The doorway with the royal arms, which is correctly shown here, is in a cottage opposite the castle, and no doubt at one time was connected with the great establishment. It is evidently only part of a much more important building, and probably stood in the castle enclosures. It is hardly necessary to remark here that it was at Pontefract Castle that Richard II. met his death in the year 1400, when only thirty-five years of age. Nothing is known of the manner of his death. Some suppose that he was murdered or starved to death, as the two gentlemen in Cromwell’s time might have been but for timely accidents; and tradition says that Sir Piers Exton, with a select band of assassins, murdered him there, that a stout resistance was made, and some were killed besides the king.
The well-known scene in “Richard II.” favours this view. The captive, in a long soliloquy in a dungeon that is yet pointed out as his prison, says—
“How these vain weak nails
May tear a passage through the flinty ribs
Of this hard world, my ragged prison walls,
And, for they cannot, die in their own pride.
Thoughts tending to content flatter themselves
That they are not the first of fortune’s slaves,
Nor shall not be the last; like silly beggars
Who sitting in the stocks refuge their shame.”
Richard II. Act V. Scene 5.
Beverley is near Hull, and perhaps rather remote from the parts of the island that are most commonly traversed. It is a town, however, of great beauty and interest, and contains among other attractions two fine old churches. One, St. Mary’s, has been engraved in some recent works, and the minster has quite the proportions and style of a first-class cathedral. Britton remarks that it resembles Salisbury in plan and general style. The ancient family of Percy were great benefactors to the building; and the shrine, commonly called the Percy Shrine, built apparently in the fifteenth century, is very commonly regarded as the finest piece of workmanship that is left us from the mediæval ages. This family possessed two grand residences in the neighbourhood—Leconfield Manor and Wressel Castle.
The lamp with which this chapter is closed is a good example of old wrought-iron work. It may have been constructed any time from the Edwardean period to the Stewart age; for, singularly enough, there are no features in this class of wrought-iron work that indicate any period in the same way as stone-work does. With close attention some slight character may be detected in a leaf, but generally such an index as this is quite wanting.
