| Date | Event | | 20/1/1236 | On 20th January 1236, John de Lacy, lord of Pontefract, was in attendance at the coronation of Henry III’s Queen (Eleanor of Provence). It was at the coronation feast and court celebrations afterwards that John befriended and ‘sponsored’ Simon de Montfort. |
| 20/1/1307 | On 20th January 1307, Henry de Lacy, lord of Pontefract, was one of two Commissioners to open parliament in Carlisle. |
| 20/1/1320 | On 20th January 1320, Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, lord of Pontefract, refused to attend the Parliament at York, fearing for his safety in his quarrels with Edward II. |
| 20/1/1327 | On 20th January 1327, at Kenilworth Castle, owned by Henry of Lancaster, later lord of Pontefract when his executed brother Thomas’s titles and lands were restored to Henry, Edward II agreed to resign his crown to his son, later Edward III. |
| 20/1/1330 | On 20th January 1330, Henry, 3rd Earl of Lancaster, brother of the executed’ traitor’ Thomas, Earl of Lancaster and lord of Pontefract, founded a hospital in Leicester, possibly, some surmise, to mark his fiftieth year or as acknowledgement to the plight of the handicapped; he was suffering worsening vision if not total blindness by this time. |
| 20/1/1382 | On 20th January 1382, fifteen-year-old Richard II, the most famous prisoner to be later held at Pontefract Castle, was married to sixteen-year-old Anne of Bohemia in Westminster Abbey by the Bishop of London, Robert Baybrooke. |
| 21/1/1342 | On 21st January 1342, John of Gaunt, future lord of Pontefract, and not yet two-years-old, was made Earl of Richmond. The official confirmation was made on 20th September that year. |
| 21/1/1390 | On 21st January 1390, John of Gaunt, lord of Pontefract, was re-sworn as a Privy Councillor to Richard II. |
| 21/1/1645 | For the 21st January 1645, Nathan Drake, diarist, recorded: ‘Captin Browne was killed in the Barbican with a muskitt bullitt from the beseegers. About that time was one John Spence killed in the barbican by overcharging his owne muskitt wch burst & killed him.’ |
| 21/1/1645 | On 21st January 1645, Nathan Drake, Royalist diarist, recorded: ‘about 11 a Clock, there came a Drumme to the gates from Forbes and Beate a parly. word was brought to the Governor who sent to know his business. He tould them he had a letter from Coll. Forbes to the Governor. The governor returned answer, he would receive no letters…unlesse they would sease battering..’ |
| 21/1/1652 | On 21st January 1652, it was reported by The Parliament Committee for Advance of Money (set up in November 1642, and ceasing in 1656, to produce voluntary loans and subsequently compulsory assessments for the fight against Charles I and from 1645 to uncover the concealed resources of Royalist ‘delinquents’) that Lady Savile, widow of Sir William Savile of Thornhill, ‘went to Sheffield, then a King’s garrison, contributing money, horses, and arms and encouraging the soldiers to fight against Parliament, and stayed there till its surrender. Also that she was privy to the design of betraying Pontefract Castle to the King in 1648, and much assisted the enemy. Also that her late husband was a commander under the Earl of Newcastle, and a notorious delinquent.’ |
| 22/1/1382 | On 22nd January 1382, Anne of Bohemia, eldest daughter of Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor, was crowned Queen of England (to Richard II) by the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Courtenay. John of Gaunt, lord of Pontefract, was in attendance and gave the queen a silver enamelled ewer on an elaborate stand. During the week-long festivities after the wedding, Gaunt provided minstrels for the jousts at Smithfield, with his son, Henry Bolingbroke (later Henry IV), displaying his considerable jousting talents. |
| 22/1/1425 | In late January 1425, Richard Neville, later to be Earl of Salisbury and brother-in-law to Richard, Duke of York, was made Constable of Pontefract Castle, succeeding Robert Waterton. |
| 22/1/1645 | On 22nd January 1645, the English Commissioners with the Scotch (sic) Army wrote from Grantham to Lieutenant-General Leslie:
‘We have received very sad complaints of horse lately quartered at Stayncross and those parts in Yorkshire under Major Blair, how they took clothes and free quarter, and assessed great sums of money, take horses and when the owners redeem them for money take both horses and money, and that one of them committed a rape ; some said the Reformadoes of your army, com¬ mitting many oppressions at Tickhill, were taken by the inhabitants to Pontefract Castle, of whom those of the Scotch nation the Committee have written to you shall be sent to receive justice at your hands, and the English Irish and French shall receive the punishment appointed by Parliament…..’ |
| 23/1/1396 |  In January 1396, John Of Gaunt was newly-married to his mistress, Katherine Swynford. The Duke and Duchess made a short trip to the North before facing the court. Possibly, John wanted to 'test the water' by taking Katherine on a tour of his domains and by the 23rd January, they were lodged at Pontefract Castle. The royal lodgings were in the turreted trefoil donjon which John had heightened 20 years earlier. The couple would have resided in great luxury as John had lavished huge sums of money on his castle. The image is of John of Gaunt. |
| 23/1/1600 | On 23rd January 1600, Alexander Keirincx, a Flemish landscape artist, was born in Antwerp. He was commissioned by Charles I of England (probably to note the king’s visit to Scotland in 1639) to paint a series of ten or more paintings of royal castles and places in England and Scotland and it is believed his depiction of the grandeur of Pontefract Castle was done in 1640. He died in Amsterdam on 7th October 1652. |
| 23/1/1643 | On 23rd January 1643, the Marquess of Newcastle retreated from Pontefract when Parliamentarian Sir Thomas Fairfax threatened his lines of communication having already taken Leeds and Wakefield from Lord Savile. |
| 24/1/1537 | On 24th January 1537, after Lord Darcy (Constable of Pontefract Castle during the Pilgrimage of Grace) had written to Henry VIII asking to be excused from a summons to attend court because of illness and infirmity, the king wrote to him thanking him for his services and ordered him to victual the castle secretly in case of further uprisings in view of the Beverley ‘disturbances’. Preparations were made for the Lord Admiral to take over Pontefract from Darcy and Sir Richard Tempest to cede Sandal Castle to Sir Henry Saville. |
| 24/1/1897 | ‘The Chemist and Druggist’ reported that on 24th January 1897 ‘A fire broke out at Pontefract on Sunday, January 24 (1897), resulting in the complete destruction of a liquorice-factory belonging to Councillor A. Taylor White. A large quantity of machinery for the making of " Pontefract cakes " was destroyed, and also a few tons of finished cakes, as well as a considerable weight of raw material.’ |
| 25/1/1140 | On 25th January 1140, ‘Archbishop’ Thurstan of York, fulfilling his vow to enter the Cluniac order of monks, took his vows at the Priory of St John, Pontefract which had been founded by Robert de Lacy in 1090. |
| 25/1/1205 | On 25th January 1205, Roger de Lacy, lord of Pontefract, was a witness of letters patent and close authorising King John’s officials to retain and destroy false coins. There was widespread concern during this part of the king’s reign regarding the quality of coinage in circulation and the debasing of the currency particularly given King John’s persistent demands for funds regarding his foreign campaigns, castle repairs, garrisons’ reinforcements etc. |
| 25/1/1277 | On 25th January 1277, Sir Henry de Lacy, lord of Pontefract, was with Edward I at Worcester preparing for a military campaign in Wales against the 'rebel' leader, Llywelyn ap Gruffudd. By the end of this month, at Oswestry, Henry arrived with a notable company of seven barons, twenty-five knights, sixty-eight troopers and one hundred plus lances. By 1st July, prior to the main, impending campaign, Sir Henry had helped King Edward receive the homage of five Welsh rulers and in early September was with the king helping to capture Anglesey. |
| 25/1/1278 | On 25th January 1278, Sir Henry de Lacy, lord of Pontefract, was authorised by Edward I to travel to Brabant to arrange the future marriage of his daughter, Margaret, to John, heir to the Duke of Brabant. |
| 25/1/1287 | Henry de Lacy, Earl of Lincoln and lord of Pontefract, was with Edmund of Lancaster visiting Gascony when he made his will on or around 25th January 1287 in Bordeaux, although it was later cancelled. In it he left £100 (£97,000 today) each to the poor scholars of Oxford and Cambridge and made reference to £1,000 (£970,000 today) he had deposited at Lincoln Cathedral in case his then five-years-old daughter, Alice, did not marry. |
| 25/1/1537 | On 25th January 1537, Henry VIII wrote to the Earl of Shrewsbury concerning the new Bigod uprising, following the Pilgrimage of Grace, in North Yorkshire, and the Earl’s health. In the letter, he also declared that so long as Lord Darcy did his duty regarding preventing further troubles in and around Pontefract and holding the castle, the king would regard him with as much favour as if the rebellion had never happened. |
| 26/1/1354 | On 26th January 1354, Henry of Grosmont, 1st Duke of Lancaster and lord of Pontefract, was made Commissioner to ‘treat’ with the King of Navarre by Edward III. |
| Date | Event | | 13/1/1396 | John of Gaunt was one of the great custodians of Pontefract castle and when his second wife, Constance of Castile, died on 24th March 1394, he was now free to marry his long-standing mistress, Katherine Swynford (sister-in-law of Chaucer), on 13th January 1396. John and Katherine had had four children - the Beauforts - who would become the ancestors of the great Tudor dynasty through their great granddaughter Margaret Beaufort and her marriage to Edmund Tudor. Edmund was the son of Catherine de Valois, the former queen of Henry V and her second husband, Owen Tudor. Margaret and Edmund's son, Henry Tudor, would defeat Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485 to become Henry VII. |
| 13/1/1649 | On 13th January 1649, Thomas Margetts wrote to Parliamentarian Captain Adam Baynes in London from Pontefract: ‘ The Ma. General lately returned hither from the disbanding of two Militia Regiments of Horse, and is now gone to the disbanding of Coll. Bethel and the foot regiments lately before Scarborough……The Enemy is yet resolute and keeps us upon hard duty…..Our guns and mortar pieces, together with the ammunition, is now come into this Town, and they will play very shortly. They now and then drop away out of the Castle, but are still very active with their great and small shot to prevent our work.
The proceedings in relation to Charles Stuart are well enough resented by the well-affected in these parts, and are glad the business goes on so fast, as it probably tends to the preventing of malicious designs and loss of Justice….Coll. Lilburne (later a regicide) gone to London and most of the other officers out of town, except Coll. Bright (who you know dissents)……’ |
| 14/1/1236 | On 14th January 1236, John de Lacy, Baron of Pontefract and Constable of Chester, was present at the marriage of Henry III and Eleanor of Provence, acting, in many ways, as an officer holding back the crowds. |
| 15/1/1322 | By mid January 1322, Roger Mortimer, 1st Earl of March and a key ally of Thomas of Lancaster, surrendered to Edward II at Shrewsbury. Mortimer’s faith in Lancaster had been destroyed by the failure of Thomas to leave his northern fortress at Pontefract during the Despenser War. Support for Lancaster was ebbing away, and as Edward II began to march north, Lancaster would try to reach his northern fortress at Dunstanburgh, only to be surrounded and defeated at the Battle of Boroughbridge on the 16th March 1322. Lancaster had opened private negotiations with Scotland aiming at a Scots-baronial alliance to coerce Edward II and on 15th January he was granted a safe conduct to visit the Scots, using the provocative code-name 'King Arthur'. |
| 15/1/1346 | On 15th January 1346, Henry, 3rd Earl of Lancaster, brother of the executed’ traitor’ Thomas, Earl of Lancaster and lord of Pontefract, and last surviving grandchild of Henry III and Eleanor of Provence was buried in Leicester. His first cousin once removed, Edward III, and niece, Queen Isabella, attended along with many English nobles and most of the Earl’s six daughters. Some years later, his son, Henry of Grosmont, had his remains transferred to the collegiate church of the Annunciation of Our Lady of the Newarke in Leicester, his extension of his father’s 1330 foundation. |
| 15/1/1394 | During the Parliament of January 1394, John of Gaunt, lord of Pontefract, petitioned for his son, Henry of Lancaster, to be the king’s heir claiming preposterously (some say) that his first wife Blanche’s great-grandfather, Edmund (Crouchback) of Lancaster, had been the true elder son of Henry III but had been overlooked in favour of his brother Edward I on account of Edmund’s physical deformity. This would have made Edward I’s nephew, Thomas of Lancaster, the next rightful king and thereafter his descendants. The nonsensical nature of this line of reasoning was apparent in not only Edward I having been over five years older than his brother, Edmund, but that it would have invalidated John of Gaunt’s own high rank and status as a true king’s son. |
| 15/1/1469 | In January 1469, Edward IV’s youngest brother, sixteen-years-old Richard, lord of Sandal, headed a commission at Salisbury investigating charges against key figures accused of plotting with the exiled Lancastrians. Sir Thomas Hungerford and Henry Courtenay, heir to the earldom of Devon, had been arrested the previous November along with John de Vere, Earl of Oxford. Hungerford’s father had been executed in 1464; Courtenay’s younger brother was in Flanders being funded by Charles the Bold; de Vere’s father and older brother had been executed in 1462. Amongst the commissioners were the king’s brother-in-law, Anthony Woodville and the Devon noble, Humphrey, Lord Stafford. Their guilty verdict was a formality and Hungerford and Courtenay were hanged, eviscerated whilst still conscious, then beheaded. Oxford was released from the Tower with sureties imposed for his future good behaviour. |
| 15/1/1645 | In January 1645, Colonel William ‘Blowface’ Forbes of the besieging Parliamentary forces around Pontefract Castle was injured. A Parliamentarian newspaper reported: ‘Pontefract Castle is still closely besieged by the L Fairfax his forces: Sir Thomas Fairfax was lately in great danger of being shot by a canon (sic) bullet from the castle which came between him and the Colonel Forbes; the waft of it feld Sir Thomas to the ground and spoyled one side of the Colonel’s face and eyes. Our forces are in great probability of taking it and will be able no doubt speedily to requite those in the castle for their obstinacy and insolency.’ Soon after recovering, Forbes married Mary, a woman twenty years his junior and the daughter of Pontefract’s former Royalist governor, Sir John Redman. |
| 16/1/1645 | On 16th January 1645, Nathan Drake's detailed accounts of the siege of Pontefract Castle recorded that when the besieged heard that the besiegers were about to plant their ordnance 'against the Piper Tower and betwixt that and the Round Tower, where there was a hollow place all the way down to the well, the gentlemen and souldyers fell all upon carrying of earth and rubbish, and so filled up the place in a little space, and we rammed up the way that passed through Piper Tower, with earth four or five yards thick. The beseeged playd 1 cannon into the closes below the Towne amongst the cutters up of clothes, but what was killed is not knowne, but they came there no more.' |
| 17/1/1425 | On 17th January 1425, Robert Waterton, Steward and Constable of Pontefract Castle and Master Forester, who had had custody of Richard II, Charles, Duke of Orleans, Jean I, Duke of Bourbon, James I of Scotland and the son of the Earl of Athol died at Methley. In addition, he was at various times Constable at Tickhill and Donnington castles, Henry IV’s Master of Horse, chief steward of the northern areas of the Duchy of Lancaster (later chamberlain) and Sheriff of Lincolnshire. He was one of the executors of Henry IV’s will. His military and diplomatic skills were evidenced by his part in quelling the Percy ‘revolts’ of 1403 and 1408 and negotiations with ambassadors from France. |
| 17/1/1645 |  On this day in 1645, the first serious action of the first siege at Pontefract Castle began. Parliamentarian gun batteries started an intense bombardment of the castle. Cannon fire lasted five days and in this time 1367 shots were fired at the defenders. Here is a photo of two of the cannon balls found over 360 years later, still lodged in the castle walls! |
| 18/1/1382 | On 18th January 1382, John of Gaunt, lord of Pontefract, escorted sixteen-year-old Anne of Bohemia, eldest daughter of Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor, into London for her impending wedding to Richard II. |
| 18/1/1425 | On 18th January 1425, Richard Plantagenet’s (Duke of York and lord of Sandal Castle), uncle, Edmund Mortimer, died of plague after having been sent to Ireland. Richard now assumed the titles of Earl of March and Ulster and the Mortimer lands in Wales and border territories. These lands, however, were held in trust by Mortimer’s widow, Anne Stafford by reason of Richard’s ‘nonage’ (minority). |
| 19/1/1645 | On 19th January 1645, Nathan Drake recorded that the Piper Tower was beaten down by the besiegers 'about 9 of the clock, there having beene 71 shott made that morning, before it fell'. |
| 19/1/1654 | On 19th January 1654, Sir Ferdinand Leigh, Royalist officer (colonel of troop), died and was buried at St Giles and St Mary, Pontefract. In 1625, he had been Deputy-Governor of the Isle of Man under his relative, the Earl of Derby and also a gentleman of the king’s privy chamber having contributed 100 shillings (£1210 in today’s money) to the Royalist cause when Charles I assembled the gentry of Yorkshire at York. |
| 19/1/2017 | On 19th January 2017, Elizabeth Love, last owner of the Main Guard, at 6 Castle Chain, Pontefract, died. In her will she left the building in trust to be turned into a museum. In 2005, Historic England, then called English Heritage, carried out tree-ring analysis of timbers from the Main Guard. Core samples were obtained from thirty-two different oak timbers in a wide range of locations throughout the Main Guard. The analysis of these produced a single site chronology comprising twenty-five samples, and having a combined overall length of 150 rings. The site chronology was dated as spanning the years AD 1507 to AD 1656. Interpretation of the sapwood would indicate that all the dated timbers, from the basement, ground, and first-floors, and from the roof, were cut in a single phase of felling in AD 1656. Such a date would indicate that while the stone element of the Main Guard may date to the fifteenth century, a considerable amount of work was undertaken at this site shortly after the Civil War. No earlier or later material is detected amongst the sampled timbers. |
| Date | Event | | 27/1/1316 | On 27th January 1316, Parliament opened in Lincoln, one of the towns of which Thomas, Earl of Lancaster and lord of Pontefract, held by right. Thomas, however, displaying his ‘power’ vis-à-vis Edward II, did not arrive until 12th February. At this time, Thomas had a retinue of over 700 men compared to the king’s household of around 500, and owned 400 horses. His gross annual income was around £11,000 (£5.9 million in today’s money vs most people earning from 1d to 3d per day). As Kathryn Warner states: ‘Although …richer than anyone in the country except his cousin the king…Thomas lived well beyond his means. Even by the standards of the time he was a despised, greedy and grasping landlord…’ |
| 27/1/1321 | On 27th January 1321, Roger Mortimer and Lords Audley and Damory after withdrawing from Edward II’s court under threat of the Despenser ‘land grab’, met Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, lord of Pontefract, to seek his aid. With the charge of treason hanging over them, together with the Earl of Hereford, they refused to go to the king at Gloucester on 5th April. |
| 27/1/1377 | On 27th January 1377, Parliament opened with Prince Richard (later Richard II) and John of Gaunt, lord of Pontefract, ceremonially presiding. The Parliament agreed a 4d a head ‘poll tax’ (£11 in today’s money) after Gaunt conceded to the bishops’ demands regarding allowing William Wykeham to join them free of house arrest. |
| 27/1/1649 | On 27th January 1649, lawyer Thomas Margetts wrote from Pontefract to Captain Baynes (Parliamentary army officer and later MP for Leeds during the Commonwealth, being the city’s first MP) concerning the third siege of Royalist Pontefract Castle by the Parliamentarians: ‘…only Wednesday the enemy made a sally upon our nearest guard to them, beat them up, took 14 prisoners and killed 3 or 4, and then were forced in again. Mr Beamond (sic), Parson of Kirby, is apprehended for holding a secret cypher intelligence with the enemy in the Castle….I think the gallows will shortly have him…’ Reverend George Beaumont was cousin to Thomas Beaumont of Lascelles Hall. When Major-General John Lambert was made aware of Beaumont’s activities, Beaumont was tortured to reveal his cypher and colleagues (which he did not do) and then hanged from the walls of Pontefract Castle with reputedly one of his relatives forced to assist at his execution. |
| 27/1/1893 | A ‘Report on the Sanitary Condition of the Malton Urban Sanitary District for the Year 1900’ recorded that the first case of smallpox in Malton had been traced to a tramp from Pontefract on 27th January 1893. |
| 28/1/1237 | On 28th January 1237, John de Lacy, Baron of Pontefract, was with Henry III at Westminster, for the first confirmation of the 1225 issue of Magna Carta. Henry, as often throughout his reign, was in desperate need of funds and sought permission from his magnates and prelates for a ‘thirtieth’ (tax on the value of people’s moveable goods). |
| 28/1/1457 | On 28th January 1457, Henry Tudor was born at Pembroke Castle in Wales. It would be Henry on 22nd August 1485, who would bring the Wars of the Roses to a conclusion with his decisive defeat of Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth, thus ending the period of Yorkist rule and heralding the commencement of the Tudor dynasty, and with it, the loss of Sandal castle’s pre-eminent place in the government of the north. |
| 28/1/1569 | On 28th January 1569, Mary, Queen of Scots was lodged at Pontefract Castle, travelling between Wetherby and her intermediate prison at Rotherham. She had been forced to abdicate in July 1567 and flee south to seek the protection of her cousin Elizabeth I. After an inconclusive inquiry/conference ordered by Elizabeth into Mary’s guilt/involvement in Lord Darnley’s murder, Mary was placed in the custody of the Earl of Shrewsbury at Tutbury Castle on the 3rd February 1569 and held in captivity in various locations for the next eighteen years until her execution at Fotheringhay Castle on the 8th February 1587. |
| 29/1/1537 | On 29th January 1537, on receipt of the king’s orders to hold Pontefract Castle with his two sons (in the aftermath of the Pilgrimage of Grace rebellion), Lord Darcy, at Templehurst, wrote to his son, Sir George Darcy (in reply to Sir George’s queries), to say that, as ‘all was quiet’ at that time, he would not make preparations until his son had seen the king’s letter and the Duke of Norfolk’s expected arrival in five days’ time. |
| 30/1/1297 | On 30th January 1297, Sir Henry de Lacy, lord of Pontefract, and his army had been ambushed by the French en route from Bayonne to Bonnegarde trying to bring provisions to the besieged bastide, in Edward I’s attempts to reclaim Gascony. Many infantry were killed and several knights taken prisoner, including John of St John, Lieutenant of Aquitaine. |
| 30/1/1537 | On 30th January 1537, Sir George Darcy wrote to his father in Templehurst, in reply to his letter of the previous day, stating that the situation in the country, in the aftermath of the Pilgrimage of Grace rebellion, was far from peaceful and he could not afford to await the Duke of Norfolk’s arrival before preparing Pontefract Castle. |
| 31/1/1308 | On 31st January 1308, Sir Henry de Lacy, lord of Pontefract and senior earl, was one of the principal signatories to the Boulogne Agreement, as was John de Warenne, 7th Earl of Surrey and owner of Sandal Castle. This document sought to assert the signatories’ duty to guard the king’s honour and rights of the Crown and redress any wrongs that had been committed against such and the people. Its successor (introduced into parliament by Henry de Lacy) Boulogne Declaration’s three articles in April 1308, invoked the “doctrine of capacities” stipulating that the subjects of the realm owed allegiance to the Crown not to the person of the king. Any abuse of the king’s position should be corrected by his subjects. Piers Gaveston, Edward II’s court favourite, was also implicitly attacked in the document (with his removal tacitly suggested) and the king was obliged to adhere to his coronation oath. |
| 31/1/1398 | On 31st January 1398, a commission convened at Bristol, led by John of Gaunt, lord of Pontefract, to investigate claims by Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk, concerning plots about the destruction of the House of Lancaster. A quarrel between Mowbray and Henry Bolingbroke, then Duke of Hereford and later Henry IV, was mediated by Richard II at Windsor that April in demanding both lords fight out their differences in a duel. |
| 1/2/1221 | In early February 1221, John de Lacy, Baron of Pontefract, on the orders of Henry III, assisted in the siege of Skipton Castle, following the rebellion of William de Forz, Earl of Aumale. De Forz surrendered to the king through the mediation of the Archbishop of York, Walter de Gray. |
| 1/2/1301 | On 1st February 1301, Sir Henry de Lacy, lord of Pontefract, was given the custody of Corfe Castle after his return from his ambassadorial mission to the papal curia. De Lacy had been somewhat successful in helping Edward’s finances by securing the pope’s 10% tax (intended to ‘recover’ the kingdom of Sicily) on English churches for three years with half the profits going to the king. |
| 1/2/1327 | On 1st February 1327, John de Warenne, the 7th and final Earl of Surrey, was present at the coronation of Edward III. However, with the accession of Edward III, John would lose his estates, including Sandal, as they reverted to royal control, only regaining them in 1334. When the earl died in June 1347, Sandal and his other Yorkshire lands passed to the king. The titles of Earl Warenne and Earl of Surrey lapsed on his death. |
| 1/2/1327 | On 1st February 1327, the Honours of the Castles of Pontefract and Clitheroe were given to Edward II's wife Queen Isabella. She was obliged to give Pontefract to Edward III's wife Queen Philippa in 1330. |
| 1/2/1419 | On 1st February 1419, Robert Waterton, Constable of Pontefract Castle, took charge of Arthur de Richemont, brother of John V, Duke of Brittany, who had been captured at Agincourt. Arthur was released by the English in 1420 and later became Duke of Touraine, Constable of France (fighting alongside Joan of Arc) and, briefly, Duke of Brittany. |
| 1/2/1456 | At the beginning of February 1456, Richard Duke of York’s second Protectorate was coming to an end. When Henry Bolingbroke had become Henry IV in 1399, one of the uses the Lancastrian kings put their private estates to was the endowment of their queens. Consequently, Margaret of Anjou held great swathes of the Duchy of Lancaster including Pontefract Castle. With the ending of Richard Duke of York’s second Protectorate, Margaret was in a position to continue this trend. This led to a tension-filled stalemate in the summer of 1456 with John Bocking reporting in June that ‘My lord of York is at Sandal still and waits on the queen, and she upon him’. This endowment to the Lancastrian queens would explain why Pontefract was a Lancastrian stronghold, but Sandal a Yorkist fortress, given its importance to Richard as his northern base. |
| 1/2/1463 | In early February 1463, the remains of Lord Salisbury and his second son, Thomas, both killed at or soon after the Battle of Wakefield, left Pontefract for Bisham Abbey on the borders of Berkshire and Buckinghamshire. Their funeral was a joint one with Alice Montagu, Countess of Salisbury who had died the previous December. |
| 2/2/1141 | On 2nd February 1141, William de Warenne , 3rd Earl of Surrey and owner of Sandal castle, fought at the Battle of Lincoln. The battle was fought between the forces of King Stephen and the Empress Matilda, during the eighteen years' civil war from 1135-1153, known as the Anarchy. William was a supporter of King Stephen, who was captured during the battle, imprisoned and effectively deposed whilst Matilda ruled for a short while. De Warenne and his brother were one of many earls fleeing before the enemy’s opening (and vastly superior) cavalry charge. |
| 2/2/1141 | On 2nd February 1141, Ilbert de Lacy was captured along with King Stephen and other leading magnates, at the Battle of Lincoln. Ilbert, Baron of Pontefract, died following his capture, possibly from his wounds. Ilbert was the eldest son of Robert de Lacy and Maud de Perche, and Ilbert, with his father, supported the claims of Robert Curthouse - eldest son of William the Conqueror - to the throne of England against those of the younger brother, Henry I. Upon Henry’s succession, the de Lacy’s were dispossessed of all their estates and Robert and Ilbert were banished from England. Allowed to return from exile, and a few years later with their lands and titles returned, Ilbert would be a key supporter of King Stephen during the Anarchy. It is interesting to note the connection once again between the castles of Pontefract and Sandal, with both de Lacy of Pontefract and de Warenne of Sandal, supporting King Stephen. |
| 2/2/1316 | In February 1316, John de Warenne, 7th Earl of Surrey, began divorce proceedings against his wife, Joan, although there is no historical record of this having ever been finalised. John would have many illegitimate children with Maud de Nerford and Isabel de Warenne. |
| 2/2/1387 | On 2nd February 1387, John of Gaunt’s, lord of Pontefract, daughter, Philippa was married to King John of Portugal in Oporto, thereby putatively extending Gaunt’s dynastic influence. |
| 2/2/1461 |  On 2nd February 1461, a Yorkist force, under Edward the Earl of March (soon to be Edward IV), defeated a Welsh Lancastrian force at the Battle of Mortimer's Cross. This battle followed the Yorkists’ heavy defeat at Wakefield (Sandal Castle) five weeks before and preceded Edward’s March to Pontefract later that month resulting in the climactic slaughter at Towton. |
| 2/2/1626 |  On 2nd February 1626, Charles I was crowned King of England which would ultimately lead to the English Civil War and the besieging of Pontefract Castle in December 1644. The image is a painting of Charles I by Anthony van Dyck, 1633. |
| 2/2/1649 | On 2nd February 1649, after the execution of Charles I on 30th January 1649, the besieged Pontefract garrison immediately declared his son as  Charles II with ‘siege coins’ struck in his name and likeness and used to pay its troops, buy and sell food within the castle and reward people gathering food outside. The coins’ legend (the motto of the town) ‘POST MORTEM PATRIS PRO FILIO’ ('After the death of the father for the son') clearly indicates the garrison’s loyalties. The earliest siege coins were made on a flange, cut by hand from silver plate or pewter, bearing the initials of the castle and the Latin legend ‘DUM SPIRO SPERO’ ('Whilst I Live I Hope'); ominous in that Charles I had already been captured and imprisoned at that time. |
In January 1396, John Of Gaunt was newly-married to his mistress, Katherine Swynford. The Duke and Duchess made a short trip to the North before facing the court. Possibly, John wanted to 'test the water' by taking Katherine on a tour of his domains and by the 23rd January, they were lodged at Pontefract Castle. The royal lodgings were in the turreted trefoil donjon which John had heightened 20 years earlier. The couple would have resided in great luxury as John had lavished huge sums of money on his castle. The image is of John of Gaunt.
On this day in 1645, the first serious action of the first siege at Pontefract Castle began. Parliamentarian gun batteries started an intense bombardment of the castle. Cannon fire lasted five days and in this time 1367 shots were fired at the defenders. Here is a photo of two of the cannon balls found over 360 years later, still lodged in the castle walls!
On 2nd February 1461, a Yorkist force, under Edward the Earl of March (soon to be Edward IV), defeated a Welsh Lancastrian force at the Battle of Mortimer's Cross. This battle followed the Yorkists’ heavy defeat at Wakefield (Sandal Castle) five weeks before and preceded Edward’s March to Pontefract later that month resulting in the climactic slaughter at Towton.
On 2nd February 1626, Charles I was crowned King of England which would ultimately lead to the English Civil War and the besieging of Pontefract Castle in December 1644. The image is a painting of Charles I by Anthony van Dyck, 1633.