A sweet story.
Edmund de Lacey,
The Earl of Lincoln.
Mourned the death of his dearest friend and confessor.
The Bishop Richard Wyche.
It's sorry with D.
And Edmund wanted something good to come from it.
He decided to build a friary on the edge of Pontefract town.
Edmund went there with a band of followers,
Determined to lay the first stone himself.
As he stood on the edge of town ready to lay the foundation stone.
He knew what he was going to say.
He held the stone back,
Ready to let it drop.
Took a breath.
And out came the words.
To the honour of Our Lady Mary,
Mother of God and Virgin,
And have sent Dominic,
Confessor,
To whose brethren I sign this place,
And also have sent Richard,
Bishop and Confessor,
Formerly my Lord and dearest friend,
I,
Wishing to found a church in this place,
Lay the first stone.
And he did.
He let that huge stone go,
And a loud crack pulled him from his tears.
The stone had split in three.
A holy number,
The number of saints that the friary had been dedicated to.
A holy sign then,
At least that's how it was taken,
Though a new foundation stone was likely found and swiftly placed.
And so it came to be that Pontefract had a friary.
A friary populated by Dominican monks.
A holy place for friars to preach to the poor,
To help them,
And to work alongside them.
A place where disputes were resolved,
And a place where,
When royalty visited the castle,
The overflowing guests could sleep.
Administered to rich and poor alike,
Giving care to everyone in equal measure.
And chief amongst its medicinal plants was the miracle cure-all,
Or so it was believed,
Licorice.
Licorice for coughs and a stomach,
Liver and kidney,
For colds and menopause,
For circulation and sore throats,
To strengthen bones and ease tiredness,
To protect teeth and ease burning hearts.
Licorice was medicine before it was sweets.
When Edmund de Lacey laid that foundation stone all those years ago,
He did not know could not know how the root would grow.
When,
Over 400 years later,
George Dunhill added sugar to licorice.
The sweet was finally born.
And licorice had rooted firmly and forever in Pontefract town as the sweet shops and factories grew and the town was imbued with its very scent.
Edmund DeLacy had loved his friends.
He had loved him so much that he had built a church in honour of him.
It loved him so much that when Edmund died,
He'd had his heart buried there too.
Edmund de Lacey's love brought the friary to Pontefract.
It brought the monks and they brought a root.
A route for medicine.
A route that became a suite that still bears the town's mark today.
Edmund Delacy loved his friend.
And this is a story of love,
And how even in death.
Its root would grow.
Into something sweet.
You
