Richard Whittington the glorious city of Constantinople was taken by
Mahomet the Second, Prince of the Turks, whose souldiers sacked it with
all extremity and omitted no manners of cruelty by violence to either
virgins, aged women, or sucking babes. This Sir Richard Whittington had
traffick from thence by his factors which there abode, and were then
taken prisoners, so that he lost near upon fifteen thousand pounds,
which when he heard of never was so much as cast down or dismayed, but
said God will send more; yea such was the incessant practice of the
Turkish tyranny upon this imperial city, as it exceeded the damage,
rapes and spoyls of other cities. They also beheaded at the same time
Constantine, sticking his head upon a launce, and with derision caused
it to be carried thorow the Turkish camp.

In the space of a week after, there hapned a horrible tempest of thunder
and lightning which burned almost eight hundred houses and spoiled three
thousand people at the sacking of the aforesaid city by the said
Mahomet. The Turks found therein so much treasure that they wondred that
the citizens would not spend it in souldiers for their own defence, but
so dotingly to spare the true spending thereof to become an enticing
prey for their irreconcileable enemies, for indeed it was thought that
if the State would have hired souldiers, and given them good pay they
might have raised the siege of the Turks. It is an old and true saying,
Covetousness is the mother of ruine and mischief.

This strange thing happened in the second time that he was elected Lord
Mayor and that was upon the twenty-seventh of April, being Tuesday in
Easter week: William Foxley, Pot maker for the Mint in the Tower of
London, fell asleep, and so continued sleeping and snoring and could not
be wakened with pricking, cramping, or otherwise burning or whatsoever
till the first day of the term, which was full 14 days and 15 nights.