There is no known well. The castle mill was upon the river a little
below the castle. The ditch along the south and west has been nearly
filled up; beyond it is a hollow way leading down to the river, which
may be old, and intended as a second line of defence.
It is stated in Domesday that, in the time of King Edward, Pickering
(Pickeringa) belonged to Earl Morcar. It was then held by the king,
with four _berewicks_, or appended manors, and some chapelries or
spiritual dependencies of the parish church. The castle and its
territory seem never to have been alienated from the Norman crown. The
Pipe Roll of 31 Henry I. mentions that Robert de Widville rendered
account for the “census rents of the forest of Pickering.” In 31
Henry II. pannage was accounted for from the forest; and in 1 Richard
I., rents were accounted for by William Boie and Alan Fitz-Geoffrey,
probably the same who occurs in the same year as Alan de Pikering. In
33 Henry II. the men of Pickering were assessed in a _donum_ towards
a royal expedition, a tax which was from time to time repeated. In 9
Richard I. mention is made of the wapentake and town of Pickering; and
in 11 John, a settlement was ordered of the boundaries between the
king’s forest of Pickering and N. de Stuteville’s forest.
[Illustration: PICKERING CASTLE.]
King John was here in February, 1201; August, 1208; and March, 1210;
each time for a day.
In 45 Henry III. the castle was held by Hugh le Bigod against the
king, with Scarborough, which castle he was monished under the Bull of
Alexander VI. to surrender.
Henry III. granted Pickering to his son, Edmund Earl of Lancaster,
about which time mention is made of the manor, fee, and forestry of
Pickering. In 13 Edward I. the earl had confirmation of the manor,
castle, and forest. On the execution and attainder of Earl Thomas,
Henry Earl of Northumberland had charge of the castle, but on the fall
of Edward II., Earl Henry recovered it. When Henry of Lancaster landed
at Ravensburn in 1399, he marched on and retook Pickering, then held
for the king.
King Richard II. was prisoner here before his removal to Pontefract.
Peck enumerates Pickering among the royal castles, and says there was
a steward of the lordship, a constable of the castle, a master of the
game, and a rider of the forest.
Pickering was held for the king in the parliamentary struggles, and
breached on the west point, and dismantled. It seems never to have
been permanently alienated from the royal demesnes. The Crown held it
from the Conquest until it was granted by Henry IV. to the Earl of
Lancaster, since which its history is that of the estates of the Duchy
of Lancaster, of which it still forms a part.
With Pickering Castle should be mentioned a very curious, though
nameless and but little known earthwork in its immediate neighbourhood.
This is not even laid down as an earthwork in the Ordnance Map, usually
so accurate, though marked as the site of a station. It is placed upon
the highest part of a round, grassy hill, with easy slopes, which rises
upon the western or right bank of the Beck or river of Pickering,
about 200 feet above the water, and opposite to, and a little lower
down than, the castle. The position is good, it is clear of the ravine
which opens out just above the town and castle, and from it is a rich
and extensive view, especially to the south and west, over Rysdale and
towards Helmsley. The labour bestowed upon the work is light compared
with that expended upon the earthworks of the castle, though the mound
is the leading feature of both, and attests their common Saxon or early
English origin.
A central mound, 90 feet in diameter at the top and 20 feet high,
is girt by a ditch, out of which it rises, and upon the outer edge
of which is a low bank. The summit of the mound is level, but is
surrounded by a light, circular bank, which probably was heaped up
to cover the lower edge of the timber defence or residence, which
no doubt was here placed. The entrance seems to have been on the
south-east side, where are marks of a way across the outer bank, and
perhaps of a causeway over the ditch. The hill is enclosed, and part
of it under the plough, so that no traces of any exterior or appended
enclosures are visible. The work, though its general outline is to be
traced with certainty, is much lowered, and its details weakened and
rendered obscure by time and weather. It is, however, an earthwork of
the same general class with Laughton, Barwick, Castleton, and others
similar to them in Yorkshire and elsewhere, and, with them, it deserves
attention. Possibly it is earlier than the castle mound of Pickering,
and probably was abandoned when that was thrown up; perhaps when
the wealth and power of the owner enabled him to found the lythe or
lordship of Pickering.
THE CASTLE OF PONTEFRACT, YORKSHIRE.
“Our histories,” says Swift, “are full of Pomfret Castle;” and although
this has long ceased to be the case, and Pomfret be now famous but
for cakes and the cultivation of the root employed in the soothing of
catarrh and the adulteration of railway coffee, it was once a very
famous, and is still a very interesting, place.
Whence came the name of Pontefract, and when and where its bridge was
broken down, are questions over which antiquaries have long stumbled,
seeing that the Aire, the only stream of the district needing to be
traversed by a bridge, is two miles from the town and quite out of its
girth.
It appears from Norman charters that the name of the place was Kirkby,
a name, no doubt, bestowed upon it when church and hamlet were
founded as a Christian settlement, in the old days when King Oswald
of Northumbria embraced the new faith, an event probably commemorated
by the cross which gave name to the wapentake still known of Oswald’s
or Osgod’s Cross. Kirkby, however, is not named in Domesday, though
probably even then a burgh. It is evidently included in the manor of
Tateshall, or Tanshelf, which belonged to the king, and appended to
which was the soke of Manesthorp, Barnebi, and Silchestone. Tateshall
formed, and still forms, a part of the town of Pontefract.
No doubt this is the “Taddenes Scylf,” where, in 947, King Eadred
received the fealty of Archbishop Wulfstan and the Northumbrian Witan,
as recorded, with their speedy breach of it, in the Anglo-Saxon
chronicle. The place must even then have been of importance, and there
can be but little doubt that the Witan met on the site of the later
castle. Also it continued to be an important place, for at the Conquest
it was a demesne of the Crown, and is recorded in Domesday as rated
at £20., having three mills, and containing a hospital for the poor.
Domesday, no doubt, means Pontefract Castle, when it records that,
“Omnis tornour sedet infra metam castelli Ilberti secundum primam
mensuram et secundum novissimam mensuram sedet extra.” _Meta_ is here
clearly the castle garth or boundary of its immediate lands, not the
military _enceinte_ or curtain about the position, with respect to
which no measurement could be in error, nor is it the Castelry, which
was a much larger area.
The parish of Pontefract, which is large, is composed of six townships,
of which one is Pontefract proper. The parish is one of twenty
composing the wapentake or hundred.
Leland, who calls the fortress “Snorre Castle,” says that before
the Conquest it belonged to Richard Aschenald, and then to Ailric,
Sweine, and Adam, his son, grandson, and great grandson. This last had
two daughters, married to Alex. de Crevequer and Adam de Montbegon.
Dodsworth calls Aschenald, Aske, still a great Yorkshire name, and
points out, what indeed is still very evident, that the Norman works
stood in part on an artificial hill, on which no doubt stood the house
of the English lord, dispossessed by the Conqueror.
Ailric is a real person, and a Domesday landowner, and before the
Conquest held many manors. Sweine was his son, and inherited, and gave
a church and chapel to the monks of St. John’s Church at Pontefract.
Ailric held his lands, much reduced, under the Norman grantee, as did
Sweine, and his son Adam Fitz Sweine, who founded Bretton Priory, and
died about 1158, having been a very considerable person. Charters by
both Sweine and Adam are found in the Pontefract cartulary.
William I. was at Castleford on the Aire in the winter of 1069, and as
he stayed there three weeks he probably found the means of inspecting
so strong a place as the English House at Kirkby, and when he granted
the district to Ilbert de Lacy it may reasonably be supposed that he
followed his usual practice of directing a castle to be built.
Mr. Freeman suggests that the name of Pontefract may have arisen
from some incident connected with this passage of the Aire; others
have thought that, like Richmond and Montgomery, it was an imported
name. Ordericus, however, as Mr. Freeman remarks, refers to it as
_Fractus-Pons_, not _Pons-Fractus_, “Rex ... præpeditur ad fracti
pontis vada,” as though the words were in a state of transition from a
description to a proper name. The change of name certainly was adopted
slowly, for while an early charter by Robert de Lacy, the second lord,
has the passage, “de dominio suo de Kirkbi,” a later one has “Deo et
Sᵗⁱ Johanni et Monachis meis de Pontefract,” while Hugh de Lanval,
the intrusive lord, at least as late as 1120, employs the older name.
Robert of Castleford, a good local authority, writing about a century
after the event, says the name commemorates the escape of a multitude
of people from drowning, when a bridge broke down beneath them. There
is, however, no river within two miles of Pontefract capable of
drowning a multitude.
Camden derives the name from the breaking down of a bridge or causeway
that traversed the marshy valley still called the Wash, the springs
of which rise close north-west of the castle and cross its approach
from Knottingley, at Bubwith Houses, where, in the time of Edward II.,
John Bubwith held lands _juxta veterem pontem de Pontefract_, about a
quarter of a mile from the castle, which, indeed, proves the existence
of a bridge, though not of a broken one. How water came to be here
collected will be explained when the defences of the castle are treated
of. Perhaps the real truth of the matter may lie in the suggestion
of Hopkinson, that the castle was called after a place of that name
belonging to De Lacy in Normandy.
A few marks of Roman occupation have been discovered here, and but
few. Legeolium, the station of the district, seems to have been at
Castleford, three miles distant.
But whatever may have been the origin of the fortress, or of its
evidently pre-Norman earthworks, its recorded history commences
with Ilbert de Lacy, to whom William granted Knottingley, a large
portion of the wapentake, and other lands, including about 150
manors, chiefly in the West Riding,—where they fill seven pages of
Domesday-book,—Nottingham, and Lincoln, of which those in Yorkshire
were erected into an Honour, whereof Pontefract, the strongest and
most important place, became naturally the chief seat. Ilbert, though
no doubt of near kin to the Herefordshire Lord of Ewyas and Holm-Lacy,
was a different person. He is thought to have built Pontefract Castle
before 1080, commencing it probably in consequence of the visit of the
Conqueror, in 1069. If Sir H. Ellis be right, and the castle then built
be that alluded to by the Domesday entry, it was speedily completed.
Ilbert also endowed the chapel of St. Clement within the castle, which,
in some form or other, long survived. He lived into the reign of Rufus,
from whom he had a confirmation of his grants. By his wife, Hawise, he
left Robert and Hugh.
Robert de Lacy, called, from his birthplace, “of Pontefract,” claims to
have built Clitheroe, which has, indeed, been attributed to his second
son. He also had a confirmation from Rufus. By Maud, his wife, he had
Ilbert, who, with his father, on the death of Rufus, joined Curthose
against Henry I., and fought at Tenchbrai. Both were banished, and
Robert was disseized of Pontefract in favour of William Transversus,
and then of Hugh de la Val, or Lanval, who held it to the reign of
Stephen. Robert finally regained the Honour, but King Henry claimed
2,000 marcs, and de la Val had £150. for the demesne lands, and 20
knights’ fees, which are entered in the Liber Niger in 1165 as held “de
veteri feodo Pontisfracti.” Robert confirmed some of de la Val’s grants
to Nostel, and founded the Cluniac Priory of Pontefract.
Ilbert de Lacy, next Lord of the Honour, fought at Northallerton, and
was a zealous supporter of Stephen, on whose death he adhered to Henry
II. He married Alice, daughter of Gilbert de Gant, but died childless.
Henry de Lacy, next brother, succeeded. To him is attributed the later
Norman work in the castle. He appears in the Liber Niger as holding
60 fees. Henry II. confirmed him in the Honour of Pontefract, and the
other English and the Norman possessions of his family. 12 Henry II. he
was assessed upon 79½ fees. He was a considerable church benefactor,
and gave St. John’s Church and St. Nicholas’s Hospital, both in
Pontefract, to the priory there. He founded Kirkstall.
Robert de Lacy, his son, and successor to the Honour, was present at
the coronation of Richard I. He died childless in 1193.
The heir, according to Dugdale, and in violation of an accepted rule
of inheritance, was Albreda de Lizures, Robert’s uterine sister. Mr.
Hunter, however, in his preface to the Pipe-roll of 31 Henry I. has
shown that in all probability Albreda was the daughter of Robert
de Lizures by a sister of Ilbert de Lacy, second of this name, and
therefore Robert’s cousin, and heir of the full blood. This point
is important as setting aside what has been regarded as a singular
exception to an accepted law. Albreda married Richard FitzEustace,
Constable of Chester.
John, their son, who died before his mother, Lord of Pontefract and
Constable of Chester, abandoned his House of Halton, took the name and
arms of de Lacy, and died 1179, having married Alice de Vere.
Roger de Lacy, son and heir. 5 Richard I. he received from his
grandmother the Lacy lands. He visited the Holy Land with his father
in King Richard’s train. 7 Richard I. he paid 2,000 marcs to have
livery of the Honour of Pontefract, excepting the castle, which the
king retained in his own hands, and to which he paid at least ten
visits between 1205 and 1216. 1 John, he reopened the question of the
de la Val 20 fees, for livery of which he paid 500 marcs; and 4 John,
1203, the king addressed a letter to the tenants directing them to
acknowledge Roger de Lacy as their lord. Though John continued to hold
the Castle, he employed Roger in various important offices, and made
him governor of the strong fortress of Château-Gaillard, on the Seine,
in which he stood a very famous siege, only giving way when short of
food, and deserted by the king. 13 John he paid scutage upon 47¾ fees
of his own land, besides others which he held in wardship. He seems to
have been the baron who, in the absence of regular soldiers, led the
Chester minstrels to the relief of Earl Ranulph, when surrounded by
the Welsh. He was a great soldier, and an openhanded benefactor to the
church, and deserved the line with which the monks of Hanlau began his
epitaph:—
“Hic sepelitur Heros generosus in orbe Rogerus.”
Earl Roger died a young man in 1211. He had married Maud de Clare,
and by her had John, his successor. In December, 14 John, 1212, the
Honour was in the king’s hands, and he seems to have made free with its
revenues; for in 1213 he directed 300 marcs from its issues to be spent
on the works at Corfe Castle.
John de Lacy had seizin 20 September, 1213, and paid John 7,000
marcs for livery of the Honour, less the castles of Pontefract and
Durrington, which the king kept, and for the expenses of keeping which
Peter FitzHerbert had an order on the Exchequer. John, who is styled
in the writ John de Chester, joined the Barons against King John, and
was duly excommunicated by the Pope. He married Margaret, co-heir of
Saer de Quincy, Earl of Winchester, by Hawise, Countess of Lincoln and
co-heir of Ranulph, Earl of Chester and Lincoln. Early in the reign of
Henry III., 1232, on the death of Earl Ranulph, Hawise seems to have
made over her earldom to her daughter’s husband, who bore the title
till his death, in 1240.
Edmund de Lacy, the son of Earl John and Margaret, was, by the
contrivance of Henry III., married to one of his foreign kinsfolk,
Alice, daughter of the Marquis de Saluces. He inherited Pontefract, but
did not assume the title of Lincoln, as he did not outlive his mother.
He died 42 Henry III., 1258, having built the House of the White
Friars, near the Barbican, at Pontefract.
Henry de Lacy, Earl of Lincoln, his son, was the greatest of his race.
He married the heiress of Longspee, and in her right became Earl of
Salisbury. He was in ward to the king, and in 1272 was knighted and
made Governor of Knaresborough Castle. He walled the town of Denbigh,
and commenced the Castle, which he is said to have left unfinished
because his only surviving son was drowned in a draw-well in the Red
Tower there. His other son had been killed by a fall from a tower at
Pontefract.
Having thus no son, Earl Henry surrendered his estates to the king,
who regranted them, 28th December, 21 Edward I., to him for life, with
remainder to Edmund, Earl of Lancaster, and the heirs of his body.
28 Edward I., Queen Margaret was a visitor at Pontefract Castle, and
during a short hunting excursion to Brotherton, was there brought to
bed suddenly of Thomas, called from his birthplace. It is said that the
house in which she took refuge, with 20 acres of land, was enclosed in
a wall and ditched, and granted by the tenure of keeping the wall in
repair. Earl Henry died at Lincoln’s Inn, 1310, leaving a daughter,
Alice, who married Thomas, eldest son and successor of Edmund Earl of
Lancaster.
Thomas Plantagenet, Earl of Lancaster, and, either by his wife Alice,
or by his father’s grant, Earl of Lincoln, and Lord of Pontefract,
succeeded. He was much at the castle, and probably refaced the lower
part of the keep, built Swillington Tower, and no doubt some of the
structures the bases of which remain in the main ward. He also in 1315
built Dunstanborough, and added Lancaster’s Buildings to Kenilworth.
Earl Thomas’s history is well known. From Boroughbridge Field he was
taken to Pontefract Castle, then occupied by the weak and vindictive
king. He was imprisoned in Swillington Tower, tried and condemned
in the great hall, and, in 1322, executed on the hill which still
bears his canonised name, a mile to the north-east. He was buried
in the Priory. The patent creating Harcla, one of his captors, Earl
of Carlisle, was dated from the castle, three days after the earl’s
execution.
Countess Alice, whose character was unhappily not so impregnable as
her castle, married, secondly, Eubolo L’Estrange, who died 9 Edw. III.
Her third husband was Hugh de Fresnes, called Earl of Lincoln. There
was a fourth, earlier in the list, whose claims are doubtful. Alice
died 1348, but Pontefract and the other possessions had already passed,
under the regrant, to her husband’s brother.
Henry Plantagenet, Earl of Lancaster, succeeded to his brother’s honour
in 1324, and died 1345. Edward III. probably retained the castle. He
was here in 1328. By Maud Chaworth Earl Henry had another Henry.
Henry Plantagenet (Tort-col, or of Grismond), Earl of Derby, &c., and,
in 1351, Duke of Lancaster. He died 1361. Blanch, his second daughter
by Isabel Beaumont, and co-heir, inherited Pontefract Castle and Honour.
John Plantagenet, of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, married the heiress and
became Lord of Pontefract. He resided much at Pontefract, and restored
the works. When threatened by Richard II. he victualled and put the
castle into a state of defence. 12 Richard II. he obtained by charter
“jura regalia” within the honour. Parts of the half-covered basements
in the main ward appear to be of his time. He died 1399.
Henry Plantagenet, of Bolingbroke, Duke of Hereford, afterwards Henry
IV., son and heir, succeeded, being then in exile. Richard II., by
confiscating the estates, provoked reprisals, which led to his own
deposition. Pontefract Castle became his first prison, and the scene of
his supposed murder. Since that event the castle has been vested in the
Crown. Richard Scrope, archbishop of York, was here condemned to death
in 1405, and at that time Henry IV. was much here, putting down the
Northern insurrections. Many of his instruments are hence dated between
1405 and 1408.
Henry V., much occupied with foreign wars, and having peace at home,
had no occasion to make use of Pontefract, which seems to have been
neglected in its military capacity; but here Charles, Duke of Orleans,
taken at Agincourt, and James I. of Scotland, were long confined, both
accomplished men and given to literature.
With the civil dissensions that came under Henry VI., the castle became
again of importance. The Duke of Exeter, taken from sanctuary after
St. Alban’s, was here imprisoned; and in 1460, after the battle of
Wakefield, Edward here took post, with his army encamped around. It
was under the walls of the castle that Warwick killed his horse before
the soldiers, saying, “Let him flee that flee will; I stay by him who
stays by me.” It was in accordance with this declaration that the king
advanced from Pontefract next day, and defeated the Lancastrians at
Towton. Edward’s father, Richard, Duke of York, and his brother, the
Earl of Rutland, slain at Wakefield, had been buried at Pontefract. He
now added his father’s head to his body, and removed the whole from St.
John’s Church to Fotheringay. During Edward’s reverses and absence in
Holland, the Lancastrians used Pontefract as a military prison.
In 1463, Edward was again at Pontefract, and in 1478, when he was
escorted thither in great state, and remained a week.
The bloody celebrity of Pontefract was increased during the ascendancy
of Richard, Duke of Gloucester, who sent hither Rivers, Grey, Vaughan,
and Hawse, to be executed without form of trial. Soon after his
accession he erected the town into a municipal borough.
The castle rose again briefly into notice in 1536, when Aske and the
insurgents of the Pilgrimage of Grace appeared before it, and forced
its surrender by Lord Darcy and the Archbishop of York, with more than
a presumption of treachery. Henry VIII. was here in 1540. Two years
later, Sir Henry Savile, as governor, had charge of several Scottish
prisoners taken at Solway Moss.
Elizabeth, towards the close of her reign, repaired the castle, and
rebuilt the chapel of St. Clement within it. King James was here in
1603, and made the castle and honour a part of the dower of his queen.
He repeated his visit in 1616, and viewed the newly-established college
of St. Clement, within the castle. King Charles was here in 1625, soon
after his accession.