The story seems to have taken its rise in the reign of Queen Elizabeth.
The reason why however the life of Whittington should have been chosen
as the stock upon which this folk-tale should be grafted is still
unexplained. Some have supposed that he obtained his money by the
employment of "cats," or vessels for the carriage of coals; but this
suggestion does not appear to be worthy of much consideration.
It is said that at Newgate, which owed much to Whittington, there was a
statue of him with a cat, which was destroyed in the Great Fire; and in
1862, when some alterations were made in an old house at Gloucester,
which had been occupied by the Whittington family until 1460, a stone
was said to have been dug up on which was a basso-relievo representing
the figure of a boy carrying a cat in his arms. This find, however,
appears rather suspicious.
Keightley devotes a whole chapter of his _Tales and Popular Fictions_ to
the legend of Whittington and his Cat, in which he points out how many
similar stories exist. The _Facezie_, of Arlotto, printed soon after the
author's death in 1483, contain a tale of a merchant of Genoa, entitled
"Novella delle Gatte," and probably from this the story came to England,
although it is also found in a German chronicle of the thirteenth
century.
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