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,
English invasion of Scotland (1400) it, in person, to the sitting parliament in November 1399. A.L. Brown has suggested that this indicates the personal interest the King felt in the affair: that this was in fact his own personal plan, and 'that it meant a lot to him, and that it had met with criticism.' He pledged to fulfil this vow before god. At almost the same time, Henry had received a letter from the Scottish king in which Henry was referred to as duke of Lancaster rather than king of England; this, it has been suggested, fuelled his martial enthusiasm towards Scotland. Perhaps even