Edmund de Lacy, the son of Earl John and Margaret, was, by the contrivance of Henry III., married to one of his foreign kinsfolk, Alice, daughter of the Marquis de Saluces. He inherited Pontefract, but did not assume the title of Lincoln, as he did not outlive his mother. He died 42 Henry III., 1258, having built the House of the White Friars, near the Barbican, at Pontefract.
Henry de Lacy, Earl of Lincoln, his son, was the greatest of his race. He married the heiress of Longspee, and in her right became Earl of Salisbury. He was in ward to the king, and in 1272 was knighted and made Governor of Knaresborough Castle. He walled the town of Denbigh, and commenced the Castle, which he is said to have left unfinished because his only surviving son was drowned in a draw-well in the Red Tower there. His other son had been killed by a fall from a tower at Pontefract.
Having thus no son, Earl Henry surrendered his estates to the king, who regranted them, 28th December, 21 Edward I., to him for life, with remainder to Edmund, Earl of Lancaster, and the heirs of his body. 28 Edward I., Queen Margaret was a visitor at Pontefract Castle, and during a short hunting excursion to Brotherton, was there brought to bed suddenly of Thomas, called from his birthplace. It is said that the house in which she took refuge, with 20 acres of land, was enclosed in a wall and ditched, and granted by the tenure of keeping the wall in repair. Earl Henry died at Lincoln’s Inn, 1310, leaving a daughter, Alice, who married Thomas, eldest son and successor of Edmund Earl of Lancaster.
Thomas Plantagenet, Earl of Lancaster, and, either by his wife Alice, or by his father’s grant, Earl of Lincoln, and Lord of Pontefract, succeeded. He was much at the castle, and probably refaced the lower part of the keep, built Swillington Tower, and no doubt some of the structures the bases of which remain in the main ward. He also in 1315 built Dunstanborough, and added Lancaster’s Buildings to Kenilworth. Earl Thomas’s history is well known. From Boroughbridge Field he was taken to Pontefract Castle, then occupied by the weak and vindictive king. He was imprisoned in Swillington Tower, tried and condemned in the great hall, and, in 1322, executed on the hill which still bears his canonised name, a mile to the north-east. He was buried in the Priory. The patent creating Harcla, one of his captors, Earl of Carlisle, was dated from the castle, three days after the earl’s execution.
Countess Alice, whose character was unhappily not so impregnable as her castle, married, secondly, Eubolo L’Estrange, who died 9 Edw. III. Her third husband was Hugh de Fresnes, called Earl of Lincoln. There was a fourth, earlier in the list, whose claims are doubtful. Alice died 1348, but Pontefract and the other possessions had already passed, under the regrant, to her husband’s brother.
Henry Plantagenet, Earl of Lancaster, succeeded to his brother’s honour in 1324, and died 1345. Edward III. probably retained the castle. He was here in 1328. By Maud Chaworth Earl Henry had another Henry.
Henry Plantagenet (Tort-col, or of Grismond), Earl of Derby, &c., and, in 1351, Duke of Lancaster. He died 1361. Blanch, his second daughter by Isabel Beaumont, and co-heir, inherited Pontefract Castle and Honour.
John Plantagenet, of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, married the heiress and became Lord of Pontefract. He resided much at Pontefract, and restored the works. When threatened by Richard II. he victualled and put the castle into a state of defence. 12 Richard II. he obtained by charter “jura regalia” within the honour. Parts of the half-covered basements in the main ward appear to be of his time. He died 1399.
Henry Plantagenet, of Bolingbroke, Duke of Hereford, afterwards Henry IV., son and heir, succeeded, being then in exile. Richard II., by confiscating the estates, provoked reprisals, which led to his own deposition. Pontefract Castle became his first prison, and the scene of his supposed murder. Since that event the castle has been vested in the Crown. Richard Scrope, archbishop of York, was here condemned to death in 1405, and at that time Henry IV. was much here, putting down the Northern insurrections. Many of his instruments are hence dated between 1405 and 1408.
Henry V., much occupied with foreign wars, and having peace at home, had no occasion to make use of Pontefract, which seems to have been neglected in its military capacity; but here Charles, Duke of Orleans, taken at Agincourt, and James I. of Scotland, were long confined, both accomplished men and given to literature.