Pontefract Castle

“ Four roundels are shown in the plate given in Fox’s History of Pontefract, “from a drawing in the possession of the Society of Antiquaries.” But the drawing is so incorrect in some points that it can hardly be relied upon for others. There were only three roundels in Leland’s time.
[587] Drake’s account of the siege says that there was a hollow place between Piper’s Tower and the Round Tower all the way down to the well; the gentlemen and soldiers all fell to carrying earth and rubbish, and so filled up the place in a little space. Quoted in Holmes’ Manual of Pontefract Castle. ”

“ The lover of antiquity may well lament when he sees our ancient fortresses nearly levelled to the ground; but the friend of rational freedom will rejoice, when he reflects on the design for which such works were erected, and on the many calamities to which they have given occasion. Amongst the existing but dismantled and ruined fortresses connecting the present with the sanguinary scene of strife and bloodshed of the past, is the famous castle of Pontefract, in Yorkshire, which sustained two memorable sieges by Cromwell’s soldiery. ”

“ Our next orders were to relieve Pontefract Castle, another garrison of the king's, which had been besieged ever since a few days after the fight at Marston Moor, by the Lord Fairfax, Sir Thomas Fairfax, and other generals in their turn. By the way we were joined with 800 horse out of Derbyshire, and some foot, so many as made us about 4500 men in all. ”

“ We give to thee our guiltless blood to drink.
We may now pass over matters of minor importance in the history of Pontefract to the time of Charles I. In the King's contest with his Parliament, this was the last fortress that held out for the unfortunate monarch. At Christmas 1644, Sir Thomas Fairfax laid siege to the castle, and on Jan. 19, following, after an incessant cannonade of three days, a breach was made: the brave garrison would not surrender; the besiegers mined, but the besieged counter-mined, and the work of slaughter went on till the garrison were greatly reduced. ”

“ The next day Fairfax dispersed them, but not without bloodshed. Soon after three hundred men from Surrey surrounded the parliament houses, cursing the parliament, insulting the soldiers, and demanding the restoration of the king. They were not repulsed without killing some of them. Similar outbreaks took place in Norwich, Thetford, Canterbury, and other places. Pontefract Castle was suprised by eighty cavaliers, each with a soldier mounted behind him.
Parliament, at the same time, was besieged with petitions or the disbanding the army and restoring the king. ”

“ The Castle of Pontefract was built on an elevated rock, commanding extensive and picturesque views. The north-west prospect takes in the beautiful vale along which flows the Aire, skirted by woods and plantations. It is bounded only by the hills of Craven. The north and east prospect is more extensive, but the scenery is not equally striking and impressive. The towers of York Minster are distinctly seen, and the prospect is only bounded by the limits of vision. ”

“ Last year, before we began our walk from London to Lancashire, we visited Whitehall and saw the window in the Banqueting-hall through which, on January 30th, 1649, about two months before Pontefract Castle surrendered, he passed on his way to the scaffold outside. ”

“ The position and dimensions of the castle were worthy of the great barons by whom it was constructed, and far too noble for the events with which its name is associated. North-east of, and one-third of a mile from, the market-cross of Pontefract, there is seen a very remarkable table of rock, oval in form, the sides of which are in part a steep slope and in part a cliff of from 30 feet to 40 feet high, rising out of a talus, which, on the north, south, and eastern faces, descends into two deep natural valleys, which unite on the north-eastern front. ”

“ Morrice led a party to the governor's chamber, told him that "the castle was surprised and himself a prisoner," and advised him to surrender. The worthy governor seized his arms and dealt some blows, but was quickly disarmed, and Pontefract was again a castle of the king.
So ended the first act in this drama. There was a second act to be played, in which Cromwell was to take a hand. The garrison was quickly reinforced by royalists from the surrounding counties; the castle was well provisioned and its fortifications strengthened; contributions were raised from neighboring parts ”

“ PONTEFRACT (pronounced and sometimes written “Pomfret”) , a market town and municipal and parliamentary borough in the West Riding of Yorkshire, England, 21 m. S.S.W. from York, served by the Midland, North-Eastern and Lancashire & Yorkshire railways. Pop. (1891) , 9702; (1901) , 13,427. It is well situated, mainly on an eminence, near the junction of the Aire and the Calder. The most important of the antiquarian remains are the ruins of the famous castle situated on a rocky height, originally covering with its precincts an area of over 8 acres, and containing in all eight round towers. ”

“ Indeed Pontefract has no cheerful annals: they are all of battle, murder, and sudden death. There was very little bloodshed, I believe, when the leader of the Pilgrimage of Grace took the castle; but who can guess how many died during the three sieges of the Civil War? The place was [198] Crown property, but after two sieges it surrendered to the army of the Parliament. ”

“ The strange Perpendicular tower, of which the lower part is square and the upper octagonal, seems oddly enough to have suffered less than the body of the building, for it has been very [192] little restored. This church of All Saints was connected with a religious house whose brethren served the castle chapel; but it was not the abbey that Camden "industriously omits" from his description of Pontefract, because even in his day there was hardly a sign of it left. ”

“ The Scots themselves, not thinking the town tenable against Henry's forces, set it on fire and deserted it. The castle alone appeared disposed to make resistance; But the shot of an enormous cannon having shattered one of the towers, it opened its gates, and the son of the Baron of Graystock, with the six principal officers, were immediately executed. Henry turned southward victorious, and at Pontefract—which no thoughts of the murder he was charged with committing prevented his visiting—he conferred upon his queen the several great estates of the Earl of Northumberland and Lord Bardolf. ”

“ Both mounts,49 as is usual, are half within and half without the line of the rampart. The stone curtain-wall has been brought up their sides, and the larger mount is crowned by a stone “shell” keep of the late twelfth century. The provision of this second mount was possibly due to the exposed position of the castle, which formed the outer defence of the city on the west and south-west, and needed its greatest strength on that side. At Pontefract and Lewes, again, there were two mounts, one at each end of the enclosure. ”

“ 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 with381 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. ”

“ At the Battle of Boroughbridge, however, Lancaster and his forces were defeated, and the earl himself obliged to surrender. On March 22, 1322, he was tried by the king's judges, in presence of the hostile earls, in his own castle at Pontefract, was condemned as a traitor, and was at once beheaded. Strangely enough, the people declared this "martyr of Pontefract" worthy of being called St. Thomas; they declared that miracles were wrought at his tomb, and they used his name as a watchword of liberty!
All his immense estates at once passed into the hands of the crown. ”

“ He was twice deprived of his honours, many of them being escheated to the crown, while Clitheroe Castle, together with the great fee of Pontefract, was bestowed on Ilbert de Lacy, a Norman follower of William.
In a country not abounding with strong positions, an insulated conical rock of limestone rising out of the fertile plain between Penhull (Pendle) and the Ribble would naturally attract the attention of the invaders. Here, therefore, we find a fortress erected even earlier than the castle at Lancaster. ”

“ Being always welcome he made friends with some of the guard. The garrison, as it happened, needed new beds, so when Marris and some others appeared at the gates laden with beds they were admitted at once. They carried the beds into that solid-looking house that was on our right as we entered the castle, the house that bears the arms of Lancaster over the door. It was the Main Guardhouse. There they flung the beds upon the floor and overpowered the friendly guard.
So Pontefract came back to the Crown, [199] the Parliamentary garrison were imprisoned in the magazine, and the third siege began. ”

“ To the east, below the junction of the Calder and the Aire, was Pontefract, in a position of great strength and importance.102 There was no great castle on the Wharfe, although Harewood guarded the south bank of the river between Otley and Tadcaster, and at Tadcaster itself there was a castle, of which little is known; Cawood castle was simply a manor-house of the archbishops of York.103 On the Ouse, almost in the centre of the shire, were the two castles of York, at the head of the tideway. Knaresborough was west of York, on the north bank of the Nidd. ”

“ At the nearer end of the vale, and immediately under the eye, the venerable ruins of Penrith Castle crest a round green hill. These are of pale red stone, and stand in detached masses; but have little that is picturesque in their appearance, time having spared neither tower, or gateway, and not a single tree giving shade, or force, to the shattered walls. The ground about the castle is broken into grassy knolls, and only cattle wander over the desolated tract. ”

“ Oswestry, 179 Overton (Denbigh) , 267; (Hereford) , 192 Owen Gwynedd, 260, 270 Oxford, 180 Oxnam, 310 Oystermouth, 298 Pantolf, William, 213 Parliamentary fortifications, 202 Payn’s Castle, 293, 395 Peak, 182 Pembroke, 278 Pentecost’s Castle, 24, 150 Penwortham, 183 Peterborough, 185 Pevensey, 99, 186 Pistes, Capitulary of, 68, 72 Pitt-Rivers, General, 2 Plinths, 355 Polnoon, 316 Pontefract, 187 ”

“ Several families, which have become extinct, are more especially reputed by tradition to have had dealings with the bad spirits, and many of them to have made compacts with the Evil One himself. Amongst the most curious of the stories once told,—I believe they are nearly all forgotten,—are those connected with Pengerswick Castle. A small tower alone remains to note the site of a once famous fortified place. This castle was said to have been occupied, in the time of Henry VIII., by a man who had committed some great crime ”

“ So many are the legends told of the former inhabitants of Pengersick, that it would be almost impossible at this date to decide which is the original. These ruins stand on the site of a much older castle, and in it dwelt, far back in the dark ages, a very wicked man, who, when he was fighting in foreign parts, forgetting his wife at home, courted a king's daughter, who gave him a magic sword, which ensured in every battle the victory to its owner. He deceived and left her; but she, with her son in her arms, followed him to his home by the Mount. ”

“ It is a grand ruin with crumbled roof and walls, but its outlines are as clear as ever they were, and if it has not the magnitude or magnificence of many others of its class, it looks far more imposing, and forms an exquisite stage setting for any mediæval romance one is able to conjure up. The history of Pontivy and its castle is this:
The town owes its origin to a monastery built here in the seventh century by St. Ivy, an English monk. The castle, however, was a foundation of seven hundred years later, by John of Rohan, in 1485. ”

“ There are in the street facing the cathedral the ruins of a much more ancient castle; a proper feudal fortress belonging to the Earls of Orkney, but called the King's Castle. It appears to have been very strong, being situated near the harbor, and having, as appears from the fragments, very massive walls. While the wicked Earl Patrick was in confinement, one of his natural sons defended this castle to extremity against the King's troops, and only surrendered when it was nearly a heap of ruins, and then under condition he should not be brought in evidence against his father. ”

“ Notwithstanding which it is now demolished, and all this glory lyeth in the dust, buried in its own ruins; there being nothing standing but a few broken walls, which seem to mourn their own approaching funerals." The walls are formed of slate, and appear to be rapidly decaying. The grounds round the castle consist of steep eminences, covered with oak and other trees. Even in the court, and remains of the fortress itself, trees of nearly a century's growth are flourishing in luxuriance, and compose, with the shrubs thickly scattered within the area, a scene highly beautiful. ”

“ It was the stronghold of the Montmorencys, and its last tenant was that rash Duke Francois, whom Richelieu, seizing every occasion to trample on a great noble, caused to be beheaded at Toulouse, where we saw, in the Capitol, the butcher's knife with which the cardinal pruned the crown of France of its thorns. The castle, after the death of this victim, was virtually demolished. Its site, which Nature to-day has taken again to herself, has an extraordinary charm. The mass of rock that it formerly covered rises high above the town, and is as precipitous as the side of the Rhone. ”