The Princes in the Tower Part I

 

The Princes in the Tower refers to the mystery of the fate of the deposed King Edward V of England and his younger brother, Prince Richard of Shrewsbury, Duke of York, heirs to the throne of King Edward IV of England. The brothers were the only sons of the king by his queen, Elizabeth Woodville, living at the time of their father's death in 1483. Aged 12 and 9 years old, respectively, they were lodged in the Tower of London by their paternal uncle and England's regent, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, in preparation for Edward V's forthcoming coronation. Before the young king's coronation, however, he and his brother were declared illegitimate by Parliament. Gloucester ascended the throne as Richard III.

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 theories about their fates have been proposed, including the suggestion that they were murdered by their kinsman, 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 was initially crowned in Dublin as "King Edward", but was later claimed by others to be York's cousin, the Earl of Warwick. And again, several years later, 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. At the time, Edward's son, the new King Edward V, was at Ludlow Castle in Shropshire, and the dead king's brother, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, was at Middleham Castle in Yorkshire. The news reached the Duke of Gloucester around 15 April, although he may have been forewarned of Edward's illness. It is reported that he then went to York Minster to publicly "pledge his loyalty to his new king". The Croyland Chronicle states that, before his death, Edward IV designated his brother Gloucester as Lord Protector. Edward's request may not have mattered, however, since "as the precedent of Henry V showed, the Privy Council was not bound to follow the wishes of a dead king".

Edward V and Gloucester set out for London from the west and north respectively, meeting at Stony Stratford on 29 April. The following morning, Gloucester arrested Edward's retinue, including the boys' uncle, Anthony Woodville, 2nd Earl Rivers, and their half-brother Sir Richard Grey. They were sent to Pontefract Castle in Yorkshire, where, on 25 June, they were beheaded. Gloucester then took possession of the prince himself, prompting Elizabeth Woodville to take her other son, Richard, Duke of York, and her daughters into sanctuary at Westminster Abbey.

Edward V and Gloucester arrived in London together. Plans continued for Edward's official coronation, but the date was postponed from 4 May to 25 June. On 19 May 1483, Edward was lodged in the Tower of London, then the traditional residence of monarchs before the coronation. On 16 June, he was joined by his younger brother Richard, Duke of York, who was previously in sanctuary. At this point, the date of Edward's coronation was indefinitely postponed by their uncle, Gloucester. On Sunday, 22 June, a sermon was preached by Dr. Ralph Shaa, brother of the Lord Mayor of London, at Saint Paul's Cross, claiming Gloucester to be the only legitimate heir of the House of York. On 25 June, "a group of lords, knights and gentlemen" petitioned Richard to take the throne. Both princes were subsequently declared illegitimate by Parliament; this was confirmed in 1484 by an Act of Parliament known as Titulus Regius. The Act stated that Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville's marriage was invalid because of Edward's pre-contract of marriage with Lady Eleanor Butler. Gloucester was crowned King Richard III of England on 6 July. The declaration of the boys' illegitimacy has been described by Rosemary Horrox as an ex post facto justification for Richard's accession.

Disappearance

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". 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).

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. An attempt to rescue them in late July failed. 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." Alison Weir proposes 3 September 1483 as a potential date; however, Weir's work has been criticized for "arriving at a conclusion that depends more on her own imagination than on the uncertain evidence she has so misleadingly presented".

Clements Markham suggests the princes may have been alive as late as July 1484, pointing to the regulations issued by Richard III's household, which stated: "the children should be together at one breakfast". James Gairdner, however, argues that it is unclear to whom the phrase "the children" alludes, and that it may not have been a reference to the princes. It may refer to Edward, Earl of Warwick (son of the Duke of Clarence) and Edward IV's two youngest daughters (Catherine and Bridget), all of whom were living under Richard's care at Sheriff Hutton.

Rumors

Several sources suggest there were rumors of the princes' deaths in the time following their disappearance. Rumors of murder appeared in France. In January 1484, Guillaume de Rochefort, Lord Chancellor of France, urged the Estates General to "take warning" from the fate of the princes, as their own king, Charles VIII, was only 13. The early reports, including those of Rochefort, Philippe de Commines (French politician), Caspar Weinreich (contemporary German chronicler), and Jan Allertz (Recorder of Rotterdam), all state that Richard killed the princes before he seized the throne (thus before June 1483). De Commines' Memoirs (c.1500), however, identifies the Duke of Buckingham as the person "who put them to death".

King Edward V and the Duke of York (Richard) in the Tower of London by Paul Delaroche. The theme of innocent children awaiting an uncertain fate was popular among 19th-century painters. Edward V is again depicted wearing the emblem of the Order of the Garter. Louvre, Paris.

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. Nevertheless, following their disappearance, rumors spread in France that they had been murdered. Before November 2023, only one contemporary narrative account of the boys' time in the tower was known to exist: 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 usually biased or influenced by Tudor propaganda.

Only Mancini's account, written in London before November 1483, is contemporary. The Croyland Chronicle and de Commines' account were written three and seventeen years later, respectively (and thus after Richard III's death and the accession of Henry VII). Markham, writing long before Mancini's account was discovered, argued that some accounts, including the Croyland Chronicle, might have been authored or heavily influenced by John Morton, Archbishop of Canterbury, to incriminate Richard III.

Early writers

KING RICHARD III

Darest thou resolve to kill a friend of mine?

TYRREL

Ay, my lord;

But I would rather kill two enemies.

KING RICHARD III

Why, there thou hast it: two deep enemies,

Foes to my rest and my sweet sleep's disturbers

Are they that I would have thee deal upon:

Tyrrel, I mean those bastards in the Tower.

– William Shakespeare's King Richard III (Act IV, scene II)

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

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. (Metely is a Middle English word describing a size as "moderate, normal, average.") 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 details of the murder.

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 rumors of the princes' death in the belief that it would discourage rebellion.

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".

More wrote his account with the intention of writing about a moral point rather than a closely mirrored history. 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 remodeling 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 White Tower. The remains were not the first children's skeletons found within the tower; the bones of two children had previously been found "in an old chamber that had been walled up", which Pollard suggests could equally well have been those of the princes. The reason the bones were attributed to the princes was that the location partially matched the account given by More. However, Further stated that they were later moved to a "better place", which disagrees with where the bones were discovered. The staircase that the bones were found underneath had not yet been built at the time of Richard III. One anonymous report was that they were found with "pieces of rag and velvet about them"; the velvet could indicate that the bodies were those of aristocrats. Four years after their discovery, the bones were placed in an urn and, on the orders of King Charles II, interred in Westminster Abbey, in the wall of the Henry VII Lady Chapel. A monument designed by Christopher Wren marks the resting place of the putative princes. The inscription, written in Latin, states "Here lie interred the remains of Edward V, King of England, and Richard, Duke of York, whose long desired and much sought after bones, after over a hundred and ninety years, were found interred deep beneath the rubble of the stairs that led up to the Chapel of the White Tower, on the 17 of July in the Year of Our Lord 1674."

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. 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. The examination has been criticized because 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.

No further scientific examination has since been conducted on the bones, which remain in Westminster Abbey; further, 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 it was closed months before its expected close date. If it had received 100,000 signatories, a parliamentary debate would have been triggered. 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.

St George's Chapel

In 1789, workmen carrying out repairs in St. George's Chapel, Windsor, rediscovered and accidentally broke into the vault of Edward IV and Queen Elizabeth Woodville, discovering in the process what appeared to be a small adjoining vault. This vault was found to contain the coffins of two unidentified children. However, no inspection or examination was carried out, and the tomb was resealed. The tomb was inscribed with the names of two of Edward IV's children: George, 1st Duke of Bedford, who had died at the age of 2, and Mary of York, who had died at the age of 14; both had predeceased the king. However, two lead coffins clearly labelled as George Plantagenet and Mary Plantagenet were subsequently discovered elsewhere in the chapel (during the excavation for the royal tomb house for King George III under the Wolsey tomb-house in 1810–13), and were moved into the adjoining vault of Edward IV's, but at the time no effort was made to identify the two lead coffins already in Edward IV's vault.

In the late 1990s, work was being carried out near and around Edward IV's tomb in St George's Chapel; the floor area was excavated to replace an old boiler and also to add a new repository for the remains of future Deans and Canons of Windsor. A request was forwarded to the Dean and Canons of Windsor to consider a possible examination of the two vaults either by fiber-optic camera or, if possible, a reexamination of the two unidentified lead coffins in the tomb also housing the lead coffins of two of Edward IV's children that were discovered during the building of the Royal Tomb for King George III (1810–13) and placed in the adjoining vault at that time. Royal consent would be necessary to open any royal tomb, so it was felt best to leave the medieval mystery unsolved for at least the next few generations. The 2012 discovery of the remains of Richard III has prompted renewed interest in re-excavating the skeletons of the "two princes", but Queen Elizabeth II never granted the approval required for any such testing of an interred royal. In 2022, Tracy Borman, joint chief curator of Historic Royal Palaces, stated that King Charles III held "a very different view" on the subject and could potentially support an investigation.

Theories

The sons of Edward IV of England by Pedro Américo

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.

Richard III

Many historians assert 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. 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. Rumors 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 favor of the communal tie (which outwardly closed, 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". Richard also failed to open any investigation into the matter, which would have been in his interest if he were not responsible for the deaths of his nephews.

Richard was on a progression through the Yorkist heartlands at the time the princes were last seen alive. 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. It is unlikely they could have been murdered without his knowledge. More and Polydore Vergil both name Sir James Tyrrell as the murderer. Tyrrell, an English knight who fought for the House of York on many occasions, 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. 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 - relatives of these accomplices were present at the Tudor court, and More may have at least partially derived his account from them - despite further questioning, however, Tyrrell was unable to say where the bodies were, claiming that Brackenbury had moved them. William Shakespeare portrays him as the culprit, sought out by Richard after Buckingham demurs. This version of events is accepted by Alison Weir and Hicks notes that his successful career and rapid promotion after 1483 "is consistent with his alleged murder of the princes". 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". 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. However, a registry copy of a will dated 1516 has been rediscovered in the British National Archives, that of Tyrrell's sister-in-law Dame Margaret Capel, wife of William Capel, in which she bequeaths a gold chain to her son Giles that had belonged to her husband and, before him, to Edward V, possibly his chain of office. William Capel appears to have given the chain to his wife while he was alive, as it is not mentioned in his will, nor is it mentioned in the will of Giles or any of his descendants. Although it is unknown how the chain came into William's possession, he is recorded to have exchanged jewelry with the Tyrrells. This revelation has revived interest in More's account.

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 did not know about what had happened) repeated rumors naming Richard as the murderer. Guillaume de Rochefort, Chancellor of France, named Richard as the murderer to the Estates General at Tours in January 1484. 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.

In line with this contemporary opinion, many current historians, including David Starkey, Michael Hicks, Helen Castor, and A. J. Pollard, regard Richard himself as the most likely culprit. There was no formal accusation against Richard III on the matter; the Bill of Attainder brought by Henry VII made no definitive mention of the Princes in the Tower, but it did accuse Richard of "the unnatural, mischievous and great perjuries, treasons, homicides and murders, in shedding of infant's blood, with many other wrongs, odious offences and abominations against God and man". The "shedding of an infant's blood" may be an accusation of the Princes' murder. Hicks speculated that it was a reference to speeches made in Parliament condemning the murder of the princes, which suggested that Richard's guilt had become common knowledge, or at least common wisdom.