The honour of Pontefract, also known as the feudal barony of Pontefract, was an English
feudal baron
A feudal baron is a vassal holding a heritable fief called a ''barony'', comprising a specific portion of land, granted by an lord, overlord in return for allegiance and service. Following the end of European feudalism, feudal baronies have largel ...
y. Its origins lie in the grant of a large, compact set of landholdings in
Yorkshire
Yorkshire ( ; abbreviated Yorks), formally known as the County of York, is a historic county in northern England and by far the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its large area in comparison with other English counties, functions have ...
, made between the
Norman conquest of England in 1066 and the completion of the
Domesday Survey
Domesday Book () – the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book" – is a manuscript record of the "Great Survey" of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 by order of King William I, known as William the Conqueror
Wil ...
in 1086. An expansive set of landholdings spanning sixty
parishes
A parish is a territorial entity in many Christian denominations, constituting a division within a diocese. A parish is under the pastoral care and clerical jurisdiction of a priest, often termed a parish priest, who might be assisted by one or m ...
and six
wapentakes in Yorkshire, the honour was created primarily to serve a strategic, defensive function in a potentially hostile frontier zone. The first lord was
Ilbert de Lacy, who built
a castle at
Pontefract
Pontefract is a historic market town in the Metropolitan Borough of Wakefield in West Yorkshire, England, east of Wakefield and south of Castleford. Historically part of the West Riding of Yorkshire, it is one of the towns in the City of Wake ...
which became the
caput
Latin words and phrases
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