On 15th April 1588, the Earl of Huntingdon, Lord-President of the North, wrote to the Justices of the Peace of the West Riding assembled at Pontefract regarding the expected Spanish invasion, requesting the provision of arms and erection of beacons.

On 19th July 1529, the ‘Beverley Sanctuary Register’ noted that Richard Dawson of Pontefract, a minstrel from the county of York, sought the liberty and protection of St John of Beverley for the murder of Brian Routch, lately of Skipton, also a minstrel.

On 15th March 1587, Thomas Austwick was baptized at Pontefract. He was Mayor of Pontefract in 1621 and 1640 and was one of the volunteer defenders of the castle during its sieges. He died in March 1648. His son, Alan, was a lieutenant of horse for Charles I and one of the persons excepted for life at the surrender of the castle.

On 18th November 1594, John Bramall, later archbishop of Armagh, was baptised at Pontefract. Bramhall was at school in the town and was admitted to Sidney Sussex College Cambridge, graduating in 1612.

On 14th July 1503, Margaret Tudor, eldest daughter of Henry VII, arrived at Pontefract on her way from Richmond Palace to Scotland to meet her husband, James IV. The marriage had been completed by proxy on 25th January that year at Richmond Palace with the Earl of Bothwell as proxy for the Scottish king. She was met by deputations seven, four and two miles from Pontefract and escorted to the town to be received by its mayor, burgesses, inhabitants and ‘the abbot in pontifical and all the convent’. She left on the 15th for York.

On 27th August 1541, Francis Dereham was appointed Queen Catherine’s (Howard) Private Secretary at Pontefract Castle; an act that was to have severe repercussions for them both.

On 25th August 1513, Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey and 2nd Duke of Norfolk, reached Pontefract on his progress north where he heard about the Scottish invasion under James IV. James had invaded as part of the ‘Auld Alliance’ with France in an attempt to get Henry VIII to desist from his own invasion of France. Despite his age (he was nearly seventy), he would hasten to Newcastle the following day.

On 24th August 1578, John Taylor, who dubbed himself ‘The Water Poet’ was born. He visited Pontefract in 1622, describing the castle as then ‘a strong, faire and ancient edifice’ having been restored and edified by the Prince of Wales, later Charles I. Ten years later, three military men journeying for pleasure through twenty-six counties found, at Pontefract ‘a high, stately, famous and princely impregnable castle…..having seven famous towers…ample enough to receive as many princes.’ Charles I was at Pontefract in 1625.

On 12th July 1537, Robert Aske, one of the leaders of the Pilgrimage of Grace, who had besieged Pontefract Castle the previous year, was drawn through the main streets of York on a hurdle prior to execution on a special scaffold erected outside Clifford’s Tower. Rather than experience a traditional hanging, Aske was reputedly hanged alive in chains being slowly suffocated to death, taking several days to die.

On 22nd July 1537, Lord Darcy, Constable of Pontefract Castle during the previous year’s Pilgrimage of Grace, who had been beheaded for treason three weeks before, was posthumously degraded from his rank as Knight of the Garter and his vacant stall bestowed upon Thomas Cromwell, who had drawn up the charges against him and had then been one of his judges.