The Princes in the Tower is a term which refers to Edward V of England and Richard of Shrewsbury, 1st Duke of York. The two brothers were the only sons of Edward IV of England and Elizabeth Woodville alive at the time of their father's death. Sometime around 1483, it is assumed that they were murdered, although there is no proof of this theory other than their disappearance.
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In May 1483 Edward, arriving in London for his coronation, was accommodated in the Tower of London, then a royal residence. Richard at that point was with his mother in sanctuary, but joined his brother in the Tower in June. Both princes were declared illegitimate by an Act of Parliament of 1483 known as Titulus Regius, and their uncle Richard Duke of Gloucester was crowned as Richard III. 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. Their fate remains an enduring mystery, but historians and contemporary popular opinion agree that the princes were probably murdered in the Tower. There is no record of a funeral.
According to some sources, the household accounts from one of Richard III's holdings in the north suggest that the boys were moved there for safekeeping early in 1485, and remained there until some time after the Battle of Bosworth.
In 1674, the skeletons of two children were discovered under the staircase leading to the chapel, during the course of renovations to the White Tower. At that time, these were believed to have been the remains of the two princes, although the staircase was apparently the original, and therefore built around two centuries before the boys disappeared, making it unlikely that the skeleons belonged to the princes. On the orders of Charles II the remains were reburied in Westminster Abbey. In 1933, the grave was opened to see if modern science could cast any light on the issues, and the skeletons were determined to be those of two young children, one aged around seven to eleven and the other around eleven to thirteen.[1] However, at least one of the scientists involved stated that the younger skeleton almost certainly belonged to a child younger than nine, leaving doubts as to whether the skeletons belonged to the princes.
If the boys were indeed murdered, there are several major suspects for the crime. The evidence is ambiguous, and has led people to various conflicting conclusions.
Richard III had eliminated the princes from the succession. However, his hold on the monarchy was not secure, and the existence of the princes would remain a threat as long as they were alive. The boys themselves were ostensibly not a threat on their own, notwithstanding Edward's having been acclaimed King, but they could have been used by Richard's enemies as figureheads for rebellion. 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 (or at a minimum, not under his control—unlikely, since they would presumably still have been in the Tower). However he did not remain silent on the matter. Raphael Holinshed, in his Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (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 communaltie (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" .[2] Even at that, at the very least, it might have been in his political interest to order an open investigation into the matter. However as the brothers' protector (having seized the elder boy at Stony Stratford and obtained the younger as 'protectorate' from his mother at Westminster), and clearly having failed to 'protect' them, he may have wished to avoid accusations of effective blame through incompetence even if the murder had been carried out by other parties. Many modern historians though, including David Starkey,[3] and Michael Hicks,[4] or writers like Alison Weir,[5] do regard Richard himself as the most likely culprit. One thing is clear: There never was a 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, though author and litigator Bertram Fields noted in his book "Royal Blood" that it did include the accusation of "shedding of Infants blood" and has speculated as to whether or not the capitalizing of the word "Infants" refers to royal status, and thus is an accusation of the Princes' murder (especially since there are no other "infants" Richard had ever been accused of killing).
James Tyrrell was an English knight who fought for the House of York on many occasions. Some, notably William Shakespeare, regard him as the most likely culprit. Tyrrell was arrested by Henry VII's forces in 1501 for supporting another Yorkist claimant to the throne. Shortly before his execution, it is said that Tyrrell admitted, under torture, to having murdered the princes at the behest of Richard III; however, no written record of such an important confession has ever been found or referred to.
Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham was Richard's right-hand man and sought personal advantage through the new king. Some, notably Paul Murray Kendall, 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 because Buckingham had taken it on himself for whatever reason to dispose of Richard's rival claimants; alternatively, he could have been acting on behalf of Henry Tudor (later to become King Henry VII). On the other hand, if Buckingham were guilty he could equally well have been acting on Richard's orders, with his rebellion coming after he became dissatisfied with Richard's treatment of him. As a descendant of Edward III, through John of Gaunt, 1st Duke of Lancaster and Thomas of Woodstock, 1st Duke of Gloucester, Buckingham may have hoped to accede to the throne himself in due course. Buckingham's guilt depends on the princes having already been dead by October 1483, since he was executed the following month. In the 1980s, within the archives of the College of Arms in London, further documentation was discovered which states that the murder was conducted "be (by) the vise of the Duke of Buckingham".[6] Another reference, surfacing this time in the Portuguese archives, states that "..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 his brother, and turned them to the Duke of Buckingham, under whose custody the said Princes were starved to death." [7] However neither document states whether Buckingham acted for himself, on Richard's orders, or in collusion with the Tudor party.
Henry VII (Henry Tudor) following his accession, proceeded to find a legal excuse to execute some of the rival claimants to the throne.[8] He married the princes' eldest sister, Elizabeth of York, to reinforce his hold on the throne, but her right to inherit depended on both her brothers being already dead. Realistically, Henry's only opportunity to murder the princes would have been after his accession in 1485. This theory leaves open the question of why the princes were not seen after 1483 and why Richard did not produce them when he was suspected of their murder.
There were subsequently a number of apparent pretenders claiming to be Prince Richard, Duke of York,[9] although there seem to have been none claiming to be Edward V. It has been suggested that this is because Edward V was well known and would have been difficult to impersonate; this would be less true of his younger brother. The best-known Pretender was Perkin Warbeck. The fact that Henry VII did not provide an official public version of the fate of the Princes, despite Warbeck's activities, until the Tyrell confession, has been interpreted as meaning either that he was unaware of the true story or that publishing it would have not been in his interests.
The Croyland Chronicle, Dominic Mancini, and Philippe de Commines all state that the rumour of the princes' death was current in England by the end of 1483. In his summary of the events of 1483, Commines says quite categorically that Richard was responsible for the murder of the princes, but of course Commines had been present at the meeting of the Estates-General of France in January 1484, when the statement was taken at face value. The other two sources do not suggest who was responsible. Only Mancini's account, written in 1483, is truly contemporary, the other two having been written three and seven years later, respectively. The Great Chronicle, compiled 30 years later from the contemporary London municipal records, says the rumour of the princes' death did not start circulating in London until after Easter of 1484. Historians have speculated, on the basis of these contemporary records, that the rumour that the princes had been murdered was deliberately created to be spread in England as an excuse for the October 1483 attempt of Henry Tudor and Buckingham to seize the throne, making Henry and Buckingham other likely suspects. However, if the princes were not already dead by the end of 1483, this of course removes any possibility that Buckingham, who was executed on 2 November 1483, could have murdered them.
The possibility of Henry Tudor (later Henry VII) being the culprit is debatable; it is said that after he became king he started the rumours that the missing princes were murdered by Richard. This may have been a plot to make Richard's loyal subjects think badly of Richard. This hints that Henry was the murderer; however, Henry became king in 1485, whereas the Princes went missing in 1483, and the only reason Henry would have had to kill them is the same reason that Richard III would have had: if they were a grave danger to the throne.
No discussion of this episode would be complete without mention of Sir James Tyrrell, the loyal servant of Richard III who is said to have confessed to the murder of the princes in 1502. Thomas More, a Tudor loyalist (and later Chancellor under Henry VIII), composed his History of King Richard III around the year 1513. He identified Tyrrell as the murderer, acting on Richard's orders, and told the story of Tyrrell's confession, which took place after he had been arrested for treason against Henry VII. The Great Chronicle of London, written around the year 1512, also identified Tyrrell.[10] Polydore Vergil, in his Anglica Historia (circa 1513), 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.[11]
In his history of King Richard, More said that the princes were smothered to death in their beds by two agents of Tyrell, Miles Forest 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.[12] Curiously, under the same Henry VIII, a documented Miles Forrest was granted King's favours as found in English historical documents: After the Dissolution, the manor of Morborne, with the house and grange of Ogerston in the same parish, lately the property of the Abbey of Crowland, was granted in 1540, with all appurtenances, to Miles Forrest, bailiff of the Abbot of Peterborough at Warmington in 1535.[13] However this was 50 years after the Battle of Bosworth Field, and 52 years after the deed was allegedly done, leading to suspicion that this Miles Forrest was not the one referred to by More, as he would by then have been into his seventies or even eighties and well past retirement. In 1513, Thomas More names his Miles Forrest as a murderer. In 1534, More fell out of favour with Henry VIII when More denied that the king was the Supreme Head of the Church of England. Henry had More beheaded in 1535. In the same year 1535 or 1540 (the above history references both dates), Henry awards the manor to Miles Forrest, the documented bailiff of the Abbot of Peterborough.
In 1674, some workmen remodelling the Tower of London dug up a wooden box containing two small human skeletons. The bones were found at the foot of a staircase, consistent with More's description of the original burial place of the princes, but not consistent with More's later claim that the bodies had been subsequently removed and buried elsewhere. They were found with "pieces of rag and velvet about them", the velvet indicating that the bodies were those of aristocrats.[14] Eventually the bones were gathered up and placed in an urn, which Charles II of England ordered interred in Westminster Abbey in the wall of the Henry VII Lady Chapel. In 1933 the bones were taken out and examined, and then replaced in the urn. 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. Examination of photographs from this exhumation indicated that the elder child was 11–13 years old and the younger was 7–11 years old.[15] It was not possible at that time to determine the sex of children's skeletons. No further scientific examination has since been conducted on the bones, which remain in Westminster Abbey, and DNA analysis, which would now determine the sex, has not therefore been attempted.
In 1789 however, 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 mysterious, unidentified children. However, no inspection or examination was carried out and the tomb was resealed.[16]