Pontefract Castle II was captured by Henry Bolingbroke's supporters in August 1399 and initially imprisoned in the Tower of London. Sometime before Christmas that year he was moved to Pontefract Castle (via Knaresborough) where he remained under guard until his death, perhaps on 14 February 1400. William Shakespeare's play Richard III mentions this incident: Various chroniclers suggest that Richard was starved to death by his captors, and others suggest he starved himself. A contemporary French chronicler suggested that Richard II had been hacked to death, but this is, according to the ODNB, "almost certainly fictitious". In 1536, the castle's guardian, Thomas Darcy,
Pontefract Museum finds from Pontefract Castle and St. John's Priory, Pontefract, coins from the English Civil War, packaging from the Pontefract liquorice factories, coloured glass and locally printed material. Most of the collection has Pontefract connections, including the mining history of the town. Pontefract Museum Pontefract Museum is a local museum in Pontefract, West Yorkshire, England. The collections cover archaeology, archives, decorative and applied art, fine art, photographs and social history. The museum is located in an Art Nouveau building in the middle of the town which was originally a Carnegie library. The library was opened in 1904 and designed by George