Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 24.djvu/592

Rh 556 W H I W I C Mercers Company. He was appointed or elected mayor in 1397, 1398, 1406, and 1419 ; and in 1416 he was chosen member of parliament for London. In April 1402 he supplied cloth of gold for the marriage of the king s daughter Blanche with Louis, son of the emperor Rupert, and four years later (July 1406) for that of Philippa and Erik VII. of Denmark. In March 1413 the king repaid him a loan of 1000, and in September 1415 he was granted a lien on the customs of Boston, Kingston-on- Hull, and London, in discharge of 700 marks lent to Henry V. (by whom he seems to have been knighted). He died in March 1423. Among his chief benefactions by will were the rebuilding of St Michael s church, in con nexion with which he founded a college, and of Newgate. He is said to have also restored St Bartholomew s hospital, London. All that is known about Whittington has been carefully collected in the Rev. Samuel Lysoiis s Model Merchant of the Middle Ages (London, 1860), from which the above account is taken. Lysons argues very strongly in favour of the famous story of &quot; Whittington and his Cat,&quot; and rejects the rationalization which explains the legend by supposing Whittmgton a fortunes to have been made in the voyages of a mediaeval cat or merchant-vessel. He is, however, only able to trace back the actual quadruped to a picture which is inscribed &quot;R Whittington 1536.&quot; Even this picture he had never seen ; and he has to admit that it bore marks of having been altered from its original size, and that the inscription is later than the alteration. The story, however, was evidently current by the end of the 16th century. Moreover, it is said that the figure of a cat was represented at the feet of the statue of Liberty on the gate of Newgate previous to the great fire of 1666 ; or, according to another account, Whittington s own &quot; statue with the cat remained in a niche to its final demolition on the rebuilding of the present prison.&quot; In repairing a house which once belonged to the Whittington family at Gloucester in 1862, a stone of 15th-century workmanship was discovered and on it appeared in bas-relief the figure of a boy nursing a cat in his arms. All this, however, cannot be said to go very far towards proving the veracity of the old legend. Clouston (Popular Talcs and Fictions, London, 1887, ii. 65-78) traces the main features of the story in the folk-lore of Denmark, Russia, Norway, Brittany, and even Persia. It was current in Italy during the 15th century ; but its earliest appearance seems to be in Abdullah s History of Persia, written towards the close of the 13th century. This writer ascribes the occurrences he tells of to the first half of the llth cen tury. Even this, in Clouston s opinion, is not the original form of the story, which from one or two of its details he suspects to be of Buddhist origin. WHITWORTH, a manufacturing village of Lancashire, England, is situated on the river Spodden and on the Rochdale and Bacup branch of the Lancashire and York shire Railway, 3 miles north of Rochdale. It possesses the usual characteristics of the cotton-manufacturing dis tricts. Coal-mining is also carried on in the neighbour hood. The church of St Bartholomew is in the Early English style. The manor of Whitworth was granted to the abbey of Stanilaw in the reign of John. A local board of twelve members was formed in 1874. The urban sani tary district, which includes the villages of Hallfold, Facit, and Leavingreave, had an area of 8000 acres, with a popu lation of 11,892, in 1881. WHOOPING-COUGH. See HOOPING-COUGH. WHORTLEBERRY, a vernacular name corrupted from the Latin myrtillus, under which appellation, according to Prior, the berries of the common myrtle were employed in the Middle Ages for culinary purposes. In more modern times the term has been applied to various species of Vaccinium, particularly to V. Myrtillus, also known as the bilberry. The berries of this plant have a considerable similarity to those of the myrtle. Several species of Vac cinium occur on moorlands throughout the northern hemi sphere. They are low shrubs allied to heaths, usually with evergreen leaves and with small bell-shaped or urn- shaped flowers, which have an inferior ovary surmounted by five calyx lobes. The stamens, though in a single row, are double the number of the corolla lobes. The anthers have usually two horns at the back and are generally prolonged at the top into two longish tubes, each with a hole at the extremity, through which the pollen escapes. The fruit is a globular or ovoid, many-seeded berry. V. Myrtillus and V. uliginosum have blue berries ; V, Vitis idxa, the cowberry, has red fruits. A hybrid between V. Myrtillus and V. Vitis idxa, called V. intermedium, occurs in Shropshire and Staffordshire. The cranberry (Oxy- coccus) is very closely allied to the whortleberry. WHYDAH. See DAHOMEY, vol. vi. p. 765. WICHITA, a city of the United States, the county seat of Sedgwick county, Kansas, is situated on the east bank of the Arkansas river, in the midst of an extremely fertile region. It is entered by six lines of railway, thus being one .of the most important railway centres of the State. Its growth has been remarkable, even in this region of rapid development. In 1870 its site was with out inhabitants; in 1880 it contained 4911 persons, while in 1886 it had a population of 20,129, making it the fourth city of the State. WICK, a royal and parliamentary burgh and seaport of Scotland, the county town of Caithness, is situated on the German Ocean at the head of Wick Bay and at the eastern terminus of the Sutherland and Caithness section of the Highland Railway, 374 miles north of Edinburgh by rail and 18|- south of John O Groat s House. It consists of the old burgh of Wick on the north bank of the river, Louisburgh, a northern continuation of Wick, and Pultney- town, the chief seat of commerce and trade, on the south side of the river. Pultneytown, laid out in 1805 by the British Fishery Society, is built on a regular plan ; and Wick proper consists chiefly of the narrow and irregular High Street, off which is the temperance hall, with Bridge Street, somewhat more regularly built, and containing the town-hall and the county buildings. In Pultneytown there are an academy, a chamber of commerce, a naval reserve station, and a fish exchange. The port consists of two harbours of fair size ; but the entrance is dangerous in stormy weather. Several expensive schemes for con structing a breakwater have resulted in disastrous failure. In 1886 the number of vessels that entered the port was 1128 of 109,142 tons, the number that cleared 1094 of 103,162 tons. The average value of the exports for the five years ending 1887 was about 150,000 ; but in 1886 it was only 89,641. The chief exports are fish, cattle, and agricultural produce, and the imports include coal, wood, and provisions. Steamers from Granton and Aber deen to Thurso, the Orkneys, and the Shetlands call at Wick going and returning. It is, however, chiefly to its fisheries that the town owes its prosperity. For many years it was the chief seat of the herring-fishing on the east coast of Scotland ; but its insufficient harbour accom modation has greatly hampered its progress, and both Peterhead and Fraserburgh more than rival it as fishing ports. The number of boats belonging to the port in 1885 was 807 ; the value of the herrings cured was 117,754 and of cod, ling, and skate, 61,928. Ship building, formerly prosecuted, has now been discontinued ; but boat-building and net-making are extensively carried on. There are also cooperages, flour-mills, steam saw-mills, a rope and a woollen manufactory, and a distillery. Wick forms one of a group of parliamentary burghs called the Wick burghs. The population of the parliamentary burgh, which includes the royal burgh of Wick, Pultneytown, and Louisburgh, was 8145 in 1871 and 8053 in 1881. In the last year the population of the royal burgh was only 1420. In 1883 the royal burgh was extended by the in clusion of Louisburgh. The population of this extended area in 1881 was 2954. Wick (Vik or &quot;bay&quot;) is mentioned as early as 1140. It was constituted a royal burgh by James VI. in 1589, its superior being