with the murder of Richard II, but contemporary historians, Thomas of Walsingham and Gower the poet, assert that he starved himself to death; others contend that his starvation was not voluntary; while there are not wanting those who say that he escaped to Scotland, lived there many years, and died in peace in the castle of Stirling, an honoured guest of Robert III of Scotland, in 1419.  I have not seen the entries, but I am told in the accounts of the Chamberlain of Scotland there are items for the maintenance of the King for eleven years.  But popular tales die hard, and doubtless you will hear the groans and see the ghost of the wronged Richard some moonlight night in the ruined keep of Pontefract.  He has many companion ghosts—­the Earl of Salisbury, Richard Duke of York, Anthony Wydeville, Earl Rivers and Grey his brother, and Sir Thomas Vaughan, whose feet trod the way to the block, that was worn hard by many victims.  The dying days of the old castle made it illustrious.  It was besieged three times, taken and retaken, and saw amazing scenes of gallantry and bravery.  It held out until after the death of the martyr king; it heard the proclamation of Charles II, but at length was compelled to surrender, and “the strongest inland garrison in the kingdom,” as Oliver Cromwell termed it, was slighted and made a ruin.  Its sister fortress Knaresborough shared its fate.  Lord Lytton, in Eugene Aram, wrote of it:—­

“You will be at a loss to recognise now the truth of old Leland’s description of that once stout and gallant bulwark of the north, when ’he numbrid 11 or 12 Toures in the walles of the Castel, and one very fayre beside in the second area.’  In that castle the four knightly murderers of the haughty Becket (the Wolsey of his age) remained for a whole year, defying the weak justice of the times.  There, too, the unfortunate Richard II passed some portion of his bitter imprisonment.  And there, after the battle of Marston Moor, waved the banner of the loyalists against the soldiers of Lilburn.”

An interesting story is told of the siege.  A youth, whose father was in the garrison, each night went into the deep, dry moat, climbed up the glacis, and put provisions through a hole where his father stood ready to receive them.  He was seen at length, fired on by the Parliamentary soldiers, and sentenced to be hanged in sight of the besieged as a warning to others.  But a good lady obtained his respite, and after the conquest of the place was released.  The castle then, once the residence of Piers Gaveston, of Henry III, and of John of Gaunt, was dismantled and destroyed.