Green cloth binding with white title plate on the spine.

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Originally sold by John Fox. Pontefract

Green cloth binding with white title plate on the spine. Fine plates with superb pull out map of early Pontefract

First edition of this scarce work.

A history of the market town of Pontefract in West Yorkshire, England. With reference to the sieges upon its castle and the Royalist sympathies of the town during the English Civil War. Written by George Fox.

Pontefract is a historic market town in the Metropolitan Borough of Wakefield in West Yorkshire, England, east of Wakefield and south of Castleford. Historically part of the West Riding of Yorkshire, it is one of the towns in the City of Wakefield district and had a population of 30,881 at the 2011 Census. Pontefract’s motto is Post mortem patris pro filio, Latin for “After the death of the father, support the son”, a reference to the town’s Royalist sympathies in the English Civil War. Small villages and settlements in the immediate area include Stapleton.

Painting of Pontefract Castle in the early 17th century

by Alexander Keirincx

After the Norman conquest in 1066 almost all of Yorkshire came under the ownership of followers of William the Conqueror, one of whom was Ilbert de Lacy who became the owner of Tateshale (Tanshelf) where he began to build a castle. Pontefract Castle began as a wooden motte and bailey castle, built before 1086 and later rebuilt in stone. The de Lacys lived in the castle for more than two centuries and were holders of the castle and the Honour of Pontefract from 1067 until the death of Alice de Lacy in 1348.

King Richard II was murdered at the castle in 1400. Little is known of the precise nature of his demise; in particular Shakespeare may have “adjusted” the facts for his own purposes. There are at least three theories which attempt to explain his death: either he was starved to death by his keepers, he starved himself to death or he was murdered by Sir Piers (Peter) Exton on 14 February 1399 or 1400.

Robin Hood and the outlaw’s Pontefract connection: The town of Pontefract and the village of Wentbridge are of central importance to the legend of Robin Hood, as it was told in the Middle Ages. The Fifteenth century Robin Hood ballads place the outlaw’s activities in the forest of Barnsdale, the southern edge of which bordered modern Wakefield. The earliest surviving manuscript of a Robin Hood ballad, “Robin Hood and the Potter” makes reference to Wentbridge: “‘Y mete hem bot at Went breg,’ s(e)yde Lytyll John” (‘I met him but at Wentbridge’, said Little John). Likewise, the Fifteenth Century ballad “A Gest of Robyn Hode”, appears to make a cryptic reference to the village by depicting a friendly knight explaining to Robin that he ‘went at a brydge’ where there was ‘a wraste-lyng’ (wrestling). Significantly, the Gest of Robyn Hode makes a very specific reference to a location within Wentbridge known as ‘the Saylis’ and ‘the Sayles’, as in a four line stanza the outlaw chief instructs his Merry Men to

Walk up to the Saylis
And so to Watling Street
And wait after some uncouth guest
Upon Chance you may them meet

The 19th-century antiquarian Joseph Hunter identified the site of the Saylis: a small tenancy, of one-tenth of a knight’s fee (i.e. a knight’s annual income), located on high ground 500 yards (457.2 metres) to the east of the village of Wentbridge in the manor of Pontefract. The Saylis is recorded as having contributed towards the aid that was granted to King Edward III in 1346–47 for the knighting of his son, the Black Prince. The late, great historians Richard Barrie Dobson and John Taylor indicated that this location provides a very specific clue to Robin Hood’s Pontefract heritage, noting that such evidence of continuity makes it virtually certain that the Saylis or Sayles, which was so well known to the Robin Hood of the “Gest” survived into modern times as the ‘Sayles Plantation’ near Wentbridge. To commemorate this, English Heritage has located a Blue Plaque on the bridge that stands in the heart of the village, above the River Went, lending weight to Pontefract’s claims to be the true home of Robin Hood.

                               Woodcut of Robin Hood, from a 17th-century broadside

Wentbridge is a small village in the City of Wakefield district of West Yorkshire, England. It lies around 3 miles (5 km) southeast of its nearest town of size, Pontefract, close to the A1 road. During the Middle Ages the village of Wentbridge was itself sometimes referred to by the name of Barnsdale because it was the main settlement in the Forest of Barnsdale. The county boundary follows the A1 from the River Went to Barnsdale Bar, which is the southernmost point of North Yorkshire. Close by to the southwest is the Roman Ridge, a Roman road, known in the Middle Ages as Watling Street, closely follows the course of the modern-day A639. It was at one time, prior to modern construction works being completed, possible to look down from the Saylis upon Watling Street as it snaked through the village of Wentbridge and it is upon this stretch of highway that Robin Hood and his Merry Men are believed to have committed their famous heists. Earlier historians have usually assumed that this district was heavily wooded. However, aerial photography and excavation have shown that the region has always been a largely pastoral landscape dotted with occasional settlements. In close proximity to the village of Wentbridge there are, or were, some notable landmarks which relate to Robin Hood. The earliest-known Robin Hood place-name reference – in Yorkshire or anywhere else – occurs in a deed of 1322 from the two cartularies of Monk Bretton Priory, near the town of Barnsley. The cartulary deed refers in Latin to a landmark named ‘the Stone of Robert Hode’ (Robin Hood’s Stone), which was located in the Barnsdale area. According to J. W. Walker this was on the eastern side of the Great North Road, a mile south of Barnsdale Bar. On the opposite side of the road once stood Robin Hood’s Well, which has since been relocated six miles north-west of Doncaster, on the south-bound side of the Great North Road.

Further evidence of Robin Hood’s Wakefield connections comes by way of Michael Drayton’s Poly-Olbion Song 28 (67–70), composed in 1622. The poem strengthens Robin Hood’s connections to Pontefract because it speaks of the outlaw’s death and clearly states that the outlaw died at ‘Kirkby’. Kirkby was an Anglo-Saxon settlement upon which the modern town Pontefract stands. In 2014, the historian Dr S. A. La’ Chance published a thesis that detailed how a notorious medieval outlaw named Swein-Son-Of-Sicga, and styled by contemporaries as ‘The Prince of Thieves’ inhabited the forested areas of Barnsdale, on the outskirts of Pontefract, and made a living by robbing, amongst others Abbot Benedict of Selby. Professor J. Green indicates that Hugh Fitz Baldric, the late eleventh century Sheriff of Nottingham and Yorkshire, held responsibility for bringing Swein-Son-Of-Sicga to justice. Acknowledging this, La’ Chance suggested that the Robin Hood legend is loosely based upon the deeds of Swein-Son-Of-Sicga. La’ Chance closed his thesis by suggesting that, in all likelihood, the outlaw drew his final breath at Saint Nicholas’s hospital, Kirkby (modern day Pontefract), which would account for the reference to Robin Hood’s death in the Poly-Olbion.