Heads you win...

"Off with his head and set it on York gates; So York may overlook the town of York."
Said Queen Margaret in Shakespeare's 'Henry VI'.

Richard Duke of York, whose head was so displayed in 1461, was not the first to have his head chopped off and displayed on Micklegate Bar. Nor was he the last...

• 1403 Sir Henry Percy (Hotspur)
• 1405 Sir William Plumpton
• 1415 Lord Scrope
• 1461 Earl of Devon
• 1572 Earl of Northumberland
• 1663 Four of the Farnley Wood Conspirators
• 1746 William Conolly
• 1746 James Mayne

Once decapitated, an individual's head was skewered on a pikestaff and displayed from the roof of the Bar. There they were pecked by crows and magpies: a suitable indignity for those seen as traitors.

The heads were left there for long periods of time. We know that the head of James Mayne was "illegally removed" in 1754 - nine years after it had been put there.

Richard Duke of York was only on the Bar for three months, however. In 1461 his son, Edward IV, replaced his father's head with those of the Lancastrian leaders captured at the Battle of Towton. The Earl of Devon was the most prominent of these leaders.