Pontefract Castle Pontefract Castle Pontefract (or, Pomfret) Castle is a castle ruin in the town of Pontefract, in West Yorkshire, England. King Richard II is thought to have died there. It was the site of a series of famous sieges during the 17th-century English Civil War. The castle, on a rock to the east of the town above All Saints' Church, was constructed in approximately 1070 by Ilbert de Lacy. on land which had been granted to him by William the Conqueror as a reward for his support during the Norman Conquest. There is, however, evidence of earlier occupation of the site.
John de Braose Braose. His grandfather had had his lands seized and his grandmother Maud de St. Valery had been captured by forces of King John of England in 1210. She was imprisoned, along with John's father William, in Corfe Castle and walled alive inside the dungeon. Both mother and son starved to death on the King's orders. This was probably due to John's grandfather's conflict with the monarch, open rebellion and subsequent alliance with Llewelyn the Great. John's nickname "Tadody" means "fatherless" in the Welsh. At his family's fall from Royal favour John de Braose was initially hidden on Gower and spent