Henry III. granted Pickering to his son, Edmund Earl of Lancaster, about which time mention is made of the manor, fee, and forestry of Pickering. In 13 Edward I. the earl had confirmation of the manor, castle, and forest. On the execution and attainder of Earl Thomas, Henry Earl of Northumberland had charge of the castle, but on the fall of Edward II., Earl Henry recovered it. When Henry of Lancaster landed at Ravensburn in 1399, he marched on and retook Pickering, then held for the king.
King Richard II. was prisoner here before his removal to Pontefract.
Peck enumerates Pickering among the royal castles, and says there was a steward of the lordship, a constable of the castle, a master of the game, and a rider of the forest.
Pickering was held for the king in the parliamentary struggles, and breached on the west point, and dismantled. It seems never to have been permanently alienated from the royal demesnes. The Crown held it from the Conquest until it was granted by Henry IV. to the Earl of Lancaster, since which its history is that of the estates of the Duchy of Lancaster, of which it still forms a part.
With Pickering Castle should be mentioned a very curious, though nameless and but little known earthwork in its immediate neighbourhood. This is not even laid down as an earthwork in the Ordnance Map, usually so accurate, though marked as the site of a station. It is placed upon the highest part of a round, grassy hill, with easy slopes, which rises upon the western or right bank of the Beck or river of Pickering, about 200 feet above the water, and opposite to, and a little lower down than, the castle. The position is good, it is clear of the ravine which opens out just above the town and castle, and from it is a rich and extensive view, especially to the south and west, over Rysdale and towards Helmsley. The labour bestowed upon the work is light compared with that expended upon the earthworks of the castle, though the mound is the leading feature of both, and attests their common Saxon or early English origin.
A central mound, 90 feet in diameter at the top and 20 feet high, is girt by a ditch, out of which it rises, and upon the outer edge of which is a low bank. The summit of the mound is level, but is surrounded by a light, circular bank, which probably was heaped up to cover the lower edge of the timber defence or residence, which no doubt was here placed. The entrance seems to have been on the south-east side, where are marks of a way across the outer bank, and perhaps of a causeway over the ditch. The hill is enclosed, and part of it under the plough, so that no traces of any exterior or appended enclosures are visible. The work, though its general outline is to be traced with certainty, is much lowered, and its details weakened and rendered obscure by time and weather. It is, however, an earthwork of the same general class with Laughton, Barwick, Castleton, and others similar to them in Yorkshire and elsewhere, and, with them, it deserves attention. Possibly it is earlier than the castle mound of Pickering, and probably was abandoned when that was thrown up; perhaps when the wealth and power of the owner enabled him to found the lythe or lordship of Pickering.
THE CASTLE OF PONTEFRACT, YORKSHIRE.
“OUR HISTORIES,” says Swift, “are full of Pomfret Castle;” and although this has long ceased to be the case, and Pomfret be now famous but for cakes and the cultivation of the root employed in the soothing of catarrh and the adulteration of railway coffee, it was once a very famous, and is still a very interesting, place.
Whence came the name of Pontefract, and when and where its bridge was broken down, are questions over which antiquaries have long stumbled, seeing that the Aire, the only stream of the district needing to be traversed by a bridge, is two miles from the town and quite out of its girth.