November 1, 2021 • 42 mins
Sir Thomas More’s version of what happened to the sons of Edward IV has long dominated popular understanding of it. But the conflict between the House of York and the House of Lancaster has many layers, and any account is colored by the alliances of who gave it.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy B. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. Today we
are going to talk about the Princes in the Tower,
(00:21):
which a lot of people have asked us to talk about.
This almost became part of an Unearthed episode earlier on
this year because the paper came out that argued a
direct link between Richard the Third and then the alleged murderers,
and then Sir Thomas Moore, whose account of what happened
(00:42):
has really dominated popular understanding of all this. But we've
gotten so many listener requests for a Princess in the
Tower episode that I decided I was just going to
hold onto that do a full episode about it instead
of a paragraph on Unearthed. There you go. So this
happened during the War the Roses, which started in fourteen
five and was a struggle between two rival branches of
(01:05):
the Royal House of Plantagenet in the House of York
and the House of Lancaster. Both houses used various badges,
symbols and emblems to represent themselves, and among those were
a white rose for the House of York, and a
red rose for the House of Lancaster. The name Wars
of the Roses comes from these symbols, although that term
(01:26):
was not coined until later on. One of the people
who really popularized this connection was William Shakespeare, who used
a lot of red and white roses in his plays
about this period of British history. So the Wars of
the Roses is not the only term in this episode
that was coined much much later. Another is the Princes
(01:47):
in the Tower. This nickname seems to have come into
use in the nineteenth century to refer to King Edward
the five and his brother Richard of Shrewsbury, Duke of York.
They were the sons of King Edward the Fourth of
the House of York, and they were not princes when
they were in the Tower, which we will get to.
They were also a little bit older than they look
(02:09):
in a lot of artwork. Edward was twelve and Richard
was about to turn ten, but there are some paintings
where they look more like ten and eight, or maybe
even younger than that. I was looking at one, I
was like, these two look like toddlers. Here they were
definitely not toddlers, still kids. The conflict between the Houses
(02:31):
of York and the Lancaster had been going on for
about fifteen years by the time Edward the fifth was born.
His father, Edward the fourth, had become king in fourteen
sixty one after a revolt against Lancastrian King Henry the sixth.
A strategic marriage could have given Edward the Fourth more
power and solidified his reign during this extremely turbulent time,
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and his cousin Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, tried to
negotiate a marriage to a French princess to that end,
but instead, on May one, fourteen sixty four, Edward secretly
married Elizabeth Woodville, which some sources today spell as Woodville.
Edward and Elizabeth kept this marriage secret for months, and,
(03:14):
according to documents from the time, they announced their marriage
around September of fourteen sixty four because Elizabeth was pregnant.
But if that's the case, that pregnancy did not come
to term, the couple's first child, Elizabeth of York, wasn't
born until fourteen sixty six. Regardless, as soon as words
spread about the king's secret marriage, it was extremely unpopular.
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Elizabeth was the widow of Sir John Gray, a Lancastrian
who had been killed in battle while fighting against the Yorks.
The Windville family also just did not have the kind
of power that Edward really needed. They were gentry, they
were not royalty, and they were viewed as a bunch
of scheming opportunists. Right from the beginning, there were rumors
(04:00):
that this marriage was not legal, and that any children
Edward and Elizabeth might have would have no legitimate claim
to the throne. This kind of rumor was not new.
There had been allegations that Edward himself was not legitimate.
During the Wars of the Roses, the English throne repeatedly
passed back and forth between the Yorks and the Lancasters.
(04:21):
In the late fourteen sixties, Edward lost a lot of
his more powerful supporters, including the Earl of Warwick, who
tried to imprison the king in late fourteen sixty nine
before fleeing to France. Warwick returned with the Lancastrian invasion
that was backed by King Louis the Eleventh. In October
of fourteen seventy, Henry the sixth supporters freed him from
(04:44):
the Tower of London and returned him to the throne.
Edward fled to Flanders, and Elizabeth and their children took
refuge at Westminster Abbey. At this point Edward and Elizabeth
had three daughters, Elizabeth, Mary and Cecily. But on November two,
fourteen seventy Elizabeth gave birth to another child while at
(05:05):
Westminster Abbey, and that was a son named Edward. Edward
the fourth returned from exile in fourteen seventy one. With
the help of Charles of Burgundy and Edward's brother Richard,
Duke of Gloucester, the Yorks defeated the Lancasters at the
Battle of Tewkesbury on May fourth, fourteen seventy one. Warwick
(05:25):
had already been killed at the Battle of Barnett in April,
and many of the most powerful Lancastrian leaders were killed
at Tewkesbury or were executed afterward. This included Henry the sixth,
son and heir. Henry himself was captured, returned to the
Tower of London, and then murdered there. With Edward the
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Fourth back on the throne, his son, Edward the fifth
became the Prince of Wales. Before long, the prince was
sent to Ludlow Castle to be educated and prepared to rule.
His uncle Anthony Woodville, Earl Rivers was designated as his
guardian and instructed to make sure the prince was quote virtuously,
cunningly and nightly brought up. The prince also had a doctor,
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a nurse, a daily schedule that involved lessons and exercise,
and religious observance and instruction, and quote noble stories read
to him each night as he ate his dinner. The
king and queen went on to have several more children.
Five daughters survived into adulthood. Those where Elizabeth, Cecily, and
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Catherine and bridget. A second son, Richard, was born in
fourteen seventy three and named Duke of York in fourteen
seventy four. A third son, George, followed in fourteen seventy seven,
but died when he was about to Of course, all
of the fighting between the houses of York and Lancaster
and Edward's Raine had a lot more going on than
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we can really get into here, but in terms of
the wars of the Roses, things were relatively stable from
the death of Henry the sixth until fourteen eighty three,
when King Edward the Fourth unexpectedly died after an illness.
Before his death, he named his brother Richard, Duke of
Gloucester as Lord Protector. Edward the Fourth death was announced
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on April nine, four eighty three, but he really probably
died a few days before that. It seems like Elizabeth
delayed the announcement so that she could try to secure
the Windville family's political future, one in which they would
have as much power and influence over the new king
as possible. This may have included Elizabeth even trying to
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act as regent for her twelve year old son, although
at this point in English history it would have been
a lot more common for the regent to be male.
Elizabeth sent word to her brother Anthony Widville Earl Rivers
to inform him of Edward the fourth death, and arranged
to have his son, who was now King Edward the Fifth,
brought to London for his coronation. Edward the Fifth learned
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of his father's death on April fourteen eighties read, and
he and his uncle left for London on the twenty
three after St George's Day observances, and what seems to
have been an intentional move, the Queen mother did not
notify her late husband's brother, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, of
Edward the fourth's death. This may have been because of
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her efforts to secure her family's position, or it may
have been because of longstanding deep animosity between Richard and
the Windvills. There is really a ton of backstory here,
but among other things, Richard and edwards brother George Plantagenet,
Duke of Clarence, had resented the amount of power that
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was going to the Windville family, and George's various schemes
and allegations had ultimately led to his execution in fourteen
seventy eight. That was something that Richard blamed Elizabeth for,
at least in part. Richard did not learn about his
brother's death until April twenty, likely through William Lord Hastings,
who had been at were the Fourth Chamberlain. The Duke
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immediately set off to meet up with his nephew, the King,
who was on route to London. So there are people
who believe that it was at this point, or maybe
even earlier, that Richard started plotting to take the throne
for himself. And if that's the case, he really had
to work quickly because if he was not successful before
Edward was formally crowned, it would just become a lot
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harder for him to do it, And on the other hand,
Elizabeth Woodbill was also working very quickly hoping to get
Edward crowned as soon as possible, because at this point,
Richard's role as Lord Protector was supposed to end with
his nephew's coronation, and that could potentially open the door
for the wood Fills to step in and take control.
(09:46):
So Elizabeth tried to arrange the coronation for May four,
which was less than a month after the death of
Edward the Fourth. We'll continue to untangle all of this
stuff after we first paused for a little sponsored by.
(10:09):
There are some question marks about pretty much everything we're
going to talk about for the entire rest of this episode.
For some of it, we have concrete documentation of some
basic details like X happened, and then why happened, and
then Z happened, But we don't have firsthand documentation of
people's motivations for X, Y and Z. Sometimes we don't
(10:30):
know who actually carried those things out. Sometimes accounts even
contradict on the basic facts of X, Y and Z
in general, Though most sources agree that Richard, Duke of Gloucester,
was plotting at minimum to get rid of the wib
Bill family and its influence over the king, but probably
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to steal the throne for himself. And that's not just
people like Sir Thomas Moore, whose history of King Richard
the Third has times been characterized as anti Richard propaganda.
Italian monk Dominic Mancini was in London during these events
and wrote an official report in December of four three,
one that More and other writers would not have had
(11:14):
access to. But it corroborates a lot of basic details
and reports a ton of gossip that was circulating. Yeah,
there's some questions around his account, like who all was
he talking to, what was his circle of acquaintances overwhelmingly
anti Richard, how much English did he actually know, a
lot of questions. But still we have this account that
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seems to back up a lot of the things that
lead people to conclude that Richard the Third was trying
to steal the throne. And at the same time, there's
still a lot that's open to interpretation, like, taken at
face value, a lot of Richard's actions could be interpreted
as loyal to his nephew, taking loyalty oaths, publicly bowing
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to him, allowing preparations for his coronation to go on
in an apparently pretty normal way, but a lot of
people believed that this was all a ruse to lure
the King and the people around him into a false
sense of security and to cover his own tracks. Richard,
Duke of Gloucester, arrived at Northampton on April. There he
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met up with Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, Anthony Woodville,
Earl Rivers, and Richard Gray, who was Elizabeth Woodville's son
from her first marriage. Earl Rivers had taken the young
king ahead to Stony Stratford, then doubled back to Northampton,
apparently on the pretense that Northampton didn't have suitable lodgings
to accommodate the King and his party, along with Gloucester,
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Buckingham and all their retainers. There were a lot of retainers,
a whole lot of them. The next morning, though Earl
Rivers was locked inside the end where he was staying.
This was probably under the orders of Gloucester, were Buckingham
or both of them working together. Like Gloucester, Buckingham had
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a long history with the wit Bills, including being married
to Elizabeth's sister Catherine when he was just ten or
twelve years old. He also had a very deep hatred
and distrust of the entire family. Richard, Duke of Gloucester, Henry,
Duke of Buckingham, and Richard Gray caught up with Edward
the Fifth at Stony Stratford on April, informing him that
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his uncle and others in their party had been arrested
because they were plotting against him. Edward didn't believe this
at all, saying that he trusted these men and then
he also trusted his mother. Buckingham told the young king
that he absolutely should not trust the Woodvilles. He ordered
Edwards escort to return home, then arrested the king's half brother,
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Richard Gray, in front of him. Some accounts described the
king as being arrested or captured at this point as well,
and one of those is that of Dominic Mancini. But
Mancini also seems to have misunderstood or mistaken at le
part of the situation here, because he describes Edward's brother
Richard as being arrested at Stony Stratford as well, but
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at that point Richard was still at Westminster Abbey with
his mother. It also doesn't seem like Edward thought he
was a captive. At this point, he wrote a letter
to the Archbishop of Canterbury instructing him to safeguard the
Great Seal of the Realm and to safeguard their tour
of London and the treasure there. It's within the realm
of possibility that Edward was coerced into writing this letter,
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or that it was forged, or that he wrote it
believing that he was in danger, But it doesn't really
read as though he thought he was a captive. As
all of this was happening, though, Elizabeth Woodville took refuge
in Westminster Abbey with her children and an entourage. Sometimes
this is described as a flight for her life, and
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at minimum it would have been clear to her at
this point, especially if she had heard about the arrests
of her kim folk, that her efforts to put the
Whodville familyly in an advantageous position were crumbling. Gloucester, Buckingham
and King Edward the Fifth continued on to London, and
once they got there, Edward was taken to the Bishop
of London's palace, where he stayed for several days. His
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uncle Richard repeated his oaths of fealty to the King
and was formally acknowledged as Lord Protector. Preparations continued for
edwards coronation, and the Great Council discussed where the King
should stay until the coronation took place. While his mother
had tried to arrange a coronation for May, the final
date had been set for late June to coincide with
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the feast of the Nativity of St John the Baptist.
The final decision for the king's lodgings in the interim,
which was suggested by the Duke of Buckingham and agreed
to by the whole Council, was to send Edward to
the Tower of London. Okay, that sounds incredibly suspicious to
a modern ear because during the Tutor era the Tower
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of London became notorious primary only as a prison. We've
talked about various people's being imprisoned in the Tower on
the show before, including Sir Walter Raleigh, and just in
this episode, we've talked about King Henry the sixth being
imprisoned in the Tower two different times. And while the
Tower did have a prison in the fifteenth century, at
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that point it was also a royal residence. Buckingham Palace
did not exist yet and would not be built for
almost another two hundred fifty years. So, in addition to
the fortress and prison, the Tower of London was a
place where royals would go stay. It was a palace
complete with the luxury accommodations that were routinely in use
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by people of their station. This is also a place
that Edward probably would have already been familiar with, since
his father had frequently held court there. Monarchs stayed in
the tower for at least the night before their coronation,
and their coronation procession started at the tower, so when
Edward the Fifth first went to the Tower, it was
to the royal residence and aunt the prison. The Duke
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of Buckingham also started trying to convince the Queen Mother
to send Richard of Shrewsbury, Duke of York, to the
Tower as well. There were several arguments for her to
do this. Richard could be a source of comfort and
companionship for his older brother, although since Richard had mostly
lived in London and Edward had mostly lived at Ludlow Castle,
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they really might not have known each other all that well.
Richard was also now next in line for the throne,
and the Tower was regarded as one of the safest
places to be, and it would have been considered strange
or even scandalous if Richard didn't attend his brother Edward's coronation,
so taking him to the tower ahead of time when
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his mother would not be able to keep him with
her at Westminster Abbey, or to try to use him
as some kind of bargaining ship, or maybe Buckingham just
wanted both of them to be in the tower at
the same time to make it easier to kill them.
So many possibilities. As Buckingham was trying to convince Elizabeth
to send Richard to the tower, plans for edwards coronation
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were carrying on, and that was now scheduled for June.
Rits were issued for the first Parliament that would assemble
under the new king to meet on June. Young men
who were eligible for knighthood were summoned to London as
well so that they could be knighted at the coronation.
But then in early June all those plans apparently went
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out the window when it was alleged that the marriage
of the late King Edward the Fourth to Elizabeth Woodville
had not been legal because he was already married to
Eleanor Talbot, the widow of Sir Thomas Butler. This information
may have come from Robert Stillington, Bishop of Bath and Wells,
who reportedly had performed that earlier marriage. Eleanor had died
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before Edward the five was born, but that did not
matter since she had still been living when Edward the
fourth had married Elizabeth. The most likely time for the
bishop to have delivered this information was at a Royal
Council meeting that happened on June eight, but reports of
that meeting said there was nothing significant and an allegation
that the king's marriage had been illegal and that consequently
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his son, whose coronation was weeks away, had no claim
to the throne. That definitely would have been categorized as
significant yeah the so this bishop would have been in
London for the coronation. The Bishop of Bath and Wells
was typically one of the bishops who escorted the new monarch,
and as a bishop, he was also a member of Parliament.
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Parliament had been summoned, but there are questions on why
he would have chosen this particular moment to share this information,
rather than, for example, when Edward the Fifth had been born.
There as some suspicion that Edward the fourth had even
tried to buy the bishop's silence by making him a
bishop in the first place. He had been a canon
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when this marriage to Eleanor Butler had allegedly been performed,
and then Bath and Wells was the first English bishopric
to open up after edwards marriage to Elizabeth was first announced.
There's this idea that maybe he was like, if you
keep your mouth shut about that time you married me
to a different lady, you get to be a bishop
right now. It's all very speculative, but there are also
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questions about whether this marriage story is even true. At
the time, it was common for couples to do what
is known as a pre contract before witnesses. They would
promise to get married, and then afterward they would consummate
the marriage. This was regarded as essentially the same as
a marriage, even though it had not been formalized in
a church. Some sources describe edwards purported marriage to Eleanor
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as a pre contract only, but a number of contemporary
sources flatly disbelieved this entire thing and dismissed it as
something that Richard had made up to undermine his nephew Laura.
Really this would be the sort of issue that would
be taken up before Parliament, but because the new king
had not been crowned yet, a formal parliament could not
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be convened. Instead, the Estates of the Realm met. This
was basically the same people, but not a formal parliament.
In mid June, the Estates of the Realm concluded that
Edward the Fifth was not the legitimate king, and they
offered the crown instead to Richard, Duke of Gloucester. This
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was not unanimous, though not within the Estates of the
Realm or with him the Royal Council. The Royal Council split,
with the Duke of Buckingham and others who supported Richard
meeting with him in secret, and the rest of the
Council meeting at Westminster. Immediately. At least some of the
council meeting at Westminster were convinced that Gloucester's private meetings
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involved a plot against the king. William Lord Hastings had
continued to back Edward as King and his uncle Richard
as Lord Protector only, and during all of this he
and several other men armed themselves and went to one
of these secret council meetings, Hastings reportedly attacked Richard, who
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hadn't yet accepted the crown and was still technically considered
the Duke of Gloucester. Hastings was arrested and almost immediately beheaded.
Hastings beheading seems to have been what convinced the public
of London that the Duke of Gloucester was trying to
steal the throne. Elizabeth finally agreed to send her younger
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son to the Tower of London, and he arrived there
on June six, and there are still questions about why,
since she and her children were safe in Westminster Abbey.
While there are some people who argued that she only
would have sent her son away if she thought it
was safe to do so, others describe her as under siege,
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with the Duke of Buckingham threatening to remove Richard by
force if she did not comply. And June, the Duke
of Gloucester issued rits canceling the parliament that was supposed
to convene on June. Then on June, which was supposed
to have been coronation day, Londoners instead heard sermons that
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attacked Edwards claim to the throne as illegitimate. On June,
Anthony Woodbill, Earl Rivers, Richard Gray and others who had
been part of their party to London were all beheaded,
and on June Richard, Duke of Gloucester was proclaimed to
be King. Richard the third. Let's take a sponsor break.
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Let's do We said at the top of the show
that the princes in the Tower, in spite of almost
ubiquitously being called the princes in the Tower, at this point,
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we're not princes. When he first arrived at the Tower,
Edward the fifth was king. His reign as king lasted
from April ninth to June three, and when his brother
Richard arrived, he was the Duke of York and Edwards
air presumptive. He hadn't formally been crowned as a prince
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that I know of at this point. Once Richard the
third was proclaimed king, though the boys were not kings
or princes, they were commoners. Formal records from the time
often nod to Edward's status with titles like read us
best artie. We really don't know what happened to them
in the tower. According to the Kroland Chronicle Continuations, written
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around April of fourteen six the boys stayed there quote
under certain guard. The Great Chronicle of London contains the
last written reference to anyone seeing the two boys. They
were shooting bows and arrows and playing in the garden
quote at sundry times ending June sixteenth. But once they
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were considered commoners, they would have been moved from the
royal residence to some other location. They weren't royals anymore.
Dominic Mancini wrote that the boys were quote withdrawn to
the inner apartments of the tower proper, and day by
day began to be seen more rarely behind the bars
and windows, until at length they ceased to appear altogether.
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Already there is a suspicion that they have been done
away with. Mancini also describes Edward as confessing and doing
penance daily, as though he thought that his death was eminent.
King Richard the third was crowned on julyie, and there
are some references to an attempt to get the boys
out of the tower after he left London on his
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royal tour, but sources contradict as to whether these plans
were carried out, or if they were, whether they were successful.
It does seem like people believe that at least one
of the boys was still alive when Richard left, though,
but as that account from Mancini suggests, rumors started to
spread really quickly that they had been killed, and in
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the subsequent decades people reported that they had heard that
the boys had died pretty much by every possible means, smothering, poisoning, stabbing, drowning, starving, and,
according to ruy de Susa of Portugal, bled into a
body of water that passed through the fort where they
were being held until they died. Sometime after the last
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report of Edward and Richard being spotted outside the tower,
their mother and the rest of her children left Westminster Abbey.
She seemed to endorse Richard the third is King, possibly
because he had promised to arrange the most advantageous marriages
possible for her daughters. In fourteen four, Parliament passed an
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act called Titulus Reggius, which formally recognized Richard the third
and laired the children of Edward the fourth and Elizabeth
Wouldville to be illegitimate. It cited several reasons, including edwards
pre contract to another woman, the fact that the marriage
was secret and without the consent of the lords of
the land, and because Elizabeth and her family had used
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sorcery to entrap the king. Sure, sure, um, that's how
that works. Of course, Richard the third was not king
for long. His opponents characterized him as scheming and cruel,
the kind of person who would murder his own nephews
children just to take the throne for himself. Richard's only
son died in fourteen eighty four and his wife the
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following year, and the Duke of Buckingham turned against him.
Yorkists invaded England with the help of French and Scottish mercenaries,
and Richard was killed at the Battle of bosworth Field
on August five. Succeeding him as king was Henry Tudor,
also known as King Henry the seventh. He was the
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last surviving man of the Lancastrian line, and he married
a york That was Elizabeth of York, the oldest sister
of Edward. The five people who thought Richard the third
was a usurper already really thought Elizabeth was the rightful queen,
so Henry's marrying her tightened his claim to the throne.
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In fact, there had been some discussion, some frankly pretty
gross discussion that Richard the third had thought about marrying
his niece himself for the same reason after his wife died,
or maybe even before. But Henry could not marry Elizabeth
if she was considered illegitimate, so he had to get
Parliament to repeal the Titulus Reggius, and after they did,
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Henry also ordered all previous copies of Titulus Reggius to
be destroyed, and for a time the text of that
document was lost until it was rediscovered in the Crowland Chronicle,
one of those chroniclers had copied it in there. It
does not appear that Henry launched any kind of investigation
into what had happened to the princess in the tower
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or into Richard's actions in fourteen eight three, possibly because
such an investigation would have unearthed information that would have
undermined Henry's own claim to the throne. But it was
during the reigns of Henry the seventh and Henry the
eight that people started printing more specific accounts of what
had happened in the Tower, including naming names. In the
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sixteenth century Anglica Historia, Italian politary Virgil wrote that Richard
the third had ordered Robert Brackenbury, Constable of the Tower,
to kill Edward the fifth and his brother. When Breckenbury
did not, Richard told Sir James Terrell to do it.
In Fabian's chronicle, Robert Fabian, who died in fifteen twelve,
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also named Terrell or possibly another servant of the king.
By this point Sir James Terrell was dead. He had
been convicted of treason and executed in fifteen o two.
I had a whole explanation of what happened in here,
but it was very long. Terrell reportedly confessed to killing
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Edward and Richards sometime between his conviction on May second
and his execution on May six, but no copy of
this purported confession exists anywhere. The first really specific account
of the boy's deaths was in the History of Richard
the Third by Sir Thomas Moore, secretary and adviser to
Henry the eight. More wrote that Richard the third had
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the boy shut up, removing everyone from them except a
servant called black will or William Slaughter. In his words,
they quote lingered in thought and heaviness till this traitorous
death delivered them of that wretchedness. For Sir James Terrell
devised that they should be murdered in their beds to
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that execution, whereof he appointed Miles Forest, one of the
four that kept them, a fellow fleshed in order before
time to him, he joined one John Dighton, his own horsekeeper,
a big, broad, square, strong nave. This is one of
those very old documents that writes the word murder like murther,
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which I always love. It's so good, and we could
get into a hall of conversation about how that linguistic
transition happened, but we've got more to this show to
go on. More goes on to say that at about midnight,
Forest and Dighton came into the boy's room, wrapped them
in their bedclothes, and smothered them with their feather beds
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and pillows. Once Terrell had confirmed that they were dead,
he quote caused those murderers to bury them at the
stairfoot meatly deep in the ground under a heap of stones.
More goes on to say that Richard the Third was
brought to the scene and ordered their bodies moved to
a better place because they were sons of a king,
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before adding sarcastically, quote low the heart courage of a king,
for he would recompense the detestable murder with a solemn obloquy.
Of course, William Shakespeare, writing during the reign of Queen
Elizabeth the First, used Moore's work as a major source
for his play Richard the Third, which depicts Richard ordering
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Terrell to carry out the crime, and Terrell returning afterwards saying, quote,
the tyranness and bloody deed is done, the most arch
of piteous massacre that every yet this land was guilty
of Dighton and Forest, whom I did suburn to do
this ruthless piece of butchery. Although they were fleshed villains,
bloody dogs, melting with tenderness and kind compassion, wept like
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two children in their death sad stories. Of course, the
tutors had very good reasons to want Richard the Third
to look like a usurper, because otherwise Henry the seventh
had forced a legitimate king off the throne. So at
this point it is generally but universally believed that Edward
the five and his brother Richard died at the Tower
(33:04):
of London by the end of three and this idea
that Richard the Third ordered James Terrell to kill them.
That's pretty widespread, but Richard the Third definitely isn't the
only suspect. Another is Henry Stafford, second Duke of Buckingham,
who came up a lot in this episode. In this idea,
he would have been trying to ingratiate himself to Richard
(33:27):
and to protect Richard's claim to the throne. Another is
John Howard, Duke of Norfolk, who became Lord High Steward
under Richard the Third pretty much with similar reasoning. But
Richard the Third is not the only monarch who stood
to benefit from Edward and his brother being out of
the picture. The other is actually Henry the seven. Making
(33:47):
Elizabeth of York legitimate so he can marry her would
have made Edward and Richard legitimate as well, so if
they were still alive, Henry would have no real claim
to the throne. So there are people who think the
boys lived in the tower for a couple of years,
hidden away, until Henry the seventh had them killed so
that he could become king. Other people interpret this more
(34:10):
as just confirmation that they were definitely dead by this point.
There are also, though, people who believed that at least
one of the boys lived for much longer, and people
who claimed that they were one of them. A man
named Lambert Simnel, who pretended to be the son of
George Plantagenet, first Duke of Clarence, had originally planned to
(34:30):
claim that he was Richard, Duke of York. Then in
fourteen ninety a man calling himself Richard of England made
this same claim, and this could really be its own episode.
This man called Perkin Warbeck, convinced a number of very
powerful people, including James the Fourth of Scotland and Holy
Roman Emperor Maximilian the First, that he really was Richard,
(34:52):
Duke of York. He eventually confessed to being an impostor.
Though yeah, we actually did an episode on Perkin Warbeck
on Criminilia in our Impostors season. Oh nice, I was
wondering that, and I forgot to ask, oh, yes, that's
a rich impostor story. So there is also a burial
record in Kent for a Richard Plantagenet dated from December
(35:14):
twenty two, fifteen fifty. Elizabeth Woodville had a cousin living
not far from the burial site, so some people have
interpreted this to mean that Richard, Duke of York somehow
escaped the tower, perhaps while Richard the Third was on
that royal tour and secretly lived out the rest of
his life with his mother's kin. On July seventeen, sixteen
(35:36):
seventy four, human remains were found in a chest under
a stone staircase outside the White Tower at the Tower
of London during some renovations that had been ordered by
Charles the second. People who examined these remains concluded that
they belonged to two people who were about eleven and
thirteen years old. John Knight, chief surgeon to the King,
(35:57):
concluded that they were indeed Edward the fifth and Richard
of Shrewsbury, Duke of York. These remains were put on
display before being placed in Henry the seventh Lady Chapel
at Westminster Abbey in an urn designed by Sir Christopher
wren So. Bones of children under a staircase, just like
Sir Thomas Moore said, but More had also written that
(36:20):
Richard the third had ordered the bodies moved to a
more suitable location, and these were not the first bones
found at the Tower of London suspected of being Edward
the fifth and his brother. Other bones were unearthed at
the tower in sixteen ten, sixty two and sixteen forty seven.
Pretty Much every time anyone found a smallish set of
(36:42):
remains in the tower, people immediately thought that it was
the prince's, including one time when it turned out to
have been an ape that had escaped from the Royal menagerie.
It's also not clear what happened to these earlier finds
and whether any of them were the same bones later
found under the staircase. In nineteen thirty three, Lawrence E. Tanner,
(37:02):
keeper of the Muniments and Librarian of Westminster Abbey, and
anatomist William Wright, dean of the London Hospital Medical College,
opened up the urn. They examined the bones and published
their findings as recent investigations regarding the fate of the
princes in the Tower in the journal Archaeologia. Dentist George
(37:24):
Northcroft had also examined the teeth to try to determine
the age of the people whose bones they were, and
they concluded that, along with a lot of other random
animal bones that were in there, there were two sets
of human bones in the urn, or belonging to children
of the right ages to be the princess in the tower.
Although this sounds pretty conclusive, this investigation was not particularly thorough.
(37:47):
It seems in a lot of ways to have been
intended to confirm that these were the princes and not
to like, actually find the truth of the situation. It
definitely didn't follow methods or use technologies that would be
in use today. In twenty eighteen, Dr John ashdown Hill
traced the mitochondrial DNA line of the Princes in the Tower.
Ashdown Hill's earlier work had been part of the identification
(38:09):
of the remains of Richard the third. This made news
in shortly after ashdown Hill's death. This work could be
used to confirm whether the bones from the urn at
Westminster Abbey, or any other bones that might be dug up,
really belonged to Edward the fifth and his brother. And
as for that paper we mentioned up at the top
of the show that was more on a murder, the
(38:31):
deaths of the Princes in the Tower and historiographical implications
for the regimes of Henry the seventh and Henry the eighth,
That was by Tim Thornton, published in the January edition
of the journal History. Thornton argues that two men named
Edward and Miles Forest were the sons of the Miles
Forest that Sir Thomas Moore had named as one of
(38:53):
the murderers. According to Thornton, More would have known both
Edward and the younger Miles Forest. Edward was a servant
of Henry the Eighth's bed chamber, and the younger Miles
was an advisor to Cardinal Woolsey and a messenger between
Henry the Eighth court and the embassy in Bruges, where
Moore was working. It's also possible that John Dighton was
(39:17):
living in Calais while Moore was also there, so More
may have known Dighton as well. If Thornton is correct
in these identifications, then Thomas Moore may have personally known
the sons of one of the alleged killers, and possibly
one of the alleged killers himself. So it's possible that
Moore's account included details he learned directly from them. That
(39:40):
still leaves some unanswered questions, though, like if you or
your father had murdered the King of England, why would
you tell Sir Thomas More about it? I do wonder
and unburdening. Perhaps I have a very quick piece of
listener mail to take us out of this episode. And
now that we have gone through this whole recording and
(40:02):
hopefully caught all the times where I typed the word
Richard when I meant the word Edward or vice versa,
this email seems particularly appropriate because it is about confusing
names in our Unearthed episode recently. This is from Gray. Uh.
Gray's email is titled correction Unearthed Columbian Harmony Cemetery and
(40:24):
it says prefacing this with all the love and devotion,
but wanted to let you know there was a tiny
mistake in the most recent Unearthed episode. The Colombian Harmony
Cemetery stones are being relocated from King George County, Virginia,
where they were found in the river bank, to a
memorial park across the Potomac River in landover Prince George's County, Maryland.
(40:49):
To make it even more confusing, there is a Prince
George County no apostrophe s in Virginia near Petersburg, which
is the home of the Tombstone House. All the best,
Great Gray sent a couple of links, one an article
from CNN about the gravestones and another an Atlas Obscure
piece about the Tombstone House. Uh. This made me laugh.
(41:12):
Even before we recorded this episode and kept just messing
up Richard and Edward all over the place. Um, partly
because when I previously used to live in Somerville, Massachusetts,
I lived on a street where the street crossed the
city line into Cambridge. Uh and had the house the
same house numbers on either side. UM. And boy did
(41:36):
that confuse people visiting us, people delivering food? Uh, not
so much the mail carrier. The mail carrier knew what
was that that. Uh? But you know more, Uh, overnight
deliveries were often overnight it to the other city. Uh.
And this just reminded me of all that. So thank
(41:56):
you Gray. I think I just sort of conflated mull
comple things when I was writing up that installment into unearthed.
If you would like to write to us about this
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(42:17):
the I heart radio app and wherever else you like
to get your podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class
is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts,
from I heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy B. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. Today we
are going to talk about the Princes in the Tower,
(00:21):
which a lot of people have asked us to talk about.
This almost became part of an Unearthed episode earlier on
this year because the paper came out that argued a
direct link between Richard the Third and then the alleged murderers,
and then Sir Thomas Moore, whose account of what happened
(00:42):
has really dominated popular understanding of all this. But we've
gotten so many listener requests for a Princess in the
Tower episode that I decided I was just going to
hold onto that do a full episode about it instead
of a paragraph on Unearthed. There you go. So this
happened during the War the Roses, which started in fourteen
five and was a struggle between two rival branches of
(01:05):
the Royal House of Plantagenet in the House of York
and the House of Lancaster. Both houses used various badges,
symbols and emblems to represent themselves, and among those were
a white rose for the House of York, and a
red rose for the House of Lancaster. The name Wars
of the Roses comes from these symbols, although that term
(01:26):
was not coined until later on. One of the people
who really popularized this connection was William Shakespeare, who used
a lot of red and white roses in his plays
about this period of British history. So the Wars of
the Roses is not the only term in this episode
that was coined much much later. Another is the Princes
(01:47):
in the Tower. This nickname seems to have come into
use in the nineteenth century to refer to King Edward
the five and his brother Richard of Shrewsbury, Duke of York.
They were the sons of King Edward the Fourth of
the House of York, and they were not princes when
they were in the Tower, which we will get to.
They were also a little bit older than they look
(02:09):
in a lot of artwork. Edward was twelve and Richard
was about to turn ten, but there are some paintings
where they look more like ten and eight, or maybe
even younger than that. I was looking at one, I
was like, these two look like toddlers. Here they were
definitely not toddlers, still kids. The conflict between the Houses
(02:31):
of York and the Lancaster had been going on for
about fifteen years by the time Edward the fifth was born.
His father, Edward the fourth, had become king in fourteen
sixty one after a revolt against Lancastrian King Henry the sixth.
A strategic marriage could have given Edward the Fourth more
power and solidified his reign during this extremely turbulent time,
(02:52):
and his cousin Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, tried to
negotiate a marriage to a French princess to that end,
but instead, on May one, fourteen sixty four, Edward secretly
married Elizabeth Woodville, which some sources today spell as Woodville.
Edward and Elizabeth kept this marriage secret for months, and,
(03:14):
according to documents from the time, they announced their marriage
around September of fourteen sixty four because Elizabeth was pregnant.
But if that's the case, that pregnancy did not come
to term, the couple's first child, Elizabeth of York, wasn't
born until fourteen sixty six. Regardless, as soon as words
spread about the king's secret marriage, it was extremely unpopular.
(03:39):
Elizabeth was the widow of Sir John Gray, a Lancastrian
who had been killed in battle while fighting against the Yorks.
The Windville family also just did not have the kind
of power that Edward really needed. They were gentry, they
were not royalty, and they were viewed as a bunch
of scheming opportunists. Right from the beginning, there were rumors
(04:00):
that this marriage was not legal, and that any children
Edward and Elizabeth might have would have no legitimate claim
to the throne. This kind of rumor was not new.
There had been allegations that Edward himself was not legitimate.
During the Wars of the Roses, the English throne repeatedly
passed back and forth between the Yorks and the Lancasters.
(04:21):
In the late fourteen sixties, Edward lost a lot of
his more powerful supporters, including the Earl of Warwick, who
tried to imprison the king in late fourteen sixty nine
before fleeing to France. Warwick returned with the Lancastrian invasion
that was backed by King Louis the Eleventh. In October
of fourteen seventy, Henry the sixth supporters freed him from
(04:44):
the Tower of London and returned him to the throne.
Edward fled to Flanders, and Elizabeth and their children took
refuge at Westminster Abbey. At this point Edward and Elizabeth
had three daughters, Elizabeth, Mary and Cecily. But on November two,
fourteen seventy Elizabeth gave birth to another child while at
(05:05):
Westminster Abbey, and that was a son named Edward. Edward
the fourth returned from exile in fourteen seventy one. With
the help of Charles of Burgundy and Edward's brother Richard,
Duke of Gloucester, the Yorks defeated the Lancasters at the
Battle of Tewkesbury on May fourth, fourteen seventy one. Warwick
(05:25):
had already been killed at the Battle of Barnett in April,
and many of the most powerful Lancastrian leaders were killed
at Tewkesbury or were executed afterward. This included Henry the sixth,
son and heir. Henry himself was captured, returned to the
Tower of London, and then murdered there. With Edward the
(05:45):
Fourth back on the throne, his son, Edward the fifth
became the Prince of Wales. Before long, the prince was
sent to Ludlow Castle to be educated and prepared to rule.
His uncle Anthony Woodville, Earl Rivers was designated as his
guardian and instructed to make sure the prince was quote virtuously,
cunningly and nightly brought up. The prince also had a doctor,
(06:09):
a nurse, a daily schedule that involved lessons and exercise,
and religious observance and instruction, and quote noble stories read
to him each night as he ate his dinner. The
king and queen went on to have several more children.
Five daughters survived into adulthood. Those where Elizabeth, Cecily, and
(06:29):
Catherine and bridget. A second son, Richard, was born in
fourteen seventy three and named Duke of York in fourteen
seventy four. A third son, George, followed in fourteen seventy seven,
but died when he was about to Of course, all
of the fighting between the houses of York and Lancaster
and Edward's Raine had a lot more going on than
(06:51):
we can really get into here, but in terms of
the wars of the Roses, things were relatively stable from
the death of Henry the sixth until fourteen eighty three,
when King Edward the Fourth unexpectedly died after an illness.
Before his death, he named his brother Richard, Duke of
Gloucester as Lord Protector. Edward the Fourth death was announced
(07:13):
on April nine, four eighty three, but he really probably
died a few days before that. It seems like Elizabeth
delayed the announcement so that she could try to secure
the Windville family's political future, one in which they would
have as much power and influence over the new king
as possible. This may have included Elizabeth even trying to
(07:34):
act as regent for her twelve year old son, although
at this point in English history it would have been
a lot more common for the regent to be male.
Elizabeth sent word to her brother Anthony Widville Earl Rivers
to inform him of Edward the fourth death, and arranged
to have his son, who was now King Edward the Fifth,
brought to London for his coronation. Edward the Fifth learned
(07:57):
of his father's death on April fourteen eighties read, and
he and his uncle left for London on the twenty
three after St George's Day observances, and what seems to
have been an intentional move, the Queen mother did not
notify her late husband's brother, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, of
Edward the fourth's death. This may have been because of
(08:19):
her efforts to secure her family's position, or it may
have been because of longstanding deep animosity between Richard and
the Windvills. There is really a ton of backstory here,
but among other things, Richard and edwards brother George Plantagenet,
Duke of Clarence, had resented the amount of power that
(08:39):
was going to the Windville family, and George's various schemes
and allegations had ultimately led to his execution in fourteen
seventy eight. That was something that Richard blamed Elizabeth for,
at least in part. Richard did not learn about his
brother's death until April twenty, likely through William Lord Hastings,
who had been at were the Fourth Chamberlain. The Duke
(09:02):
immediately set off to meet up with his nephew, the King,
who was on route to London. So there are people
who believe that it was at this point, or maybe
even earlier, that Richard started plotting to take the throne
for himself. And if that's the case, he really had
to work quickly because if he was not successful before
Edward was formally crowned, it would just become a lot
(09:25):
harder for him to do it, And on the other hand,
Elizabeth Woodbill was also working very quickly hoping to get
Edward crowned as soon as possible, because at this point,
Richard's role as Lord Protector was supposed to end with
his nephew's coronation, and that could potentially open the door
for the wood Fills to step in and take control.
(09:46):
So Elizabeth tried to arrange the coronation for May four,
which was less than a month after the death of
Edward the Fourth. We'll continue to untangle all of this
stuff after we first paused for a little sponsored by.
(10:09):
There are some question marks about pretty much everything we're
going to talk about for the entire rest of this episode.
For some of it, we have concrete documentation of some
basic details like X happened, and then why happened, and
then Z happened, But we don't have firsthand documentation of
people's motivations for X, Y and Z. Sometimes we don't
(10:30):
know who actually carried those things out. Sometimes accounts even
contradict on the basic facts of X, Y and Z
in general, Though most sources agree that Richard, Duke of Gloucester,
was plotting at minimum to get rid of the wib
Bill family and its influence over the king, but probably
(10:51):
to steal the throne for himself. And that's not just
people like Sir Thomas Moore, whose history of King Richard
the Third has times been characterized as anti Richard propaganda.
Italian monk Dominic Mancini was in London during these events
and wrote an official report in December of four three,
one that More and other writers would not have had
(11:14):
access to. But it corroborates a lot of basic details
and reports a ton of gossip that was circulating. Yeah,
there's some questions around his account, like who all was
he talking to, what was his circle of acquaintances overwhelmingly
anti Richard, how much English did he actually know, a
lot of questions. But still we have this account that
(11:37):
seems to back up a lot of the things that
lead people to conclude that Richard the Third was trying
to steal the throne. And at the same time, there's
still a lot that's open to interpretation, like, taken at
face value, a lot of Richard's actions could be interpreted
as loyal to his nephew, taking loyalty oaths, publicly bowing
(11:57):
to him, allowing preparations for his coronation to go on
in an apparently pretty normal way, but a lot of
people believed that this was all a ruse to lure
the King and the people around him into a false
sense of security and to cover his own tracks. Richard,
Duke of Gloucester, arrived at Northampton on April. There he
(12:19):
met up with Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, Anthony Woodville,
Earl Rivers, and Richard Gray, who was Elizabeth Woodville's son
from her first marriage. Earl Rivers had taken the young
king ahead to Stony Stratford, then doubled back to Northampton,
apparently on the pretense that Northampton didn't have suitable lodgings
to accommodate the King and his party, along with Gloucester,
(12:42):
Buckingham and all their retainers. There were a lot of retainers,
a whole lot of them. The next morning, though Earl
Rivers was locked inside the end where he was staying.
This was probably under the orders of Gloucester, were Buckingham
or both of them working together. Like Gloucester, Buckingham had
(13:02):
a long history with the wit Bills, including being married
to Elizabeth's sister Catherine when he was just ten or
twelve years old. He also had a very deep hatred
and distrust of the entire family. Richard, Duke of Gloucester, Henry,
Duke of Buckingham, and Richard Gray caught up with Edward
the Fifth at Stony Stratford on April, informing him that
(13:23):
his uncle and others in their party had been arrested
because they were plotting against him. Edward didn't believe this
at all, saying that he trusted these men and then
he also trusted his mother. Buckingham told the young king
that he absolutely should not trust the Woodvilles. He ordered
Edwards escort to return home, then arrested the king's half brother,
(13:45):
Richard Gray, in front of him. Some accounts described the
king as being arrested or captured at this point as well,
and one of those is that of Dominic Mancini. But
Mancini also seems to have misunderstood or mistaken at le
part of the situation here, because he describes Edward's brother
Richard as being arrested at Stony Stratford as well, but
(14:08):
at that point Richard was still at Westminster Abbey with
his mother. It also doesn't seem like Edward thought he
was a captive. At this point, he wrote a letter
to the Archbishop of Canterbury instructing him to safeguard the
Great Seal of the Realm and to safeguard their tour
of London and the treasure there. It's within the realm
of possibility that Edward was coerced into writing this letter,
(14:30):
or that it was forged, or that he wrote it
believing that he was in danger, But it doesn't really
read as though he thought he was a captive. As
all of this was happening, though, Elizabeth Woodville took refuge
in Westminster Abbey with her children and an entourage. Sometimes
this is described as a flight for her life, and
(14:51):
at minimum it would have been clear to her at
this point, especially if she had heard about the arrests
of her kim folk, that her efforts to put the
Whodville familyly in an advantageous position were crumbling. Gloucester, Buckingham
and King Edward the Fifth continued on to London, and
once they got there, Edward was taken to the Bishop
of London's palace, where he stayed for several days. His
(15:14):
uncle Richard repeated his oaths of fealty to the King
and was formally acknowledged as Lord Protector. Preparations continued for
edwards coronation, and the Great Council discussed where the King
should stay until the coronation took place. While his mother
had tried to arrange a coronation for May, the final
date had been set for late June to coincide with
(15:36):
the feast of the Nativity of St John the Baptist.
The final decision for the king's lodgings in the interim,
which was suggested by the Duke of Buckingham and agreed
to by the whole Council, was to send Edward to
the Tower of London. Okay, that sounds incredibly suspicious to
a modern ear because during the Tutor era the Tower
(15:57):
of London became notorious primary only as a prison. We've
talked about various people's being imprisoned in the Tower on
the show before, including Sir Walter Raleigh, and just in
this episode, we've talked about King Henry the sixth being
imprisoned in the Tower two different times. And while the
Tower did have a prison in the fifteenth century, at
(16:18):
that point it was also a royal residence. Buckingham Palace
did not exist yet and would not be built for
almost another two hundred fifty years. So, in addition to
the fortress and prison, the Tower of London was a
place where royals would go stay. It was a palace
complete with the luxury accommodations that were routinely in use
(16:39):
by people of their station. This is also a place
that Edward probably would have already been familiar with, since
his father had frequently held court there. Monarchs stayed in
the tower for at least the night before their coronation,
and their coronation procession started at the tower, so when
Edward the Fifth first went to the Tower, it was
to the royal residence and aunt the prison. The Duke
(17:02):
of Buckingham also started trying to convince the Queen Mother
to send Richard of Shrewsbury, Duke of York, to the
Tower as well. There were several arguments for her to
do this. Richard could be a source of comfort and
companionship for his older brother, although since Richard had mostly
lived in London and Edward had mostly lived at Ludlow Castle,
(17:24):
they really might not have known each other all that well.
Richard was also now next in line for the throne,
and the Tower was regarded as one of the safest
places to be, and it would have been considered strange
or even scandalous if Richard didn't attend his brother Edward's coronation,
so taking him to the tower ahead of time when
(17:45):
his mother would not be able to keep him with
her at Westminster Abbey, or to try to use him
as some kind of bargaining ship, or maybe Buckingham just
wanted both of them to be in the tower at
the same time to make it easier to kill them.
So many possibilities. As Buckingham was trying to convince Elizabeth
to send Richard to the tower, plans for edwards coronation
(18:07):
were carrying on, and that was now scheduled for June.
Rits were issued for the first Parliament that would assemble
under the new king to meet on June. Young men
who were eligible for knighthood were summoned to London as
well so that they could be knighted at the coronation.
But then in early June all those plans apparently went
(18:27):
out the window when it was alleged that the marriage
of the late King Edward the Fourth to Elizabeth Woodville
had not been legal because he was already married to
Eleanor Talbot, the widow of Sir Thomas Butler. This information
may have come from Robert Stillington, Bishop of Bath and Wells,
who reportedly had performed that earlier marriage. Eleanor had died
(18:52):
before Edward the five was born, but that did not
matter since she had still been living when Edward the
fourth had married Elizabeth. The most likely time for the
bishop to have delivered this information was at a Royal
Council meeting that happened on June eight, but reports of
that meeting said there was nothing significant and an allegation
that the king's marriage had been illegal and that consequently
(19:15):
his son, whose coronation was weeks away, had no claim
to the throne. That definitely would have been categorized as
significant yeah the so this bishop would have been in
London for the coronation. The Bishop of Bath and Wells
was typically one of the bishops who escorted the new monarch,
and as a bishop, he was also a member of Parliament.
(19:35):
Parliament had been summoned, but there are questions on why
he would have chosen this particular moment to share this information,
rather than, for example, when Edward the Fifth had been born.
There as some suspicion that Edward the fourth had even
tried to buy the bishop's silence by making him a
bishop in the first place. He had been a canon
(19:57):
when this marriage to Eleanor Butler had allegedly been performed,
and then Bath and Wells was the first English bishopric
to open up after edwards marriage to Elizabeth was first announced.
There's this idea that maybe he was like, if you
keep your mouth shut about that time you married me
to a different lady, you get to be a bishop
right now. It's all very speculative, but there are also
(20:22):
questions about whether this marriage story is even true. At
the time, it was common for couples to do what
is known as a pre contract before witnesses. They would
promise to get married, and then afterward they would consummate
the marriage. This was regarded as essentially the same as
a marriage, even though it had not been formalized in
a church. Some sources describe edwards purported marriage to Eleanor
(20:47):
as a pre contract only, but a number of contemporary
sources flatly disbelieved this entire thing and dismissed it as
something that Richard had made up to undermine his nephew Laura.
Really this would be the sort of issue that would
be taken up before Parliament, but because the new king
had not been crowned yet, a formal parliament could not
(21:09):
be convened. Instead, the Estates of the Realm met. This
was basically the same people, but not a formal parliament.
In mid June, the Estates of the Realm concluded that
Edward the Fifth was not the legitimate king, and they
offered the crown instead to Richard, Duke of Gloucester. This
(21:29):
was not unanimous, though not within the Estates of the
Realm or with him the Royal Council. The Royal Council split,
with the Duke of Buckingham and others who supported Richard
meeting with him in secret, and the rest of the
Council meeting at Westminster. Immediately. At least some of the
council meeting at Westminster were convinced that Gloucester's private meetings
(21:51):
involved a plot against the king. William Lord Hastings had
continued to back Edward as King and his uncle Richard
as Lord Protector only, and during all of this he
and several other men armed themselves and went to one
of these secret council meetings, Hastings reportedly attacked Richard, who
(22:11):
hadn't yet accepted the crown and was still technically considered
the Duke of Gloucester. Hastings was arrested and almost immediately beheaded.
Hastings beheading seems to have been what convinced the public
of London that the Duke of Gloucester was trying to
steal the throne. Elizabeth finally agreed to send her younger
(22:33):
son to the Tower of London, and he arrived there
on June six, and there are still questions about why,
since she and her children were safe in Westminster Abbey.
While there are some people who argued that she only
would have sent her son away if she thought it
was safe to do so, others describe her as under siege,
(22:53):
with the Duke of Buckingham threatening to remove Richard by
force if she did not comply. And June, the Duke
of Gloucester issued rits canceling the parliament that was supposed
to convene on June. Then on June, which was supposed
to have been coronation day, Londoners instead heard sermons that
(23:14):
attacked Edwards claim to the throne as illegitimate. On June,
Anthony Woodbill, Earl Rivers, Richard Gray and others who had
been part of their party to London were all beheaded,
and on June Richard, Duke of Gloucester was proclaimed to
be King. Richard the third. Let's take a sponsor break.
(23:37):
Let's do We said at the top of the show
that the princes in the Tower, in spite of almost
ubiquitously being called the princes in the Tower, at this point,
(23:57):
we're not princes. When he first arrived at the Tower,
Edward the fifth was king. His reign as king lasted
from April ninth to June three, and when his brother
Richard arrived, he was the Duke of York and Edwards
air presumptive. He hadn't formally been crowned as a prince
(24:18):
that I know of at this point. Once Richard the
third was proclaimed king, though the boys were not kings
or princes, they were commoners. Formal records from the time
often nod to Edward's status with titles like read us
best artie. We really don't know what happened to them
in the tower. According to the Kroland Chronicle Continuations, written
(24:43):
around April of fourteen six the boys stayed there quote
under certain guard. The Great Chronicle of London contains the
last written reference to anyone seeing the two boys. They
were shooting bows and arrows and playing in the garden
quote at sundry times ending June sixteenth. But once they
(25:03):
were considered commoners, they would have been moved from the
royal residence to some other location. They weren't royals anymore.
Dominic Mancini wrote that the boys were quote withdrawn to
the inner apartments of the tower proper, and day by
day began to be seen more rarely behind the bars
and windows, until at length they ceased to appear altogether.
(25:24):
Already there is a suspicion that they have been done
away with. Mancini also describes Edward as confessing and doing
penance daily, as though he thought that his death was eminent.
King Richard the third was crowned on julyie, and there
are some references to an attempt to get the boys
out of the tower after he left London on his
(25:46):
royal tour, but sources contradict as to whether these plans
were carried out, or if they were, whether they were successful.
It does seem like people believe that at least one
of the boys was still alive when Richard left, though,
but as that account from Mancini suggests, rumors started to
spread really quickly that they had been killed, and in
(26:08):
the subsequent decades people reported that they had heard that
the boys had died pretty much by every possible means, smothering, poisoning, stabbing, drowning, starving, and,
according to ruy de Susa of Portugal, bled into a
body of water that passed through the fort where they
were being held until they died. Sometime after the last
(26:32):
report of Edward and Richard being spotted outside the tower,
their mother and the rest of her children left Westminster Abbey.
She seemed to endorse Richard the third is King, possibly
because he had promised to arrange the most advantageous marriages
possible for her daughters. In fourteen four, Parliament passed an
(26:54):
act called Titulus Reggius, which formally recognized Richard the third
and laired the children of Edward the fourth and Elizabeth
Wouldville to be illegitimate. It cited several reasons, including edwards
pre contract to another woman, the fact that the marriage
was secret and without the consent of the lords of
the land, and because Elizabeth and her family had used
(27:17):
sorcery to entrap the king. Sure, sure, um, that's how
that works. Of course, Richard the third was not king
for long. His opponents characterized him as scheming and cruel,
the kind of person who would murder his own nephews
children just to take the throne for himself. Richard's only
son died in fourteen eighty four and his wife the
(27:39):
following year, and the Duke of Buckingham turned against him.
Yorkists invaded England with the help of French and Scottish mercenaries,
and Richard was killed at the Battle of bosworth Field
on August five. Succeeding him as king was Henry Tudor,
also known as King Henry the seventh. He was the
(28:00):
last surviving man of the Lancastrian line, and he married
a york That was Elizabeth of York, the oldest sister
of Edward. The five people who thought Richard the third
was a usurper already really thought Elizabeth was the rightful queen,
so Henry's marrying her tightened his claim to the throne.
(28:20):
In fact, there had been some discussion, some frankly pretty
gross discussion that Richard the third had thought about marrying
his niece himself for the same reason after his wife died,
or maybe even before. But Henry could not marry Elizabeth
if she was considered illegitimate, so he had to get
Parliament to repeal the Titulus Reggius, and after they did,
(28:44):
Henry also ordered all previous copies of Titulus Reggius to
be destroyed, and for a time the text of that
document was lost until it was rediscovered in the Crowland Chronicle,
one of those chroniclers had copied it in there. It
does not appear that Henry launched any kind of investigation
into what had happened to the princess in the tower
(29:06):
or into Richard's actions in fourteen eight three, possibly because
such an investigation would have unearthed information that would have
undermined Henry's own claim to the throne. But it was
during the reigns of Henry the seventh and Henry the
eight that people started printing more specific accounts of what
had happened in the Tower, including naming names. In the
(29:29):
sixteenth century Anglica Historia, Italian politary Virgil wrote that Richard
the third had ordered Robert Brackenbury, Constable of the Tower,
to kill Edward the fifth and his brother. When Breckenbury
did not, Richard told Sir James Terrell to do it.
In Fabian's chronicle, Robert Fabian, who died in fifteen twelve,
(29:49):
also named Terrell or possibly another servant of the king.
By this point Sir James Terrell was dead. He had
been convicted of treason and executed in fifteen o two.
I had a whole explanation of what happened in here,
but it was very long. Terrell reportedly confessed to killing
(30:09):
Edward and Richards sometime between his conviction on May second
and his execution on May six, but no copy of
this purported confession exists anywhere. The first really specific account
of the boy's deaths was in the History of Richard
the Third by Sir Thomas Moore, secretary and adviser to
Henry the eight. More wrote that Richard the third had
(30:33):
the boy shut up, removing everyone from them except a
servant called black will or William Slaughter. In his words,
they quote lingered in thought and heaviness till this traitorous
death delivered them of that wretchedness. For Sir James Terrell
devised that they should be murdered in their beds to
(30:53):
that execution, whereof he appointed Miles Forest, one of the
four that kept them, a fellow fleshed in order before
time to him, he joined one John Dighton, his own horsekeeper,
a big, broad, square, strong nave. This is one of
those very old documents that writes the word murder like murther,
(31:13):
which I always love. It's so good, and we could
get into a hall of conversation about how that linguistic
transition happened, but we've got more to this show to
go on. More goes on to say that at about midnight,
Forest and Dighton came into the boy's room, wrapped them
in their bedclothes, and smothered them with their feather beds
(31:36):
and pillows. Once Terrell had confirmed that they were dead,
he quote caused those murderers to bury them at the
stairfoot meatly deep in the ground under a heap of stones.
More goes on to say that Richard the Third was
brought to the scene and ordered their bodies moved to
a better place because they were sons of a king,
(31:58):
before adding sarcastically, quote low the heart courage of a king,
for he would recompense the detestable murder with a solemn obloquy.
Of course, William Shakespeare, writing during the reign of Queen
Elizabeth the First, used Moore's work as a major source
for his play Richard the Third, which depicts Richard ordering
(32:18):
Terrell to carry out the crime, and Terrell returning afterwards saying, quote,
the tyranness and bloody deed is done, the most arch
of piteous massacre that every yet this land was guilty
of Dighton and Forest, whom I did suburn to do
this ruthless piece of butchery. Although they were fleshed villains,
bloody dogs, melting with tenderness and kind compassion, wept like
(32:42):
two children in their death sad stories. Of course, the
tutors had very good reasons to want Richard the Third
to look like a usurper, because otherwise Henry the seventh
had forced a legitimate king off the throne. So at
this point it is generally but universally believed that Edward
the five and his brother Richard died at the Tower
(33:04):
of London by the end of three and this idea
that Richard the Third ordered James Terrell to kill them.
That's pretty widespread, but Richard the Third definitely isn't the
only suspect. Another is Henry Stafford, second Duke of Buckingham,
who came up a lot in this episode. In this idea,
he would have been trying to ingratiate himself to Richard
(33:27):
and to protect Richard's claim to the throne. Another is
John Howard, Duke of Norfolk, who became Lord High Steward
under Richard the Third pretty much with similar reasoning. But
Richard the Third is not the only monarch who stood
to benefit from Edward and his brother being out of
the picture. The other is actually Henry the seven. Making
(33:47):
Elizabeth of York legitimate so he can marry her would
have made Edward and Richard legitimate as well, so if
they were still alive, Henry would have no real claim
to the throne. So there are people who think the
boys lived in the tower for a couple of years,
hidden away, until Henry the seventh had them killed so
that he could become king. Other people interpret this more
(34:10):
as just confirmation that they were definitely dead by this point.
There are also, though, people who believed that at least
one of the boys lived for much longer, and people
who claimed that they were one of them. A man
named Lambert Simnel, who pretended to be the son of
George Plantagenet, first Duke of Clarence, had originally planned to
(34:30):
claim that he was Richard, Duke of York. Then in
fourteen ninety a man calling himself Richard of England made
this same claim, and this could really be its own episode.
This man called Perkin Warbeck, convinced a number of very
powerful people, including James the Fourth of Scotland and Holy
Roman Emperor Maximilian the First, that he really was Richard,
(34:52):
Duke of York. He eventually confessed to being an impostor.
Though yeah, we actually did an episode on Perkin Warbeck
on Criminilia in our Impostors season. Oh nice, I was
wondering that, and I forgot to ask, oh, yes, that's
a rich impostor story. So there is also a burial
record in Kent for a Richard Plantagenet dated from December
(35:14):
twenty two, fifteen fifty. Elizabeth Woodville had a cousin living
not far from the burial site, so some people have
interpreted this to mean that Richard, Duke of York somehow
escaped the tower, perhaps while Richard the Third was on
that royal tour and secretly lived out the rest of
his life with his mother's kin. On July seventeen, sixteen
(35:36):
seventy four, human remains were found in a chest under
a stone staircase outside the White Tower at the Tower
of London during some renovations that had been ordered by
Charles the second. People who examined these remains concluded that
they belonged to two people who were about eleven and
thirteen years old. John Knight, chief surgeon to the King,
(35:57):
concluded that they were indeed Edward the fifth and Richard
of Shrewsbury, Duke of York. These remains were put on
display before being placed in Henry the seventh Lady Chapel
at Westminster Abbey in an urn designed by Sir Christopher
wren So. Bones of children under a staircase, just like
Sir Thomas Moore said, but More had also written that
(36:20):
Richard the third had ordered the bodies moved to a
more suitable location, and these were not the first bones
found at the Tower of London suspected of being Edward
the fifth and his brother. Other bones were unearthed at
the tower in sixteen ten, sixty two and sixteen forty seven.
Pretty Much every time anyone found a smallish set of
(36:42):
remains in the tower, people immediately thought that it was
the prince's, including one time when it turned out to
have been an ape that had escaped from the Royal menagerie.
It's also not clear what happened to these earlier finds
and whether any of them were the same bones later
found under the staircase. In nineteen thirty three, Lawrence E. Tanner,
(37:02):
keeper of the Muniments and Librarian of Westminster Abbey, and
anatomist William Wright, dean of the London Hospital Medical College,
opened up the urn. They examined the bones and published
their findings as recent investigations regarding the fate of the
princes in the Tower in the journal Archaeologia. Dentist George
(37:24):
Northcroft had also examined the teeth to try to determine
the age of the people whose bones they were, and
they concluded that, along with a lot of other random
animal bones that were in there, there were two sets
of human bones in the urn, or belonging to children
of the right ages to be the princess in the tower.
Although this sounds pretty conclusive, this investigation was not particularly thorough.
(37:47):
It seems in a lot of ways to have been
intended to confirm that these were the princes and not
to like, actually find the truth of the situation. It
definitely didn't follow methods or use technologies that would be
in use today. In twenty eighteen, Dr John ashdown Hill
traced the mitochondrial DNA line of the Princes in the Tower.
Ashdown Hill's earlier work had been part of the identification
(38:09):
of the remains of Richard the third. This made news
in shortly after ashdown Hill's death. This work could be
used to confirm whether the bones from the urn at
Westminster Abbey, or any other bones that might be dug up,
really belonged to Edward the fifth and his brother. And
as for that paper we mentioned up at the top
of the show that was more on a murder, the
(38:31):
deaths of the Princes in the Tower and historiographical implications
for the regimes of Henry the seventh and Henry the eighth,
That was by Tim Thornton, published in the January edition
of the journal History. Thornton argues that two men named
Edward and Miles Forest were the sons of the Miles
Forest that Sir Thomas Moore had named as one of
(38:53):
the murderers. According to Thornton, More would have known both
Edward and the younger Miles Forest. Edward was a servant
of Henry the Eighth's bed chamber, and the younger Miles
was an advisor to Cardinal Woolsey and a messenger between
Henry the Eighth court and the embassy in Bruges, where
Moore was working. It's also possible that John Dighton was
(39:17):
living in Calais while Moore was also there, so More
may have known Dighton as well. If Thornton is correct
in these identifications, then Thomas Moore may have personally known
the sons of one of the alleged killers, and possibly
one of the alleged killers himself. So it's possible that
Moore's account included details he learned directly from them. That
(39:40):
still leaves some unanswered questions, though, like if you or
your father had murdered the King of England, why would
you tell Sir Thomas More about it? I do wonder
and unburdening. Perhaps I have a very quick piece of
listener mail to take us out of this episode. And
now that we have gone through this whole recording and
(40:02):
hopefully caught all the times where I typed the word
Richard when I meant the word Edward or vice versa,
this email seems particularly appropriate because it is about confusing
names in our Unearthed episode recently. This is from Gray. Uh.
Gray's email is titled correction Unearthed Columbian Harmony Cemetery and
(40:24):
it says prefacing this with all the love and devotion,
but wanted to let you know there was a tiny
mistake in the most recent Unearthed episode. The Colombian Harmony
Cemetery stones are being relocated from King George County, Virginia,
where they were found in the river bank, to a
memorial park across the Potomac River in landover Prince George's County, Maryland.
(40:49):
To make it even more confusing, there is a Prince
George County no apostrophe s in Virginia near Petersburg, which
is the home of the Tombstone House. All the best,
Great Gray sent a couple of links, one an article
from CNN about the gravestones and another an Atlas Obscure
piece about the Tombstone House. Uh. This made me laugh.
(41:12):
Even before we recorded this episode and kept just messing
up Richard and Edward all over the place. Um, partly
because when I previously used to live in Somerville, Massachusetts,
I lived on a street where the street crossed the
city line into Cambridge. Uh and had the house the
same house numbers on either side. UM. And boy did
(41:36):
that confuse people visiting us, people delivering food? Uh, not
so much the mail carrier. The mail carrier knew what
was that that. Uh? But you know more, Uh, overnight
deliveries were often overnight it to the other city. Uh.
And this just reminded me of all that. So thank
(41:56):
you Gray. I think I just sort of conflated mull
comple things when I was writing up that installment into unearthed.
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(42:17):
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