Capgrave's Chronicle.

And again

"In the Marche nexte after Kynge Richarde than was dede
Fro Pountefreite brought with grete sollempnyte
Men seide forhungred he wase, and lapte in lede.
At Poules his masse was doone and dirige

In herse roiall semely to Roialte

The Kynge and lordes clothes of golde ther offred
Some eught some wyne upon his herse were profred."

37

But Capgrave, more of a south-country man, (He was an Augustinian friar at King's Lynn), writing his Chronicle of England somewhat later in the century, and after the fall of the House of Lancaster, and the accession of that of York, thus gives the particulars of Richard's death.

"In the same .tyme, Ser Thomas Spencer, whech was cleped erle of Gloucetir, was take and hedded at Bristow; and many othir wer so ded be the

comownes.

"This cam to Kyng Richardis ere in the Castel of Pounfreit, and, as sum men sey, he peyned himself, and deyed for hungir. Summe othir seide that he was kept fro mete and drink whil a knyte rode to London and cam ageyn. His body after his deth was caried to London, and at Seynt Paules had his 'Dyrige' and his Masse, the Kyng there present. Than was the body sent fro London onto Langle, to be beried among the Frere Prechouris."

We have shown above how each of the words, Pomfrait and Pountfreyt occurred in 1400 in the same series of MSS.; but in the next century we have a still more singular instance, in the translation of Polydore Virgil which is in the King's MSS. (C. viii., ix.) in the British Museum, and which is in a hand

38

Capgrave's Chronicle.

writing of the middle of the sixteenth century. In the body of the translation, which we may fairly suppose to have been according to the original, we find Woodvill, Vaughan and others, to have been, by Richard III., "Sent bak to be kept in ward at Pounfrayt castle;" but in a side note by an annotator, the word used is "Pomfrette;' " he himself says Pounfrayt, without m, but the annotator, evidently at least half a century later, uses as we might have expected, the later word Pomfrette, just then coming into use.

Excepting this, there are only four instances in the whole of the MS. in which the name of the town occurs, and, remarkably enough, in each the word is .spelt differently, though in neither, except in the later note that we have quoted, is m used. Two are under date 1471

"Whan therle of Warwycke, who at those very days lay at Warwycke, had intelligence that King Edward was returnyd into England, and marchyd towards Yorke, he sent letters by post streightway to his brother Montacute, who had wynteryd at Powntfrayt with no smaule army of soldiers.',

King Edward" set forward towardes London, and omytting of purpose the right way that ledeth to Pountfreyt, where we have before sayd that the lord Montacute with an host laye," &c.

The two other instances are connected with the execution of Woodvill. King Richard "sent his letters of warrant to the keper of Pontfreyt castle to

Polydore Virgil.

39

behead in hast," &c.; and Richard Ratclyf "gardyd with that companye, stayed at Poyutfrayt."

We conclude this part of our enquiry with instances selected from the Harleian MS 433, which is chiefly a register of the Grants &c which passed the Privy Seal, the Royal Signet, or the Sign Manual, during the reigns of Edward V. and Richard III., although they add nothing but corroboration to the conclusion at which we have already arrived that the name Pomfret was entirely unknown in the reign of those kings. Among them is a "Grant to David ap Jenkyns of the Office of Keeper of the King's Wardrobe within the Castle of Pountfret "; a Grant to the "Toune of Pountfret to have a Maire & other certene libertees", a letter in which the king commands that 20 acres of pasture within the Park of "Pountfret" which had been taken from the Monastery of St John the Evangelist within the town of "Pountfret" be restored to that Monastery. Pountfret, Pountfreit, Pontfret, and Pountefreit occur repeatedly in the datal clauses, but never in one single instance is there a trace of the letter m.

All the examples we have hitherto given are from careful transcripts of MSS., or copied direct from the originals by ourselves. But a power destined to supersede the labours of the scribe had been silently though rapidly gaining strength; and though we have not happened to light upon the name of the town in any printed book of the fifteenth century, we have discovered it in one which was printed early in

40

Polycronycon.

the sixteenth, while yet all the glories of Pontefract remained; while St. John's Monastery still filled the enclosure at Monkhill, which now contains but a few mounds to mark the position of the various monastic offices; while St. Thomas's Church capped the neighbouring height, where nothing now remains but its name and á carved head or two; while the Black Friars' house was still in existence in the Friar Wood valley, and the Church of the Trinities in the Horsefair; while St. Helen's Chapel stood in the court yard of St. Nicholas' Hospital, and that of St. Clement in the Main Ward of the Castle; while moreover the Castle itself still possessed all its ancient magnificence, and was yet a veritable Ehrenbreitstein; and two generations before a stone was laid of the now antiquated New Hall.

This earliest example that we have been enabled to discover of the name of Pontefract, as spelt by the type of the printer, is in the Polycronycon* of Ralph Higden, book vii, fo. ccci. Higden says under date 1213-4:

that tyme Kynge John caused to han
ge and drawe an holy man yt hyghte
Pyers of PONTFRET, for he war
ned hym of many myshappes, that
hym sholde falle for his cruelnesse &
for his fornycacyon. Also for he had
warned hym that he sholde regne

*The printer's date is M.ccccc & XXVIJ the xvi daye of Maye.

Pontfret.

at

but XIII yere, and he regned almost
XVIII yeres. But he knew not in yt
doyng that he regned frely but XIIII
yere. But he regned III not frely for
the whiche thre yere he was trybuta
ry to the pope. . Cryst appered twyes
to this Pyers at Yorke and ones
PONTFRET, and taughte hym many
thynges that he tolde afterwarde to
bysshoppes, and people that were
of evyll lyfe. Also in a time he laye
thre dayes and thre nyghtes as he we
re in swownyng and was rauysshed
and saw the joyes and paynes of
good men and of euyll.

*

41

Here we have the first appearance of Pontfret in the printed vernacular (as very frequently written in the datal clauses of the grants of Edward V. and Richard III., nearly half a century previously), with no u, but with no suggestion of an m.

Another early printed book, we find equally to

*This is copied exactly, so far as modern types will allow; but the printer of 1527 used a small diagonal in place of a comma, and had at his command various double letters which are now quite out of use, such as cr and co joining like our present æ œ, fi fl and ff, ffi and ffl. It is also interesting to note that the early typographer was entirely indifferent to the syllabic division of words. We have seen two copies of this volume, one in the City Library, Guildhall, London, and a second in far finer condition at the Minster Library, York. This latter bears the imprint we have given in the previous note, but the copy at Guildhall, although apparently word for word the same as that at York, is described in the catalogue as being of the date 1495. We believe the imprint is gone, though at the time we examined the book we had no reason for taking particular notice whether it still remained.

In Knighton, Piers of Pontfret is translated Petrus de Pontefracto, and at the second mention of the name, it appears as Pontemfractum.