Speech from the throne policies and objectives. The monarch would sometimes speak to parliament in person; King Edward III (in 1365), Richard II, and Edward IV (to both houses of parliament on multiple separate occasions) did so. However, various other figures gave the oration on the sovereign's behalf: between 1347 and 1363, it was read by the Chief Justice; by the Chief Justice of the Common Pleas in 1401; the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1344, 1368, 1377 (speaking for a presiding Edward III), 1399, and 1422; and in 1343, 1363, and, usually after 1368, by the Lord Chancellor—who was then the Prolocutor, or chairman
Pontefract third siege, Pontefract inhabitants, fearing a fourth, petitioned Parliament for the castle to be slighted. In their view, the castle was a magnet for trouble, and in April 1649 demolition began. the ruins of the castle remain and are publicly accessible. Pontefract was the site of Pontefract Priory, a Cluniac priory founded in 1090 by Robert de Lacy dedicated to St John the Evangelist. The priory was dissolved by royal authority in 1539. The abbey maintained the Chartularies of St John, a collection of historic documents later discovered among family papers by Thomas Levett, the High Sheriff of Rutland and