions of a man making his fortune with the help of a cat. Dying a childless widower in 1423, Whittington bequeathed his entire fortune to charity, thus cementing his position as an English folk hero. he somewhat mythical version of his life remained popular all through the Georgian and Victorian eras and is still often seen on stage today.
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HOW DID ‘LONDON’ GET ITS NAME?
CAPITAL GAINS The folk tale of the orphan and his cat are based on a real 14th-century mayor
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million – the number of objects housed in the British Museum, although only 80,000 are displayed at any given time.
When was Britain last invaded? Most people think the answer is 1066, but it’s not. The French invaded England in 1216 at the request of the barons fighting King John,
though since the barons were themselves French, this invasion wasn’t quite as foreign as it looked. During the Irish rebellion against Queen Elizabeth (1594-
1603), a small Spanish force landed briefly at Kinsale to help the rebels. Some historians claim that William of Orange’s landing in 1688 at the head of a Dutch
During the time of the Romans, the town was known as Londinium and this was passed down to the Saxons as Lundenwic, but the precise origins of the name are unclear. The 12thcentury author Geofrey of Monmouth attributed the founding of London to the mythical King Lud, hence Kaerlud (or ‘Lud’s City’), while later writers suggested the presence of a Celtic war-leader by the name of Londinos. It may represent a (Latin) corruption of a named British settlement on the banks of the Thames, or it may have derived from a native term for a geographical feature – for example, the Welsh for a lake or pond (llyn).
BORDER CONTROL Invaders have tried their luck more recently than you might think
army was the last successful foreign invasion of England but, since he’d been invited by Parliament, not everyone agrees. In 1796, a large French invasion force was only beaten back from Bantry Bay in Ireland by bad weather, and two years later the French landed and won the Battle of Castlebar before being forced to surrender to the British. A small French force, led by a not very competent Irish-American, landed near Fishguard in west Wales in 1797, got drunk and were promptly rounded up – 12 of them by a feisty local lady called Jemima Nicholas. In their befuddled state, the French had mistaken the women’s traditional red shawls and black hats for advancing British infantry!
THE BIG BOOK OF HISTORY ANSWERS
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