| 9/8/1726 | On 9th August 1726, Volume III of Daniel Defoe’s travelogue A Tour Thro’ the Whole Island of Great Britain: Divided into Circuits or Journies was released (and later on 13th October 1738, the second, revised edition), having been published in three volumes between 1724 and 1727. Defoe (author of Robinson Crusoe in 1719), novelist and pamphleteer wrote about Sandal and Pontefract:
‘South between Wakefield and a Village called Sandal, they shewed us a small square Piece of Ground, which was fenced off by itself; and on which, before the late Civil War, stood a large Stone Cross, just upon the Spot where the Duke of York, fighting desperately, and refusing to yield, tho’ surrounded with Enemies, was killed.’ |