# Bolton Castle

14th-century castle located near Wensleydale, Yorkshire, England

Castle Bolton with East and West Bolton, United Kingdom

Palace · Fortification. 1379 CE

## Story

• Bolton Castle is a quadrangular stone castle in Wensleydale, built for Richard le Scrope from a contract of September 1378 and a licence of July 1379.
• The chapel was dedicated in 1399, and the cost is given both as 18,000 marks and as £12,000.
• The castle was fired in 1536 or 1537 after the abbot of Jervaulx was sheltered here during the Pilgrimage of Grace.
• Mary, Queen of Scots was held in the south-west tower for six months in 1568 and 1569, after the Battle of Langside.
• A royalist garrison surrendered in 1645 when the horses had been eaten, and Parliament slighted the castle in 1647.
• The house was never sold, and it is still held by descendants of the Scrope family.

## Visiting

The castle, gardens and shop are open daily from 10am to 5pm, and the tea room is open from 10am to 4pm, except when the castle closes for a wedding. The castle, gardens and tearoom are closed on all days from 2 November 2026 until 5 March 2027. Adult admission for the castle, gardens and grounds is £15. Concession admission for ages 4 to 18 and for ages 67 and over is £12.50, and admission for a child under 4 is free.
Family admission for two adults and three concessions, with at least one child, is £60. A group of 15 or more, paid as one admission, costs £14 for each adult and £11.50 for each concession. Gardens-only admission is £6 for an adult and £5 for concessions aged 5 to 18 or 67 and over. A gardens-only family admission is £29, a gardens-only group adult admission is £5, and a gardens-only group concession admission is £4.
Dogs other than assistance dogs are not allowed in the castle, and dogs are not allowed in the main gardens. Members with Historic Houses membership receive free admission, a carer is admitted without an admission charge, and the person cared for pays the usual admission. Visitors are not allowed a disabled toilet inside the castle. Paid parking is not included in the admission.

## History

Bolton Castle is a quadrangular stone house in Wensleydale, built for Richard le Scrope, 1st Baron Scrope of Bolton. John Lewyn contracted for the work in September 1378, the licence to crenellate followed in July 1379, and the chapel was dedicated in 1399. The cost is given as 18,000 marks, as 1,000 marks a year across eighteen years, and as £12,000.

Four ranges of three storeys enclose a courtyard, with four-storey corner towers. The north-east tower has gone, in a storm dated both to 1761 and to 1762. The principal rooms lie on the first floor of the north range, and the chapel is on the second floor of the south range.

Richard served Richard II as treasurer and chancellor, and after 1382 he gave his attention to this castle. He died on 30 May 1403 and was buried at Easby Abbey. In 1536 or 1537 the house was fired after John Scrope sheltered Adam Sedbar, Abbot of Jervaulx, during the Pilgrimage of Grace, and John was then allowed to repair it.

Mary, Queen of Scots was held in the south-west tower for six months after the Battle of Langside, from July 1568 until January 1569. In the English Civil War a royalist garrison surrendered when the horses had been eaten, and the castle was slighted in 1647. The family left for Bolton Hall in 1675, while one account dates that new hall to 1678.

The castle later housed eight rented dwellings and was quarried for stone, but it was not sold. It remains with descendants of the Scropes through the Paulet and Orde-Powlett families. Digging in 1991 found robbed medieval features in the north range, and a human bone manacled to a rock was found in the dungeon during the modern restoration.

## Photographs

- [Bolton Castle near Leyburn, North Yorkshire, England — Bob Weyker](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7d/Bolton_Castle.JPG)
- [Another view of Bolton Castle. Is that a Buzzard soaring high above the parapet? — David Seale](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b4/Another_view_of_Bolton_Castle._-_geograph.org.uk_-_577147.jpg)
- [Bolton Castle, Wensleydale, North Yorkshire — Kreuzschnabel](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/56/2014_Bolton_Castle.jpg)
- [Benchmark on Bolton Castle — Roger Templeman](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c8/Benchmark_on_Bolton_Castle_-_geograph.org.uk_-_2516492.jpg)
- [Bolton Castle, North Yorkshire — Chris06](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/Bolton_Castle_%281%29.jpg)
- [Bolton Castle, North Yorkshire — Chris06](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fb/Bolton_Castle_%283%29.jpg)
- [Bolton Castle, North Yorkshire — Chris06](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1c/Bolton_Castle_%282%29.jpg)
- [Bolton Castle, North Yorkshire — Chris06](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9c/Bolton_Castle_%284%29.jpg)
- [An owl at Bolton Castle — Dave Pickersgill](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/85/An_owl_at_Bolton_Castle_-_geograph.org.uk_-_4555067.jpg)
- [Approaching Bolton Castle — Gordon Hatton](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b3/Approaching_Bolton_Castle_-_geograph.org.uk_-_6937056.jpg)

## Sources

- [Bolton Castle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolton_Castle) — Wikipedia
- [Richard Scrope, 1st Baron Scrope of Bolton](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Scrope,_1st_Baron_Scrope_of_Bolton) — Wikipedia
- [John Lewyn](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lewyn) — Wikipedia
- [Mary, Queen of Scots](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary,_Queen_of_Scots) — Wikipedia
- [Battle of Langside](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Langside) — Wikipedia
- [Pilgrimage of Grace](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilgrimage_of_Grace) — Wikipedia
- [English Civil War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Civil_War) — Wikipedia
- [Mary Seton](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Seton) — Wikipedia
- [Francis Knollys (the elder)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Knollys_(the_elder)) — Wikipedia
- [Henry Scrope, 9th Baron Scrope of Bolton](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Scrope,_9th_Baron_Scrope_of_Bolton) — Wikipedia
- [John Scrope, 8th Baron Scrope of Bolton](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Scrope,_8th_Baron_Scrope_of_Bolton) — Wikipedia
- [Emanuel Scrope, 1st Earl of Sunderland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emanuel_Scrope,_1st_Earl_of_Sunderland) — Wikipedia
- [Adam Sedbar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Sedbar) — Wikipedia
- [Charles Paulet, 1st Duke of Bolton](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Paulet,_1st_Duke_of_Bolton) — Wikipedia
- [Agnes Strickland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnes_Strickland) — Wikipedia
- [Plantagenet Somerset Fry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plantagenet_Somerset_Fry) — Wikipedia
- [John Leland (antiquary)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Leland_(antiquary)) — Wikipedia
- [Henry VIII](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_VIII) — Wikipedia
- [Elizabeth I](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_I) — Wikipedia
- [Ordnance Survey National Grid](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordnance_Survey_National_Grid) — Wikipedia
- [Bolton Castle history](https://boltoncastle.co.uk/the-castle/history/) — Bolton Castle
- [Bolton Castle opening times](https://boltoncastle.co.uk/plan-ahead/opening-times/) — Bolton Castle
- [Bolton Castle tickets and passes](https://boltoncastle.co.uk/tickets-passes/) — Bolton Castle
- [Bolton Castle access questions](https://boltoncastle.co.uk/help-centre/faqs/) — Bolton Castle
- [Gardens at Bolton Castle](https://boltoncastle.co.uk/attractions/gardens/) — Bolton Castle
- [Herb garden at Bolton Castle](https://boltoncastle.co.uk/attractions/gardens/herb-garden/) — Bolton Castle
- [Bolton Castle scheduled monument](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1003582) — Historic England
- [Bolton Castle listed building](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1130885) — Historic England
- [Hidden secrets of the herb garden at Bolton Castle](https://www.yorkpress.co.uk/news/23529638.hidden-secrets-herb-garden-bolton-castle/) — The York Press
- [Harry Orde-Powlett, Lord Bolton, has died aged 69](https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/heritage-and-retro/heritage/yorkshire-dales-landowner-and-bolton-castle-custodian-harry-orde-powlett-lord-bolton-has-died-aged-69-4190233) — The Yorkshire Post
- [Obituary of the 8th Lord Bolton](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2023/06/20/lord-bolton-castle-bosnia-rwanda-obituary/) — The Telegraph
- [Lord Bolton obituary](https://www.thetimes.com/uk/obituaries/article/lord-bolton-obituary-92fqf3czx) — The Times
- [Bolton Castle Repair Project Phase 1 trial excavations 1991](https://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/library/browse/issue.xhtml?recordId=1064104&recordType=GreyLit) — Archaeology Data Service
- [Bolton Castle, the north and east ranges, 1992](https://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/library/browse/issue.xhtml?recordId=1048351&recordType=GreyLit) — Archaeology Data Service
- [Bolton Castle.JPG](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bolton_Castle.JPG) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Another view of Bolton Castle. - geograph.org.uk - 577147.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Another_view_of_Bolton_Castle._-_geograph.org.uk_-_577147.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [2014 Bolton Castle.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2014_Bolton_Castle.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Benchmark on Bolton Castle - geograph.org.uk - 2516492.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Benchmark_on_Bolton_Castle_-_geograph.org.uk_-_2516492.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Bolton Castle (1).jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bolton_Castle_(1).jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Bolton Castle (3).jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bolton_Castle_(3).jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Bolton Castle (2).jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bolton_Castle_(2).jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Bolton Castle (4).jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bolton_Castle_(4).jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [An owl at Bolton Castle - geograph.org.uk - 4555067.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:An_owl_at_Bolton_Castle_-_geograph.org.uk_-_4555067.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Approaching Bolton Castle - geograph.org.uk - 6937056.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Approaching_Bolton_Castle_-_geograph.org.uk_-_6937056.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons

## Detailed history

Bolton Castle stands in Wensleydale, in the parish of Castle Bolton with East and West Bolton, in the Yorkshire Dales. The village of Castle Bolton takes its name from the castle. On the Ordnance Survey National Grid, a reference system for Great Britain whose origin lies west of the Isles of Scilly, the castle is given as SE03379183, as SE0335691835, as SE0335891833, and as SE0336091819. Its latitude and longitude are also given as 54 degrees 19 minutes 19 seconds north and 1 degree 56 minutes 53 seconds west.

It is a quadrangular castle of the late fourteenth century, a stone house of four ranges around a courtyard rather than a shell keep on a motte. The ranges are of three storeys, with four-storey towers at the corners. The tower at the north-east has gone. Turrets stand in the middle of the north and south ranges. The entrance was a gatehouse in the east range, a chamfered pointed arch set inside a taller arch, with a barrel-vaulted passage. The walls are rubble with ashlar dressings. The original windows are lancets with cinque-cusped heads and labels, though some windows in the south-west tower were later changed into three-light openings with mullions and transoms. The main chambers lie on the first floor of the north range. The chapel is on the second floor of the south range. Besides those rooms there were eight apartments and twelve lodgings for retainers.

The ground had a history of the Scrope name before this building. A man called Richard FitzScrob, Scrob being given as the earliest Norman spelling of Scrope, built Richard’s Castle in Herefordshire in 1050. The fortune that paid for Bolton is less clear. Henry le Scrope and Geoffrey le Scrope are said to have founded the family wealth, yet the land they acquired was on a modest scale. Henry applied for a licence to fortify his manor house at Kirby Fleetham, and his declared gifts and fees are put at no more than about £80 a year. He was Chief Justice of the King’s Bench and Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, and he was the father of the builder.

Richard le Scrope, 1st Baron Scrope of Bolton, was born about 1327 and died on 30 May 1403. His life is also headed Richard Scrope, without the “le”. He was a soldier and courtier of Richard II of England. One account says that he fought under Edward the Black Prince at the Battle of Crécy in 1346. Another account, speaking of Sir Henry, says that Sir Henry’s first action was Crécy, that he was knighted at the Battle of Durham, that he served in the retinue of the Earl of Warwick in France and later with John of Gaunt, and that he fought in every major campaign between 1346 and 1384. Those two namings, Richard and Henry, are left as they stand.

Richard was Knight of the Shire for Yorkshire in the parliament of 1364. In 1371 he was summoned to the upper house as a baron, and in that year he was made Lord High Treasurer and Keeper of the Great Seal. He served as treasurer from 1371 to 1375. In 1378, the year he became Lord Chancellor of England to Richard II, he took on the building of a replacement for his manor house in the dale. He tried to curb the king’s extravagance. He resigned in 1380 when the government collapsed after military failures in France, and he held the seal again from 1381 to 1382. One explanation of the second loss of office says that after the death of Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March, and of other tenants who died while their heirs were under age, many people asked the king for the lands that had fallen to the Crown. Richard II told the chancellor to grant those requests. Scrope answered that the lands should stay in the king’s hands for the king’s own needs. The king, angry, sent messenger after messenger for the Great Seal, and Scrope refused to give it to anyone but the king himself. He was deprived of office in 1382 for non-cooperation. After the Peasants’ Revolt, in which his successor as chancellor was beheaded, he had already taken the office up again, and after 1382 he gave himself to the rebuilding of Bolton Castle, for which he had a licence to crenellate.

The dates of the work do not all match. A contract with the mason was made in September 1378, and the building was already partly constructed in that year. The licence to crenellate was granted in July 1379. One summary dates the castle to 1379–98. Another says building began in 1378 and took about eighteen years. The life of the mason dates Bolton Castle to 1378 to about 1396. The licence is also said to have been granted, and building to have commenced, in 1379, with completion in 1399. John Leland (antiquary), who worked in the reign of Henry VIII of England, is reported as saying that Bolton was eighteen years in building, cost 1,000 marks a year, and was finished in 1399. The chapel was dedicated in 1399, and in that year Scrope established a chantry of six priests at the castle.

The cost is given in more than one way. The whole work is reputed at 18,000 marks, spent between 1378 and 1399. The same span at 1,000 marks a year is the figure tied to Leland. A further account gives a total of £12,000, using limestone quarried from the hillside to the north, and says the castle was completed to a unified design in eighteen years. Alongside the castle, Richard bought the kingdom of the Isle of Man for his son William for a further £10,000. One modern comparison puts the castle and that purchase at about £90 million in present prices. He also gained property by lending money on the security of land, and taking the land when the debt was not paid. He obtained the wardship of the three heiress daughters of Robert, Lord Tiptoft, who was reputed to have salvaged King John’s treasure from the Wash. The three girls were betrothed to Scrope’s sons, and in his will he called them his dearest daughters.

The mason named in the contract is John Lewyn, also written Johan Lewyn. He was active from the early 1360s to about 1400, and he was regarded as the pre-eminent master mason in the north of England, one of three leading masons of the Perpendicular style in the later fourteenth century, with Henry Yevele in the south-east and William Wynford in the south-west. His early life is unknown. He first appears in 1353 as a mason of Durham Priory, so he was likely born before the middle of the century. A John Lewy who may be the same man is recorded at Westminster in 1351 and at Windsor in the 1360s. The first project firmly linked to him is work at Coldingham Priory, a cell of Durham, in 1364, and whatever he built there has been lost. His earliest surviving building is the kitchen at Durham Priory, of 1367–74, whose unusual vault, possibly Spanish in influence, has suggested time abroad, though that cannot be proved. By 1368 he was the bishop of Durham’s mason and received grants of land from Bishop Hatfield.

From 1368 and through the 1370s and 1380s he worked for the Crown on the royal castles at Bamburgh, Roxburgh and Carlisle. Only the Carlisle work survives, the outer gatehouse of 1378–83, also called De Ireby’s Tower. Roxburgh’s curtain and three towers, of 1378–87 and 1392, are gone, as are the domestic ranges at Bamburgh of 1368–72. In 1378 he contracted with Sir Richard Scrope to build part of Bolton Castle. The contract is for the eastern side, and it implies that construction had already begun, perhaps at first as an addition to a manor house already standing beside the thirteenth-century church to the north. The stylistic unity of the finished castle makes it almost certain, in the mason’s life, that he designed the whole, and Bolton is called his largest and most important surviving work. He also traded, unsuccessfully, in wool at Newcastle. He disappears from the written record after 1398, when his quarry at Durham is mentioned, and he is presumed to have died around 1400. He had at least one son, Walter Lewyn, with whom he worked at Brancepeth. That Brancepeth contract refers to roads, not to the slightly earlier castle there.

Lewyn is known above all for castles, in a north that was still disturbed after the wars with Scotland, while the Percy and Neville families grew powerful on the border. The houses of that generation have been called palace fortresses: luxurious residences that looked like castles, unlike a southern house such as Dartington Hall, and were not primarily meant for war. The Perpendicular of the court reached the far north in the 1370s with the Neville Screen, designed by Henry Yevele and shipped from London. An assessment of Lewyn’s own style is difficult, because the only surviving buildings firmly tied to him are Durham’s kitchen, Bolton Castle, and the Carlisle gatehouse, though the keep at Warkworth is accepted firmly enough to be used in the comparison. One reason for giving Warkworth to him is the use of flues in the heads of the hall windows to draw smoke away, a feature exactly paralleled at Bolton. At Bolton the smoke from the hall hearth was carried through tunnels in the walls, with no other louvres. An astronomical clock stood in the courtyard. Both of those details are part of the description left from Henry VIII’s reign.

The planning is complex, with suites of private rooms, chambers in the walls, and winding stairs, the fashion of the fourteenth century. At Bolton that plan has been read as allowing eight households to live in the castle at once. The scale and regularity, set against the more irregular earlier castles at Alnwick, Raby and Brancepeth, were admired, and the quadrangular castles of Lumley, Sheriff Hutton and Wressle followed the same idea, whether by Lewyn or by others. Today the walls look austere, but that impression is false: they once carried turrets, battlements, pinnacles and sculpture, and fragments of that decoration survive at Bolton and at Warkworth. Other works are only possibly his, or inspired by him, because no document ties them: the gatehouses, domestic range and kitchen at Cockermouth; Bishop Hatfield’s tomb and throne at Durham; the chapter house at Howden Minster in 1380, a tentative suggestion; Hylton; Lumley in 1389; the east end of Melrose after 1389, again tentative; the kitchen at Raby, whose vault resembles Durham; Sheriff Hutton, now shattered fragments; the Warkworth keep, perhaps of the 1390s, though suggested dates have varied widely; and Wressle in the 1390s, of which one range and two towers remain. A star vault, with parallels in Islamic architecture such as the mosque at Cordoba, and seen only sometimes elsewhere in Europe, covers the Durham kitchen, and the same form over the kitchens at Raby and Cockermouth is why those rooms are attributed to him. Dunstanburgh has been linked as largely the work of Henry Holme, perhaps to Lewyn’s design. John of Gaunt was Lewyn’s client there, and the polygonal turrets and nearly triangular arches at Warkworth may derive from Gaunt’s new buildings at Kenilworth. Finchale Priory in 1398 is a documented job whose exact works are unclear, and works at Durham Castle in the 1360s are unclear and perhaps included a keep rebuilt in the nineteenth century.

Sir Francis Knollys later called Bolton the highest walled house he had seen. His words, in the spelling of his own letter, say that the house appeared very strong, very fair, and very stately after the old manner of building, and that it had but one entrance. The west and south ranges are now almost complete. The north and east ranges are more ruinous. The full footprint of the quadrangular core survives. The outer works are poorly understood. A substantial moat ditch survives as an earthwork to the west and is included with the standing building. Land to the north, where a single-track road and its verges now run, is thought to retain buried evidence of the manor house that the castle replaced. The quarries that supplied the stone, and the remains of the late medieval designed landscape, are not included in that protected area. The extent of the other outer works is not well enough known to be included.

Little is known of the castle in the fifteenth century. Richard’s arms were azure, a bend or. He fought a famous dispute with Sir Robert Grosvenor for the right to that shield. In 1385 a general proclamation told everyone interested in the dispute to appear on 20 August at Newcastle upon Tyne. The case in the court of chivalry lasted four years, or is said to have run from that challenge of 1384 through a four-year controversy, and judgment was given in Westminster Hall for Scrope. Geoffrey Chaucer and Owain Glyndŵr gave evidence for him. The same witnesses are also named as John of Gaunt and Owen Glendower, the latter the other spelling of that name.

Henry IV confirmed that Richard’s lands and titles would not be forfeited, even though Richard’s eldest son, William le Scrope, 1st Earl of Wiltshire, was executed by Henry in 1399 for supporting Richard II. Richard died on 30 May 1403 at Pishobury in Hertfordshire, where he had bought a country estate, and he was buried at Easby Abbey near Richmond. The title passed to his second son, Roger le Scrope, 2nd Baron Scrope of Bolton. His other sons were Stephen le Scrope, who died in 1408, and Richard le Scrope. His wife was Blanche de la Pole, daughter of William de la Pole of Hull. His first cousin was Richard le Scrope, Archbishop of York. Roger, the second lord, outlived his father by only seven months and was succeeded by his son Richard, then ten years old. In 1420 that Sir Richard was killed at the siege of Rouen and was succeeded by his son Henry, 4th Lord Scrope, who was only two. Henry later supported Richard, Duke of York, against Margaret of Anjou, wife of Henry VI. In 1498 a John Scrope died aged 63 and left his son and heir Henry his parliament robes and all his furniture at Bolton Castle.

In 1405 the archbishop, son of Lord Scrope of Masham and cousin of the Bolton line, was executed for his part in Harry Hotspur’s plot and armed rising against Henry IV. He was held in great veneration. Miracles were said to follow his death, and pilgrimages were made to his burial place. On 9 June 2005 a mass and a family gathering marked the 600th anniversary of that execution, with more than eighty members of the Scrope family and their descendants present.

The next violent break at the castle came under Henry VIII of England, king from 22 April 1509 until his death on 28 January 1547. He was born on 28 June 1491 at Greenwich, the second son of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York. After his brother Arthur died in 1502 he became the heir, and he married Arthur’s widow, Catherine of Aragon. When Pope Clement VII would not annul that marriage, Thomas Cranmer declared it void in 1533, Clement excommunicated Henry, and the Acts of Supremacy made Henry Supreme Head of the Church of England. He dissolved the monasteries and took their wealth. That break, the dissolution of the lesser houses, and the policies of his minister Thomas Cromwell, together with political, social and economic grievances, produced the Pilgrimage of Grace.

The Pilgrimage of Grace was a Catholic popular revolt that began in Yorkshire in October 1536 and spread into Cumberland, Northumberland, Durham and north Lancashire, under Robert Aske, a barrister of the Inns of Court and the youngest son of Sir Robert Aske of Aughton, near Selby. It has been called the most serious rebellion of the Tudor period. A short Lincolnshire Rising came first. On 1 October 1536, at Louth, after the closure of Louth Park Abbey, a crowd rose under a monk and a shoemaker, Nicholas Melton, called Captain Cobbler. Estimates of the Lincolnshire force run to 22,000, and a march on Lincoln has been put at up to 40,000. The protest there was against the suppression of the monasteries, not against Henry’s rule as such, and it also demanded an end to a subsidy, to the Ten Articles, to peacetime taxes, a purge of heretics in government, and the repeal of the Statute of Uses. It collapsed after 4 October, when the king told the occupiers to disperse or face Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk. The vicar of Louth and Captain Cobbler were later hanged at Tyburn, and Thomas Moigne, a lawyer and member of parliament for Lincoln, was hanged, drawn and quartered.

The Pilgrimage itself broke out on 13 October 1536. Aske led a band of 9,000, each of whom had sworn the Oath of the Honourable Men, into York, brought expelled monks and nuns back to their houses, drove out the king’s new tenants, and restored Catholic observance. At Scawsby Leys, near Doncaster, the Duke of Norfolk and the Earl of Shrewsbury faced a host put at 30,000 to 40,000. In early December, at Pontefract Castle, the pilgrims drafted the 24 Articles. Norfolk promised a general pardon, a parliament at York within a year, and a reprieve for the abbeys until that parliament met. Aske dismissed his followers. In February 1537 a new rising, Bigod’s Rebellion, which Aske had not authorised, broke out in Cumberland and Westmorland under Sir Francis Bigod of Settrington. Norfolk, knowing the king’s promises would not be kept, moved quickly. Bigod, Aske, Lord Darcy, Lord Hussey, Sir Thomas Percy and Sir Robert Constable were among those taken, tried and killed. The number of executions is given as 216, among them seven abbots. Robert Aske was hanged in chains at York. A list of those arraigned at Westminster on 16 May 1537 names Constable, Percy, the Bulmers, Bigod, Margaret Cheney, George Lumley, Aske and Hamerton. On 25 May several were put to death at Tyburn and Smithfield. The same reckoning of deaths names Adam Sedbar, Abbot of Jervaulx, among the seven abbots, and a list dates his execution to 26 May 1537.

At Bolton the local part of this story is told through John Scrope, 8th Baron Scrope of Bolton, born about 1510 and, in his own life, dead on 22 June 1549. He was the son of Henry Scrope, 7th Baron Scrope of Bolton, and Mabel Dacre. Around 1530 he married Catherine Clifford, daughter of Henry Clifford, 1st Earl of Cumberland, at Skipton. They had eleven children. The eldest son was Henry Scrope, 9th Baron Scrope of Bolton. John lived in the family house at Bolton. In 1536 he was pressured into the Pilgrimage. He found himself obliged to give sanctuary to Adam Sedbar, Abbot of Jervaulx, the twenty-third and last abbot of that Cistercian house in the same dale. Sedbar, born about 1502, had been elected abbot in 1533, just as the dissolution was being prepared, and in 1536 he was persuaded, somewhat reluctantly, to join the rising with the abbots of Fountains, Bridlington and Guisborough. When the king’s commissioners came to Bolton to take the ringleaders, John fled to his father-in-law at Skipton Castle. Sedbar hid for several days on Witton Fell, was captured on 12 May 1537, and was taken to London. He was imprisoned in the Beauchamp Tower, where the inscription “ADAM SEDBAR. ABBAS JOREVALL 1537” can still be read. He was examined on 25 April and on 24 May. The charge was that he conspired to deprive the king of the title of Supreme Head of the English Church, to compel a parliament and a convocation, and that he committed insurrections. He said the aims were not ecclesiastical. He was found guilty. His own life says he was taken to Tyburn on 2 June 1537 and hanged, drawn and quartered, the same day as the prior of Bridlington, a few days after the abbot of Fountains and the prior of Guisborough. That 2 June date and the 26 May date in the list of executions are both left on the record. Their heads were displayed on London Bridge.

Before the commissioners left Bolton they fired the castle. One account places that burning in 1536, as the consequence of John’s support for the Pilgrimage, and says the extent of the damage is unknown but was counted a sufficient punishment, because he was still summoned to parliament and remained there until 1552, in the reign of Edward VI. Another account places the burning in 1537, by Henry VIII’s commissioners, and says John had reluctantly granted the abbot sanctuary, that the abbot was executed, and that John was pardoned and allowed to repair and reoccupy the house and retake his seat. The enlarged windows are thought to belong to that repair. His life says that because of the duress he was forgiven. His death on 22 June 1549 and a parliament attendance continuing to 1552 cannot both be a single uninterrupted fact, so both are kept. Within a few years of the fire some of the damage had been repaired.

The most famous prisoner came a generation later, after the Battle of Langside. Mary, Queen of Scots, had been forced to abdicate in 1567 in favour of her infant son James VI, after her capture at Carberry Hill, and she was held at Lochleven while her half-brother James Stewart, Earl of Moray, was regent. She escaped from Lochleven on 2 May 1568 with the help of George Douglas. Mary Seton, one of the Four Marys, had aided an earlier escape from that island by standing at a window in the queen’s clothes while Mary left in a boat. In May 1568 Mary gathered a force put at 6,000 men, declared at Hamilton that her abdication had been extorted, and on 8 May a bond for her restitution was signed by eight earls, nine bishops, eighteen lords, twelve abbots and nearly a hundred barons. She hoped to avoid a battle and reach Dumbarton Castle, still held for her by Lord Fleming. On 13 May 1568 Moray’s army met her at Langside, then a few miles south of Glasgow. The fight lasted about forty-five minutes. Argyll commanded Mary’s army and is said by George Buchanan to have fainted, though that is treated as a rumour spread by enemies. Mary stood about half a mile back, near Cathcart Castle, on a mound later called the Court Knowe. Hackbutters in the village lane broke her vanguard. Morton’s border pikemen met Hamilton’s men in the push of pike. Grange brought up reinforcements when the Renfrewshire wing gave ground, and Moray then charged. Only one of Moray’s men was killed. More than 100 of Mary’s men were lost, and the toll would have been higher if Moray had not halted the pursuit. More than 300 were taken, including Lord Seton and Sir James Hamilton. Mary rode for Dumbarton, failed, and reached Dundrennan Abbey. On the night of 16 May 1568 she crossed the Solway Firth to Workington with about twenty companions, stayed at the house of Henry Curwen, whose name is also written Heny Curwen, and on 18 May Richard Lowther, deputy of Lord Scrope at Carlisle, took her to Carlisle Castle. The Earl of Northumberland claimed the right to hold her. Lowther refused him, and Francis Knollys upheld Lowther. The battle is generally taken as the start of the Marian civil war.

Mary expected help from Queen Elizabeth I to recover her throne. Elizabeth I, born on 7 September 1533 and queen from 17 November 1558 until her death on 24 March 1603, was the daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. She had restored a Protestant settlement, she had not married, and a Catholic queen in England, with a claim to the English throne, was a danger to her. Elizabeth ordered an inquiry into the confederate lords and into whether Mary was guilty of the murder of Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley. She was cautious about letting Mary come far south, and also about leaving her near the border. Francis Knollys (the elder), born about 1511 or about 1514, was a Protestant courtier who had gone into exile under Mary I and sat on Elizabeth’s council from December 1558. He arrived at Carlisle on 28 May 1568. He felt Mary’s fascination at the first meeting, returned evasive answers to her request for an interview with Elizabeth and for help to regain her crown, and told her of the suspicion that lay on her over Darnley’s death. He feared that a prisoner of agility and spirit might escape over the border with household linen used as a rope, and he also feared that bringing her deeper into England might cause sedition. He watched her see two football matches on the green outside the postern. On 28 June 1568 he wrote that Mary Seton was the finest busker of a woman’s head and hair in any country, and that she had set such curled hair on the queen that it was said to be a periwig.

Carlisle was judged unsuitable. In mid-July 1568, and on 13 July in Knollys’s account, Mary was moved to Bolton, farther from the Scottish border but not too close to London, despite what he called her tragical demonstrations. Her clothes, sent from Lochleven, arrived on 20 July. She was held for six months. Her keepers were Henry Scrope, 9th Baron Scrope of Bolton, and Sir Francis Knollys. Henry, born about 1534, was a loyal supporter of Elizabeth, marshal of the army at the siege of Leith in 1559, and from 1562 until his death Warden of the West Marches and Captain of Carlisle. He had been at court when Mary landed, and he hurried north with Knollys. Mary was given his own apartments in the south-west tower. Of a retinue of 51 gentlemen, servants and ladies, only 30 of her men and six ladies could stay in the castle. The rest lodged nearby. The household included cooks, grooms, her hairdresser Mary Seton, an embroiderer, an apothecary, a physician and a surgeon. Knollys worried that her goldsmith might counterfeit wax seals for forged letters. The castle was not ready for a queen. Tapestries, rugs and furniture were borrowed from local houses and from Barnard Castle in County Durham. Elizabeth lent pewter vessels and a copper kettle. Mary obtained an old cloth of estate from Scotland and placed it above her chair in the great chamber, so that the room was like a throne room.

Her keepers let her walk the surrounding land and often hunt. Her prime occupation at Bolton was having her hair done by Mary Seton. A story says she escaped and went toward Leyburn, losing a shawl on the way, and that the cliff edge running west from Leyburn is called the Shawl for that loss. The story is told as a story. Knollys, whom she nicknamed Schoolmaster, taught her English. She had spoken French, Latin and Scots. She wrote him a letter in English which she had never used before. Those letters were afterwards gathered by Agnes Strickland, who published The Letters of Mary Queen of Scots in 1842 and 1843. Agnes Strickland was born on 18 July 1796. Her death is given as 8 July 1874 and as 13 July 1874, and one account places the death at Southwold on 13 July. She and her sister Elizabeth compiled the Lives of the Queens of England, with Agnes named as the sole author. Mary was also allowed to meet local Catholics, and for that Knollys and Scrope were severely reprimanded. Lord Scrope’s wife, Margaret Howard, daughter of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, was herself a Catholic, sister of Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk. One account says she was ordered not to come within the castle walls and moved to a house two miles away. Knollys tried to draw Mary toward his own Puritan reading, had her read the English prayer book, and praised the forms of Geneva so freely that Elizabeth sent him a sharp reprimand. In October 1568 he suggested his wife’s nephew, George Carey, as a possible husband for Mary. In November he said he needed more retainers in case of a rescue. In December he was told to press Mary to assent to abdication. In January 1569 he wrote to Elizabeth that, by refusing either to condemn Mary or to acquit her, the queen was inviting perils, and he asked her to leave the decision to her councillors.

A commission sat at York and then at Westminster between October 1568 and January 1569. On 20 January 1569 orders arrived at Bolton to move Mary to Tutbury Castle in Staffordshire, into the care of George Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury. Her life dates the move to 26 January 1569. She protested. She spent much of the next eighteen years in Shrewsbury’s houses, and she was executed in 1587. Knollys was a commissioner at her trial at Fotheringhay in 1586 and urged her immediate execution in 1587, in parliament and in council. He was made a Knight of the Garter in 1593 and died on 19 July 1596. He had married Catherine Carey, daughter of Mary Boleyn, on 26 April 1540, and they had sixteen children. His daughter Lettice married Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, at Wanstead on 21 September 1578, after Knollys insisted on a marriage. Elizabeth was his wife’s first cousin.

Mary Seton, born in 1542 and dead in 1615, was the daughter of George Seton, 6th Lord Seton, and Marie Pieris, a French lady of Mary of Guise. She was the only one of the Four Marys who did not marry, and she stayed with the queen in Scotland and in England. At the start of the English captivity she had a room to herself, two beds, a gentlewoman called Janet Spittell, and a manservant, John Dumfries. In March 1569, after the move from Bolton, the Earl of Shrewsbury noted that Mary would sit and sew with Mary Seton and Lady Livingston in Bess of Hardwick’s chamber at Tutbury. Seton formed a relationship with Christopher Norton and seems to have plotted an escape. Norton was executed for his part in the Northern Rebellion. She retired around 1585 to the Convent of Saint-Pierre at Reims, where the abbess was Renée de Guise. On 22 February 1608 she wrote that her right arm was paralysed and that she had forgotten the little English she knew after twenty years as a recluse. She died at the convent in 1615. Andrew Beaton, master of Mary’s household in England, had wished to marry her, but she had vowed celibacy. He went to Paris for a dispensation and died on the way back.

Henry Scrope’s part did not end at Bolton. In 1569 the Rising of the North, an abortive revolt of the Catholic northern earls, aimed to free Mary from Tutbury and to restore the old religion with Mary as queen. As captain of Carlisle, Henry helped to suppress it. No fighting in that rising came as far south as Bolton. The fighting stayed in Durham and at Barnard Castle. Henry remained loyal to Elizabeth. He was made a Knight of the Garter in 1584. His first wife, Mary, daughter of Edward North, 1st Baron North, died in 1558. Their daughter Mary married William Bowes of Streatlam. His second wife was Margaret Howard, and their sons were Thomas, the heir, and Henry Scrope, who died in 1625. In September 1589, when James VI expected Anne of Denmark, Henry sent a brace of very fat stags, ready baked, to Edinburgh, and looked for a company of the queen’s players in Lancashire to send north. The bride was delayed and the preparations were wasted. James wrote to him on 22 October 1589 about the government of Scotland while the king sailed to Norway. Henry wrote to William Asheby that he could hardly believe the king was going. Henry died at Carlisle on 13 June 1592. Elizabeth wrote in praise of his loyal service. His son Thomas Scrope, 10th Baron Scrope of Bolton, succeeded him.

Thomas’s only child was Emanuel Scrope, 1st Earl of Sunderland, also the 11th Baron Scrope of Bolton, born on 1 August 1584 and dead on 30 May 1630. His mother was Philadelphia Carey, sister of Robert Carey and a relative of Elizabeth. He was Lord President of the King’s Council in the North, and he was created Earl of Sunderland on 19 June 1627. In 1609 he married Lady Elizabeth Manners, daughter of John Manners, 4th Earl of Rutland. Their four children all died young. On 26 December 1613 he danced in The Somerset Masque at Whitehall. By his servant and mistress Martha Jeanes, also called Janes or Jones, alias Sanford or Sandford, he had a son, John Jeans Scrope, and three daughters, Mary, Elizabeth and Annabella, all of whom survived. A settlement of 20 May 1629 left his unentailed estate, and Bolton Castle itself, to that son. The entailed estate went to descendants of his great-aunts, not to the nearest half-blood relative. The barony of Scrope of Bolton was impoverished, and the woman who held it was never summoned to parliament, nor were her Catholic descendants. John died in 1646 and left his estate among his three sisters, and Bolton Castle to the eldest, Mary. Mary died in 1680. She married Charles Paulet, 1st Duke of Bolton, but she died before he became duke, so she was only Marchioness of Winchester. Elizabeth, born in 1627, married the 3rd Earl Rivers. Annabella, who lived from 1629 to 1703, inherited Langar in Nottinghamshire and married John Grubham Howe. In 1663 Charles II gave Annabella the rank of an earl’s daughter, an unusual honour. The castle today is held by a descendant in the female line, through a further illegitimate daughter, of the 5th Duke of Bolton.

The English Civil War, also called the Great Rebellion, was a series of wars and political struggles between Royalists and Parliamentarians in England from 1642 to 1651, inside the wider Wars of the Three Kingdoms of 1639 to 1653. The First English Civil War was fought over the balance of power between Parliament and Charles I, and it ended in June 1646 with the king in custody. Charles I had succeeded his father James in 1625. James had called kings little gods on earth. Parliament’s real leverage was tax, because the gentry collected it, and Charles’s attempt to rule without that cooperation, his religious policy, and his plans to bind England, Scotland and Ireland, split the kingdom. Royalist strength lay in the countryside, the cathedral cities of York, Chester, Worcester and Oxford, and the poorer north and west. Parliament was stronger in the ports and the richer south and east. Supporters of the king were nicknamed Cavaliers, and supporters of Parliament Roundheads. In the field, armies of 120,000 to 150,000 men were out in a campaign season. John, the illegitimate son who had inherited Bolton, declared for the king, as much of Yorkshire did.

The siege is dated in more than one way. One account says the castle was besieged in 1645 and surrendered after six months through starvation. Another says the siege ran from the autumn of 1644 until November 1645, and that John surrendered only after the last of the horses and all the other animals had been eaten, with the garrison starving. The castle’s own account says he surrendered only after all the horses had been eaten. For that defiance the castle was slighted in 1647. Parliament is said to have destroyed the east curtain and the garrison quarters, making the place militarily useless, while the south-west tower and the west curtain, with the private apartments, remained habitable. Another account says the slighting was partial, enough to make the castle indefensible, but left it partly habitable. John was fined £7,000. His death is placed in 1646, and also in London, either of the plague or while he was killed conducting espionage for the king and living under an assumed name. The estate then passed to his sister Mary.

Mary’s marriage to Charles Paulet is dated to 1653, when he is said to have returned to Bolton after release from the Tower, and also to 12 February 1655, at St Dionis Backchurch in London. He had been a member of the garrison during the six-month siege. Charles Paulet, also written Paulett, was born about 1630 and died on 27 February 1699. He was the son of John Paulet, 5th Marquess of Winchester, and Jane Savage. He sat in the Commons for Winchester and Hampshire from 1660 to 1675, succeeded as 6th Marquess of Winchester in 1675, supported William and Mary in 1688, and was created Duke of Bolton on 9 April 1689. One account says he built Bolton Hall in North Yorkshire in 1678. Another says Bolton Hall was completed in 1675 and the family left the castle. A third says the castle ceased to be the family seat in 1675, when Bolton Hall was completed. Mary, his wife, died on 1 November 1680 at Moulins in France and was buried at Wensley on 12 November. Their son Charles became the 2nd Duke of Bolton.

During a storm the north-east tower collapsed. The year is given as 1761, and the collapse is ascribed to damage from the previous century, and it is also given as 1762. The listing of the building simply says that the north-east tower has been demolished, without a year. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the castle was quarried for building stone, and it also formed eight dwellings rented by villagers.

The dukes of Bolton again ran out of male heirs. In 1794 Bolton Castle and a great part of the estates of the 6th Duke passed to Jean Mary Powlett, natural daughter of Charles, the 5th Duke of Bolton. She was married to Thomas Orde, a politician, who took the Paulett name. He became the 1st Lord Bolton in 1797. The barony is also said to have been created in 1797 for Thomas Orde-Powlett. Around the time of the Napoleonic wars, given as 1805 to 1815, the family changed the spelling from Paulett to Powlett, because Powlett would appear less French. In 1807 William Orde-Powlett became the 2nd Lord Bolton. The castle has remained with the Orde-Powlett family. It is said never to have been sold, and to be still in the hands of descendants of the Scropes.

In 1899 William Thomas Orde-Powlett, 4th Lord Bolton, carried out restoration. In 1944 Italian prisoners of war helped to restore the north curtain wall. In 1986 Harry Orde-Powlett took on the running of the castle, which the civil war had left uninhabitable as a house, and he developed it as a place visitors could enter and as a wedding venue. One account says he opened it two years later. During that restoration a human bone was found manacled to a rock in the dungeon. He also redecorated rooms, brought in period tapestries, tableaux and furniture, and returned arms and armour to the forge. In 1991 a repair grant of £650,000 went toward stabilising the limestone walls and four turrets. In the 1990s a programme of consolidation was informed by archaeological investigation. The walls were cleared of vegetation and repointed, and the work of that decade is described as preserving the castle as found.

Trial excavations in 1991, in the north range, found medieval features, heavily robbed, and also material of the post-medieval and modern periods. The results were used to discuss the structural history and to plan repairs, and further digging was recommended in the north and east ranges. In 1992, during major repairs, investigation of the north and east ranges and of the outer faces of the north-east tower was used to clarify how the fabric was built and how the rooms changed their use. The gardens were reinstated after an archaeological survey. That survey is dated to 1994, and the reinstatement by Baron Bolton is also dated to 1995. The original garden is described as nearly twenty acres, looking over the ancient Forest of Wensleydale. By 1535 Leland spoke of a fine park attached to the castle, walled in stone, and high walls of deer parks still survive. The design of the new gardens was meant to follow medieval pleasure-garden ideas, including a description by Albertus Magnus in 1260 of plants that refresh the sight by the variety of their flowers. The ground is now divided into walled sections: a maze, a vineyard, a Mary Garden also called the Catholic Garden, planted with flowers associated with Our Lady, a dyer’s garden, a wild-flower meadow, a rose garden, and a herb garden.

The herb garden is planted as a physic garden, with over 100 kinds of plants that would have been popular in the medieval period. The planting period is given as about 1400 to 1680, the years from the making of the gardens to the family’s move to Bolton Hall, and a gardener’s aim is also stated as 1399 to the late 1600s. The beds are arranged by use: respiratory, digestive, anti-inflammatory, nerves and emotions, pain, wounds, eyes, poisons and plague, and magic and myth. Plants named in the garden include sea holly, skullcap, lungwort, white horehound, liquorice, good King Henry, self-heal, saw-wort, sweet woodruff, lady’s mantle, lilies, tansy, sweet violet, primrose, mandrake and costmary. Elizabeth Carter, the gardener, has worked at the castle since 2015, and in August 2022 she described the research behind the beds. Two new beds were then described as in progress, one for the Doctrine of Signatures and one for Nicolas Culpeper. The castle’s own note of the garden names two new beds for 2026, one for the Doctrine of Signatures and one for masterwort. Those two pairings are left side by side. Tom Orde-Powlett, whose family owns the Bolton estate, has called the garden rooms a window on the lives of the people who lived in the castle.

Harry Algar Nigel Orde-Powlett, 8th Lord Bolton, died of cancer on 10 June 2023, aged 69. His birth is given as 1952 and as 14 February 1954. He succeeded his father in 2001, and one account says in June 2001. He married Philippa in 1977. Her surname is given as Tapply and as Tapley, and she is also called Pip. She died in 2016. He married again in 2019, and his second wife is named Valerie. His sons are Thomas, Benjamin and Nicholas. The funeral was at Holy Trinity Church in Wensley on 23 June 2023. The castle passed to his eldest son, Thomas Peter Algar Orde-Powlett, 9th Baron Bolton, who is also called Tom, and who with his wife Katie runs the castle. The infobox of the castle’s account names the owner as Thomas, Lord Bolton.

The castle has been used as a film and television location, including the films Ivanhoe in 1952, Elizabeth in 1998 and Bill in 2015, and the series Heartbeat and All Creatures Great and Small. Part of the structure is a ruin and part has been restored. Falconry displays are staged in some months, and the rooms are sometimes rented for weddings. The castle was scheduled on 8 February 1915, and that entry was amended on 16 December 2014. It was listed at Grade I on 13 February 1967, and the scheduling history also says that in 1967 it was additionally designated Grade I. One summary of why it is protected calls it a residence built for Sir John Scrope, Chancellor of England. The historical summary of the same protection names Sir Richard Scrope, and calls him chancellor. Both namings are kept. The reasons given are the quality of the late fourteenth-century architecture, the power of the man who built it, and the buried remains. It remains in private hands and is open to visitors.

Plantagenet Somerset Fry, born Peter George Robin Fry on 3 January 1931 and dead on 10 September 1996, wrote more than fifty books of history, for adults and for children, including books about castles. He was born the third child and only son of a naval officer and a pianist. He added Somerset to his surname by deed poll, because the Fry family came from Wells in that county, and he took Plantagenet as a nickname at university because of his advocacy of Richard III. He studied at St Catherine’s College, Oxford, from 1954, started the Council for Independent Archaeology, and was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. In 1996 he was told he was dying of bowel cancer. He refused treatment, and he died at his home in Wattisfield in Suffolk, aged 65, by suffocating himself with a plastic bag, after writing a letter to the coroner.

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