This Day in History: 1405-06-03

On 3rd June 1405, Henry IV and his half- brother, Thomas Beaufort, arrived at Pontefract Castle where Richard Scrope, Archbishop of York, and Thomas Mowbray, earl of Norfolk, had been imprisoned. Scrope and Norfolk, seeking revenge for the execution and banishment respectively of their kinsmen, had been persuaded to surrender their forces outside York by Ralph Neville, earl of Westmorland. An eight-man commission sat in judgement on Scrope and Norfolk at the archbishop’s own palace of Bishopthorpe, south of York on the 8th June with both men executed that same day outside York’s town walls. Robert Waterton, Constable of Pontefract Castle, was later accused by the Scottish chronicler, Walter Bower, of having counselled Henry IV to execute Archbishop Scrope. Henry IV attained the status of the only English monarch to have authorised the killing of both an archbishop and a king.