Princes in the Tower

It is unclear what happened to the two princes after the last recorded sighting of them in the tower. It is generally assumed that they were murdered; a common hypothesis is that the murder was commissioned by Richard III in an attempt to secure his hold on the throne. Their deaths may have occurred sometime in 1483, but apart from their disappearance, the only evidence is circumstantial. As a result, several other hypotheses about their fates have been proposed, including the suggestion that they were murdered by their maternal uncle the Duke of Buckingham, their future brother-in-law King Henry VII, or his mother Lady Margaret Beaufort, among others. It has also been suggested that one or both princes may have escaped assassination. In 1487, Lambert Simnel initially claimed to be the Duke of York, but later claimed to be York's cousin the Earl of Warwick. From 1491 until his capture in 1497, Perkin Warbeck claimed to be the Duke of York, having supposedly escaped to Flanders. Warbeck's claim was supported by some contemporaries, including York's aunt the Duchess of Burgundy.

In 1674, workmen at the Tower of London excavated, from under a staircase, a wooden box containing two small human skeletons. The bones were widely accepted at the time as those of the princes, but this has not been proven and is far from certain. King Charles II had the bones buried in Westminster Abbey, where they remain.

Background

On 9 April 1483, Edward IV of England died unexpectedly after an illness lasting around three weeks.

Dominic Mancini, an Italian friar who visited England in the 1480s and who was in London in the spring and summer of 1483, recorded that after Richard III seized the throne, Edward and his younger brother Richard were taken into the "inner apartments of the Tower" and then were seen less and less, until they disappeared altogether. Mancini records that, during this period, Edward was regularly visited by a doctor, who reported that Edward, "like a victim prepared for sacrifice, sought remission of his sins by daily confession and penance, because he believed that death was facing him."^[10] The Latin reference to "Argentinus medicus", was originally translated as "a Strasbourg doctor"; however, D.E. Rhodes suggests it may actually refer to "Doctor Argentine", whom Rhodes identifies as John Argentine, an English physician who later served as provost of King's College, Cambridge, and as doctor to Arthur, Prince of Wales, eldest son of King Henry VII of England (Henry Tudor).^[6]

There are reports of the two princes being seen playing in the tower grounds shortly after Richard joined his brother, but there are no recorded sightings of either of them after the summer of 1483.^[11] An attempt to rescue them in late July failed.^[2] Their fate remains an enduring mystery.

Many historians believe that the princes were murdered; some have suggested that the act may have happened towards the end of summer 1483. Maurice Keen argues that the rebellion against Richard in 1483 initially "aimed to rescue Edward V and his brother from the Tower before it was too late", but that, when the Duke of Buckingham became involved, it shifted to support of Henry Tudor because "Buckingham almost certainly knew that the princes in the Tower were dead."^[12] Alison Weir proposes 3 September 1483 as a potential date;^[13] however, Weir's work has been criticised for "arriving at a conclusion that depends more on her own imagination than on the uncertain evidence she has so misleadingly presented."^[14]

Other than their disappearance, there is no direct evidence that the princes were murdered, and "no reliable, well-informed, independent or impartial sources" for the associated events.^[3] Nevertheless, following their disappearance, rumours quickly spread that they had been murdered. Only one contemporary narrative account of the boys' time in the tower exists: that of Dominic Mancini. Mancini's account was not discovered until 1934, in the Municipal Library in Lille. Later accounts written after the accession of Henry Tudor are often claimed to be biased or influenced by Tudor propaganda.^[3]

Four unidentified bodies have been found which are considered possibly connected with the events of this period: two at the Tower of London and two in

Robert Fabyan's Chronicles of London, compiled around 30 years after the princes' disappearance, names Richard as murderer.^[19]

Thomas More (a Tudor loyalist who had grown up in the household of John Morton, an avowed foe of Richard III) wrote The History of King Richard III, c.1513. This identified Sir James Tyrrell as the murderer, acting on Richard's orders. Tyrrell was the loyal servant of Richard III who is said to have confessed to the murder of the princes before his execution for treason in 1502. In his history, More said that the princes were smothered to death in their beds by two agents of Tyrrell (Miles Forrest and John Dighton) and were then buried "at the stayre foote, metely depe in the grounde vnder a great heape of stones", but were later disinterred and buried in a secret place.^[20] Historian Tim Thornton claimed that the sons of Miles Forrest were at court in Henry VIII's England, and Thomas More's contacts with them could have given him the detail of the murder.^[1][21][22]

Polydore Vergil, in his Anglica Historia (c.1513), also specifies that Tyrrell was the murderer, stating that he "rode sorrowfully to London" and committed the deed with reluctance, upon Richard III's orders, and that Richard himself spread the rumours of the princes' death in the belief that it would discourage rebellion.^[23]

Holinshed's Chronicles, written in the second half of the 16th century, claims that the princes were murdered by Richard III. The chronicles were one of the main sources used by William Shakespeare for his play Richard III, which also portrays Richard as the murderer, in the sense that he commissions Tyrrell to have the boys killed. A. J. Pollard believes that the chronicle's account reflected the contemporary "standard and accepted account", but that by the time it was written "propaganda had been transformed into historical fact".^[3]

More wrote his account with the intention of writing about a moral point rather than a closely mirrored history.^[24] While More's account does rely on some firsthand sources, the account is generally taken from other sources. Additionally, More's account is one of the bases for Shakespeare's Richard III, which similarly indicts Richard for murdering the young princes.

Bodies

Tower of London

On 17 July 1674, workmen remodelling the Tower of London dug up a wooden box containing two small human skeletons. The bones were found buried 10 feet (3.0 m) under the staircase leading to the chapel of the

The bones were removed and examined in 1933 by the archivist of Westminster Abbey, Lawrence Tanner; a leading anatomist, Professor William Wright; and the president of the Dental Association, George Northcroft. By measuring certain bones and teeth, they concluded the bones belonged to two children around the correct ages for the princes.^[3] The bones were found to have been interred carelessly along with chicken and other animal bones. There were also three very rusty nails. One skeleton was larger than the other, but many of the bones were missing, including part of the smaller jawbone and all of the teeth from the larger one. Many of the bones had been broken by the original workmen.^[30][31] The examination has been criticised, on the grounds that it was conducted on the presumption that the bones were those of the princes and concentrated only on whether the bones showed evidence of suffocation; no attempt was even made to determine whether the bones were male or female.^[3]

No further scientific examination has since been conducted on the bones, which remain in Westminster Abbey, and DNA analysis (if DNA could be obtained) has not been attempted. A petition was started on the British government's "e-petition" website requesting that the bones be DNA tested, but was closed months before its expected close date. If it had received 100,000 signatories a parliamentary debate would have been triggered.^[32] Pollard points out that even if modern DNA and carbon dating proved the bones belonged to the princes, it would not prove who or what killed them.^[3]

St George's Chapel

In 1789, workmen carrying out repairs in

The absence of hard evidence of what happened to the princes has led to a number of theories being put forward. The most common theory is that they were murdered close to the time that they disappeared, and among historians and authors who accept the murder theory, the most common explanation is that they were murdered at the behest of Richard III.^[40]

Richard III

Many historians conclude that Richard III, the princes' uncle, is the likeliest culprit in the case of the disappearance of the princes for a number of reasons. Although the princes had been eliminated from the succession, Richard's hold on the monarchy was very insecure due to the way in which he had attained the crown, leading to a backlash against him by the Yorkist establishment.^[41] An attempt had already been made to rescue them and restore Edward to the throne, clear evidence that the existence of the princes would remain a threat as long as they were alive. The boys could have been used by Richard's enemies as figureheads for rebellion.^[42] Rumours of their death were in circulation by late 1483, but Richard never attempted to prove that they were alive by having them seen in public, which strongly suggests that they were dead by then. However, he did not remain silent on the matter. Raphael Holinshed, in his Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland, written in 1577, reports that Richard, "what with purging and declaring his innocence concerning the murder of his nephews towards the world, and what with cost to obtain the love and favour of the communal tie (which outwardlie glosed, and openly dissembled with him) ... gave prodigally so many and so great rewards, that now both he lacked, and scarce with honesty how to borrow."^[43] Richard also failed to open any investigation into the matter, which would have been in his interest if he was not responsible for the deaths of his nephews.

Richard was away from court on a progression through the Yorkist heartlands at the time the princes disappeared; if they died at this time, he would have been unable to murder them in person.^[44] They were under guard in the Tower of London, which was controlled by his men, and access to them was strictly limited by his instructions.^[45] He could therefore have dispatched one of his retainers to murder the princes on his behalf, but it is unlikely they could have been murdered without his knowledge.^[45] This is the version put forward by More and Polydore Vergil, who both name Sir James Tyrrell as the murderer. Tyrrell was an English knight who fought for the House of York on many occasions. Tyrrell was arrested by Henry VII's forces in 1502 for supporting another Yorkist claimant to the throne. Shortly before his execution, Tyrrell is said by More to have admitted, under torture, to having murdered the princes at the behest of Richard III.^[46] The only record of this is the writing of Thomas More, who wrote that, during his examination, Tyrrell made his confession as to the murders, saying that Richard III ordered their deaths. He also implicated two other men; despite further questioning, however, he was unable to say where the bodies were, claiming that Brackenbury had moved them.^[47] William Shakespeare portrays him as the culprit, sought out by Richard after Buckingham demurs. This version of events is accepted by Alison Weir^[48] and Hicks notes that his successful career and rapid promotion after 1483 'is consistent with his alleged murder of the princes'.^[49] However, the only record of Tyrrell's confession is through More, and "no actual confession has ever been found". Pollard casts doubts on the accuracy of More's accounts, suggesting it was "an elaboration of one of several circulating accounts"; however, he does not discount the possibility of it being "just his own invention", pointing to the "clear similarities to the stories of the Babes in the Wood".^[3] Clements Markham suggested that More's account was actually written by Archbishop Morton and that Tyrrell was induced to do the deed by Henry VII between 16 June and 16 July 1486, the dates of two general pardons that he received from the king.^[50]

Richard's guilt was widely accepted by contemporaries. George Cely, Dominic Mancini, John Rous, Fabyan's Chronicle, the Crowland Chronicler and the London Chronicle all noted the disappearance of the Princes, and all bar Mancini (who noted that he had no knowledge of what had happened) repeated rumours naming Richard as the murderer.^[51] Guillaume de Rochefort, Chancellor of France, named Richard as the murderer to the Estates General at Tours in January 1484.^[52] It also appears to have been the belief of Elizabeth Woodville, who would go on to support Henry Tudor in his campaign against Richard III. One possible motive for Elizabeth Woodville subsequently making her peace with Richard and bringing her daughters out of sanctuary could be that Richard had to swear a solemn oath, before witnesses, to protect and provide for her surviving children, which made it much less likely they could be quietly murdered as it was believed their brothers had been.^{[53][54][55][56]}

In line with this contemporary opinion many current historians, including

Some, notably Paul Murray Kendall,^[62] regard Buckingham as the likeliest suspect: his execution, after he had rebelled against Richard in October 1483, might signify that he and the king had fallen out; Weir takes this as a sign that Richard had murdered the princes without Buckingham's knowledge and Buckingham had been shocked by it.^[63] A contemporary Portuguese document suggests Buckingham as the guilty party, stating "...and after the passing away of king Edward in the year of 83, another one of his brothers, the Duke of Gloucester, had in his power the Prince of Wales and the Duke of York, the young sons of the said king and his brother, and turned them to the Duke of Buckingham, under whose custody the said Princes were starved to death."^[64] A document dated some decades after the disappearance was found within the archives of the College of Arms in London in 1980; this stated that the murder "be the vise of the Duke of Buckingham".^[65] This led Michael Bennett to suggest that possibly some of Richard's prominent supporters, Buckingham and James Tyrrell, murdered the princes on their own initiative without waiting for Richard's orders. Bennett noted in support of this theory: 'After the King's departure Buckingham was in effective command in the capital, and it is known that when the two men met a month later there was an unholy row between them.'^[66]

Buckingham is the only person to be named as responsible in a contemporary chronicle other than Richard himself. However, for two reasons he is unlikely to have acted alone. First of all, if he were guilty of acting without Richard's orders it is extremely surprising that Richard did not lay the blame for the princes' murder on Buckingham after Buckingham was disgraced and executed, especially as Richard could potentially have cleared his own name by doing so.

Henry VII (Henry Tudor), following his seizure of the crown, executed some of the rival claimants to the throne.[73] John of Gloucester, illegitimate son of Richard III, is said by some sources to have been one of those executed.^[15][2] Henry was out of the country between the princes' disappearance and August 1485, thus his only opportunity to murder them would have been after his accession in 1485. Pollard suggests Henry (or those acting on his orders) is "the only plausible alternative to Richard III."^[3]

The year after becoming king, Henry married the princes' eldest sister,

Historian David Baldwin suggests that Henry VII's reticence on the subject may have been because at least one of the princes was still alive; he considers that Richard is more likely to survive, with Edward dying of a malady.^[81] Baldwin argues that it is "impossible" that no one knew what happened to the Princes after they entered the Tower;^[82] he believes Richard III and Henry VII, leading courtiers and their mother would all have known the boys' whereabouts and welfare.^[82] Baldwin argues that had this been the case, Henry VII would have had the choice of keeping quiet about the survival of Richard, or having him executed, and concluded, "He [Henry] would have been happy to let people think the boys had been murdered, but not to speculate when or by whose hand."^[81]

During the reign of Henry VII, two individuals claimed to be Richard, Duke of York, who had somehow escaped death. Lambert Simnel initially claimed to be Richard, before changing his story and claiming to be Edward Plantagenet, 17th Earl of Warwick.^[83] Perkin Warbeck later claimed to be Richard, appearing in Ireland and calling himself king Richard IV.^[84] Margaret of York, Duchess of Burgundy, formally recognised Warbeck as Richard. Margaret, Richard III's sister, an unrelenting opponent of Henry VII, had previously recognised Simnel as Warwick.^[84] Warbeck was also accepted as Richard by James IV of Scotland. After a failed attempt to invade England he was captured. He retracted his claims, was imprisoned and later executed. Many modern historians believe he was an imposter, whose supporters accepted his claim for political reasons.^[84]

The fact that two persons claimed to be Richard led the 18th-century writer Horace Walpole to argue that Richard had in fact escaped death, and that Warbeck genuinely was Richard,^[85] a view also supported by the Scottish historian Malcolm Laing. Walpole, however, later retracted his views and stated that he now believed the princes to have been murdered by Richard III to secure his hold on the crown.^[86] In more recent times the theory that Warbeck was Richard has been endorsed by Annette Carson, a freelance writer with a "lifelong interest" in Richard III.^[87] She suggested that Richard smuggled the princes abroad to the custody of their aunt, the Duchess of Burgundy, and they were raised there under false identities.^[88] Baldwin's theory was that by having removed them from sight to prevent them being a focus for opposition, he was then unable to bring them back to court to scotch rumours of their murder without once again having them become a threat.^[89] This theory has also been endorsed by Philippa Langley,^[90][91] known for the discovery of Richard III's body in 2012, who argues that contemporary documents show the two princes were alive and in contact with royals on the European continent as late as 1493, and suggests that the men known to history as Lambert Simnel and Perkin Warbeck were genuinely princes Edward and Richard.^[92] Among the evidence presented by Langley is a witness statement (dated 1493) purported to have been written by Richard describing his escape and flight to Europe, which has been independently authenticated as a late 15th-century document, and a document claiming that Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor had identified a man as Prince Richard by examining three birthmarks on his body.^[93]

In 2021, researchers from the "Missing Princes Project"^[94] claimed to have found evidence that Edward had lived out his days in the rural Devon village of Coldridge. They have linked the 13-year-old prince with a man named John Evans, who arrived in the village around 1484, and was immediately given an official position and the title of Lord of the Manor.^[95] Researcher John Dike noted Yorkist symbols and stained glass windows depicting Edward V in a Coldridge chapel commissioned by Evans and built around 1511, unusual for the location.^[96]

Impact

The political reality of the disappearance of the princes, whatever happened to them, is that they were believed to have been murdered and Richard was blamed for their murders.^[97] Even if he had not been directly responsible for their deaths, the fact that he had deposed them and kept them under tight guard made him responsible for their welfare in the eyes of contemporaries, and the belief that they had been murdered made him guilty.^[98] As Baldwin noted in support of his conclusion that Richard would not have murdered the princes, "It seems incredible Richard ever supposed killing his nephews would help secure his position or make him more acceptable to his subjects."^[89] An initial uprising in September 1483, aimed at deposing Richard and restoring Edward V to the throne, was not stopped by rumours of Edward's murder.^[99] Instead, the rebels rallied around Henry Tudor as a potential alternative candidate; Horrox says Tudor was "an inconceivable choice if Edward V and his brother were thought to be still available."^[2]

Anthony Cheetham, who considered Richard likely to have had the princes murdered, commented that it was "a colossal blunder. Nothing else could have prompted the deflated Woodvilles to hitch themselves to Henry Tudor's bandwagon."^[100] The fact that the majority of the rebels were wealthy and powerful southern noblemen, loyal to Edward IV, suggests a degree of revulsion against Richard's usurpation of the throne:^[101] their willingness to fight on under an implausible alternative candidate suggests that they regarded anyone as preferable to Richard as King due to his usurpation and the murder of his nephews.^[102] Bennett suggested that perhaps those who had initially supported Richard in his seizure of power may have felt complicit in the crime, which he thought "might explain the bitterness of the subsequent recriminations against him."^[103] Hicks speculated that these men may have been "appalled by the character of the regime...shocked by Richard's crimes."^[104] Their defection severely weakened Richard, who had to impose his supporters among the northern lords as officeholders in the southern counties to maintain order, in itself a very unpopular act that further damaged his reputation.^[2] In Pollard's words, "the belief that he had murdered his nephews seriously handicapped Richard's efforts to secure himself on the throne he had usurped."^[105]

In popular culture

The mystery of the Princes in the Tower has spawned best-selling novels such as Josephine Tey's The Daughter of Time^[106] and four novels in Philippa Gregory's Cousins' War series, and continues to attract the attention of historians and novelists.

Literature

Fiction

• C. Lysah – The Little Princes in the Tower (1892)
• Elaine M. Alphin – Tournament of Time (1994)
• Sonya Hartnett - Princes (1997)
• Valerie Anand – Crown of Roses (1989)
• Margaret Campbell Barnes – The Tudor Rose (1953)
• Emma Darwin – A Secret Alchemy (2009)
• The Dragon Waiting: A Masque of History
  (1983)
• Elizabeth George – "I, Richard" (short story) (2002)
• Philippa Gregory
  • The White Queen (2009)
  • The Red Queen (2010)
  • The Kingmaker's Daughter (2012)
  • The White Princess (2013)
• Margaret Peterson Haddix
  • Found
    (2008)
  • Sent
    (2009)
• Rosemary Hawley Jarman – "We Speak No Treason" (1971)
• Sharon Kay Penman – The Sunne in Splendour (1982)
• Elizabeth Peters
  – The Murders of Richard III (1974)
• Anne Easter Smith
  • A Rose for the Crown (2008)
  • The Daughter of York (2008)
  • The King's Grace (2009)
  • Royal Mistress (2013)
• Jason Charles – The Claws of Time (2017)
• William Shakespeare – Richard III (circa 1595)
• Josephine Tey – The Daughter of Time (1951)
• George R. R. Martin - A Clash of Kings (1998), where the bodies of two young boys, thought to be princes, are found hanged and burned. Martin's A Game of Thrones is inspired in part by the Wars of the Roses.
• Jodi Taylor - Plan for the Worst (2020)

Non-fiction

• Horace Walpole – Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of Richard III (1768)
• Markham, Clements (1906). Richard III: His Life and Character.
• Audrey Williamson – The Mystery of the Princes (1978)
• Giles St. Aubyn – The Year of Three Kings, 1483 (Atheneum, 1983)
• A. J. Pollard – Richard III and the Princes in the Tower (1991)
• Alison Weir – The Princes in the Tower (1992)
• ISBN 0-06-039269-X
  )
• Josephine Wilkinson – The Princes in the Tower (2013)
• John Ashdown-Hill - The Mythology of the "Princes in the Tower" (2018)
• Nathen Amin - Henry VII and the Tudor Pretenders; Simnel, Warbeck and Warwick (2020)
• Philippa Langley- The Princes in the Tower: Solving History's Greatest Cold Case (The History Press, 2023)

Television

• The
  Richard IV following the accidental death of Richard III after a Yorkist victory at the Battle of Bosworth Field. There is no explanation of what became of Edward V. According to the show, Henry VII assumed power after the finale and erased Richard IV's reign from history, along with ruining the reputation of Richard III.^[107]
• An episode of the Canadian children's documentary series Mystery Hunters is dedicated to the unsolved case of the missing princes.
• In 1984, Channel 4 broadcast a four-hour "trial"
  Lord Elwyn-Jones and the barristers were recruited from the Queen's Counsel, but had to remain anonymous. Expert witnesses included David Starkey
  . The jury was composed of ordinary citizens. The burden of proof was left to the prosecution. The jury found in favour of the defendant.
• In 2005
  Margaret Beaufort
  to be still alive, but insane after many years imprisoned in chains in a cell.
• The Black Butler anime episode "His Butler, in an Isolated Castle" features the ghosts of the two young princes.
• The 2013
  The White Queen
  is an adaptation of Philippa Gregory's novels The White Queen (2009), The Red Queen (2010) and The Kingmaker's Daughter (2012).
• The 2017 Starz miniseries The White Princess is an adaptation of Philippa Gregory's novel of the same name which speculates on the fate of Prince Richard.
• In 2023, Robert Rinder and Philippa Langley presented a Channel 4 programme, The Princes in the Tower: The New Evidence.^[109]

See also

• List of people who disappeared
• List of unsolved deaths

References