Tutbury Castle became the headquarters of Henry de Ferrers and was the centre of the wapentake of Appletree, which included Duffield Frith.

[4] The castle was "nearly destroyed"[5] by Prince Edward in 1264 after the rebellion of Robert de Ferrers, 6th Earl of Derby.

[9] Tapestries, furniture, and bedding were sent from the Royal Wardrobe at the Tower of London to furnish Tutbury, but because of delays caused by poor weather Bess of Hardwick was asked to send her things from Sheffield.

[10] She noted the castle was like a hunting lodge, with its enclosure on a slight hill reminiscent of the Bois de Vincennes, and complained of the damp, the wet plaster, and draughty ill-fitting old carpentry.

In November 1569, following the Catholic Rising of the North, Mary was rushed south to Coventry where she stayed in an inn.

In January 1585 she once again returned to Tutbury via Wingfield Manor,[17] and on the way stayed a night in Derby in the house of a widowed Mrs Beaumont.

Her keepers Ralph Sadler and John Somers were made busy providing satisfactory hangings for Mary's bedchamber.

[20] In the coming months, Mary made numerous detailed complaints about her lodgings in her letters to Castlenau and his successor Châteauneuf.

An outdoor enclosure made with wooden palings by John Somers, she wrote, was more like a pig run than anything that might be called a garden.

[22] Ralph Sadler sometimes took Mary hunting with his hawks on the river Dove, no farther than three miles from the castle, with a guard of 40 or 50 men on horseback.

[27] By the late sixteenth century the fabric of the castle began to decay, although James I stayed there a number of times between 1619 and 1624.

Following the siege, a treaty of surrender was agreed upon, and the conditions were drawn up by Sir Andrew Kniveton, the Governor of Tutbury Castle – with the agreement being signed on 20 April 1646.