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,
Hugh Waterton of Eaton Tregoz near Ross-on-Wye in Herefordshire, which by an inquisition taken after his death was found to contain castle buildings and a deer park of 144 acres. By 1377 he was one of Gaunt's retainers, and in 1399 an executor of his will. From the late 1370s he was also associated with Gaunt's son, Henry Bolingbroke, the future Henry IV, becoming a Privy Councillor and by 1386 was Bolingbroke's chamberlain. On 10 July 1386 he was among those who gave evidence in the celebrated case between Richard le Scrope, 1st Baron Scrope of Bolton, and Sir Robert Grosvernor as