My foot, which had pained me ever since leaving York, so that I had been limping for some time, now became so painful that I could scarcely walk at all.  Still, we were obliged to reach Pontefract in order to procure lodgings for the night, so my brother relieved me of all my luggage excepting the stick, in order that I might hobble along to that town.  It was with great difficulty that I climbed up the hill to the inn, which was in the upper part of the town, and there I was painfully relieved by the removal of my boot, and found that my ankle was seriously swollen and inflamed.  It might, of course, have arisen through over-exertion, but we came to the conclusion that it was caused through the repair of my boots at York.  Before arriving there the heels were badly worn down at one side, and as I had been practically walking on the sides of my feet, the sudden reversion to the flat or natural position had brought on the disaster that very nearly prevented us from continuing our walk.  We applied all the remedies that both our hostess and ourselves could think of, but our slumbers that night were much disturbed, and not nearly so continuous as usual.

(Distance walked twenty-three and a half miles.)

Thursday, October 26th.

[Illustration:  THE OLD CHURCH, PONTEFRACT.]

The great object of interest at Pontefract was the castle, the ruins of which were very extensive.  Standing on the only hill we encountered in our walk of the previous day, it was formerly one of the largest and strongest castles in England, and had been associated with many stirring historical events.  It was here that King Richard II was murdered in the year 1399, and the remains of the dismal chamber where this tragedy took place still existed.  During the Wars of the Roses, when in 1461 Queen Margaret appeared in the north of Yorkshire with an army of 60,000 men, the newly appointed King, Edward IV, sent the first portion of his army to meet her in charge of his most influential supporter, the Earl of Warwick, the “King Maker.”  The King followed him to Pontefract with the remainder of his army, and the old castle must have witnessed a wonderful sight when that army, to the number of 40,660 men, was marshalled in the plains below.

But it was in the Civil War that this castle attained its greatest recorded notoriety, for it was besieged three times by the forces of the Parliament.  Sir Thomas Fairfax was in charge of the first siege, and took possession of the town in 1644, driving the garrison into the castle.  He had a narrow escape from death on that occasion, as a cannon-ball passed between him and Colonel Forbes so close that the wind caused by its passage knocked both of them down to the ground, Forbes losing the sight of one of his eyes.  The castle was strongly defended, but just as one of the towers collapsed, a shot from the castle struck a match, and the spark, falling into Fairfax’s powder stores, caused a tremendous explosion which