Pontefract was referred to as "Pomfret". William Shakespeare's play "Richard III" mentions the castle:<br> Pomfret is referred to in Shakespeare's Richard II also My lord, the mind of Bolingbroke is changed:You must to Pomfret, not unto the Tower.And, madam, there is order ta'en for you;With all swift speed you must away to France Pontefract suffered throughout the English Civil War. In 1648–49 the castle was laid under siege by Oliver Cromwell, who said it was "... one of the strongest inland garrisons in the kingdom." Three sieges by the Parliamentarians left the town "impoverished and depopulated". In March 1649, after the
Foulksrath Castle and it was visited in 1992 by a BBC television crew of British ghost hunters. The first legend concerns a female ghost said to look out from the castle windows; she is purported to be the daughter of a former owner of the castle, who, unhappy with his daughter's choice of lover, had her locked away in a tower, where she either starved to death, or was put to death by her father, depending on the version. The second ghost apparently makes a yearly apparition on 29 November, and is supposedly a guard who fell asleep on duty and was