Pontefract Cakes and Castle, and an unhappy St. Valentine's Day for Richard II

Pontefract Cakes | Candy Room

Pontefract cakes (also known as Pomfret cakes and Pomfrey cakes) are a type of small, roughly circular black sweet measuring approximately 3/4" (2 cm) wide and 1/5" (4mm) thick, made of liquorice, originally manufactured in the Yorkshire town of Pontefract, England.

The original name for these small tablets of liquorice is a "Pomfret" cake, after the old Norman name for Pontefract. - Wikipedia

https://delishably.com/desserts/The-Story-of-Pontefract-Cakes

Mum, being a proud Yorkshire woman, always presented liquorice at Christmas. Liquorice allsorts found their way into our stockings which, according to her Yorkshire upbringing, were hung at the foot of each child's bed, not at the fireplace. During all my youth, not once did I wake up while the stealthy Saint Nicholas filled my stocking.

Though I repeatedly tried the liquorice, the taste of those bits and pieces remained disgusting - a bit like chewing on pencil erasers. As kids, we were not permitted to reject food of any kind, especially anything offered as a gift which, being a gift, should always be graciously received. Given the wider controversy about the taste of said "candies", my mum understood that declining its consumption could be an acceptable exception to the family rule. (I think I was the only child who avoided the allsorts and Pontefract cakes, a fact of which my siblings routinely reminded me.)

Pontefract Castle

Pontefract castle, known in its day by its Norman name Pomfret, was a most formidable edifice constructed by Ilbert de Lacy in approximately 1070. Originally a wooden structure, it was gradually replaced with stone.

Richard II was captured by Henry (later Henry IV) Bolingbroke's supporters at Flint on August 16, 1399. He was imprisoned in the Tower of London. and before Christmas of that same year he was transferred to Pontefract Castle. Richard remained there under guard until he died, perhaps on 14 February 1400. Not a very happy Saint Valentine's Day for poor Richard.

Richard III by William Shakespeare (circa 1593):

III.iii.9. 

O Pomfret, Pomfret! O thou bloody prison!
Fatal and ominous to noble peers!
Within the guilty closure of thy walls
Richard the Second here was hack’d to death.

In the wake of a military action led by Oliver Cromwell begun in 1648, a dismantling of the castle began and it and its chapel now lie in ruins.

Following requests from the townspeople, the grand jury at York, and Major General Lambert, on 27 March Parliament gave orders that Pontefract Castle should be "totally demolished & levelled to the ground" and materials from the castle would be sold off. - Wikipedia