HistoryExtra Home of Britain’s bestselling history magazine and award-winning podcast 2023-11-08T11:14:06.000Z https://www.historyextra.com/people/edward-v/feed/atom HistoryExtra <![CDATA[An enigma at the heart of British history: who killed the Princes in the Tower, Edward V and Richard Duke of York?]]> https://www.historyextra.com/period/medieval/who-killed-princes-tower-edward-v-richard-iii/ 2023-11-08T11:14:06.000Z The grisly discovery was made on Friday 17 July 1674, while building work was being carried out at the Tower of London. While pulling down a ruined building beside the White Tower, the workmen digging down some stairs found a wooden chest containing the bodies of two children, estimated to be around 11 and 13 years old.

Among those present was John Knight, chief surgeon to King Charles II. Knight, and other eyewitnesses who handled the broken bones, quickly came to the conclusion that these had to be none other than the remains of the long-lost Princes in the Tower. Finally, after nearly 200 years, it seemed that an enigma at the heart of British history had been resolved.

Who were the Princes in the Tower?

The two boys now remembered as the ‘Princes in the Tower’ were the sons of Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville: Edward V and Richard. A handsome and charismatic ruler, Edward IV of the House of York had seized the throne during the Wars of the Roses, but spent much of his 22-year reign struggling to establish his rule.

Nonetheless, by the time he died on 9 April 1483, he appeared to have restored a measure of stability. His eldest son and namesake had trained for his role as king for the past ten years in the marches of Ludlow, while the nine-year-old Prince Richard was already a widower and preparing to be a mighty lord.

But Edward IV’s death left their position vulnerable, as there was a worm gnawing at the heart of the body politic: factional fighting for power. The heir was only 12 years old, and a child king was likely to be influenced heavily by those closest to him. Whoever controlled the king, controlled the kingdom, and in 1483, two rival factions vied for authority over the newly acclaimed Edward V. One ‘Woodville’ clan was led by his mother Queen Elizabeth Woodville, while a more disparate collection of interests focused around Edward IV’s brother Richard, Duke of Gloucester.

Richard versus the Woodvilles

The Woodvilles appeared to have the upper hand for not only did Queen Elizabeth have her younger son Richard in her care, but her brother Anthony Woodville had the new king Edward V in his keeping at Ludlow. It is possible that in his dying days, Edward IV made efforts to balance the rivalries, perhaps even declaring that his son and heir should remain with Anthony Woodville, one of his uncles, while the Duke of Gloucester, another uncle, serve as Lord Protector until Edward V was old enough to rule for himself. That was not to be the case as Edward IV’s will went missing and exactly what form of government he had hoped to establish was soon overtaken by events.

The White Tower, Tower of London

On 30 April 1483, at Stony Stratford, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, and his ally the Duke of Buckingham had Anthony Woodville arrested and took possession of the young king. When word of this coup reached Elizabeth, she fled with her younger son and five daughters into sanctuary at Westminster Abbey. There they remained as spring gave way to summer, and her fears of Richard’s intentions increased.

Edward V’s coronation was repeatedly delayed, despite Richard having escorted him to the Tower of London – the traditional residence of a monarch before being crowned – in readiness. Then at a chaotic meeting of the royal council on 13 June, Richard levelled accusations of treason against those he said were conspiring against him, which were followed by a spate of arrests and the summary beheading of the late king’s chamberlain, William Lord Hastings.

London roiled with anxiety, city watches patrolled the streets by torchlight, and rumours abounded that the lives of both Edward V and the Duke of Gloucester were in danger. Richard, now Lord Protector, dispatched urgent messages to his supporters in the north summoning weapons and soldiers to his aid.

The scene changed again on 16 June, when Elizabeth finally released the younger Prince Richard into the Duke of Gloucester’s custody, but only after the Archbishop of Canterbury stood as surety for his safety. The two princes were reunited in the Tower. Edward V’s coronation was postponed, however, the very next day, this time until the winter. Then Anthony Woodville was executed for treason on 25 June, by command of the Lord Protector.

The most shocking event was yet to come, though. A week after the two princes were brought together in the Tower, a sermon was preached at St Paul’s Cross stating that, to the astonishment and indignation of the assembled Londoners, the princes had no claim to the throne. They were, the preacher Ralph Shaa insisted, the offspring of an invalid marriage, for Edward IV had been secretly contracted to another woman, named Eleanor Butler, at the time of his marriage to Elizabeth Woodville. If the princes were to be declared as illegitimate, then that meant the true king was their uncle, Richard, Duke of Gloucester.

Was Edward V illegitimate?

The claim of Edward V’s illegitimacy was taken up and reiterated in a speech by the Duke of Buckingham in front of another throng of London’s citizens, this time at the Guildhall. In a bid to convince the mayor and other influential figures, he denounced the Woodvilles and gave his impassioned support for Richard to be seen as the rightful king. With panic mounting and a northern army marching south to support Richard, the ‘three estates’ of England – the noblemen, clergy and commons – united against the princes.

On 26 June, just a couple of days after Buckingham’s speech, they appealed to Richard to take the throne, pronouncing the princes illegitimate. Edward V would henceforth be known merely as ‘Edward Bastard’. On 6 July 1483, his uncle was crowned King Richard III.

That summer, an Italian cleric named Dominic Mancini was visiting London. He left for France shortly after the coronation and penned a report that autumn – most commonly referred to as The Usurpation of Richard the Third – regarding the remarkable events surrounding the princes in the Tower. Their attendants had been removed from them in June, he recalled, and the princes themselves had “withdrawn into 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.”

Where in the Tower were the Princes imprisoned?

The history of the Tower of London is long and filled with gruesome details, but only one of the outer towers has become known as the ‘Bloody Tower’ – the one associated with the princes. In the 15th century, this gateway between the inner and outer wards was known as the ‘Garden Tower’, as it bordered the garden of the Lieutenant’s Lodgings. This appears to match the report of a contemporary London chronicle that the princes were seen “shooting and playing in the garden” during their imprisonment. But it does not match the chronicle’s claim that the princes had been kept “within the king’s lodging” at the Tower. The royal apartments were further east, securely within the innermost ward, and sure enough a garden lay at the bottom of the Lanthorn Tower there. This seems a far more suitable location for princes, especially once they became captives. A gateway like the Bloody Tower, with its heavy through-traffic, hardly seems ideal for such highly sensitive political prisoners. Previous high-status inmates were incarcerated further inside. John Balliol, the Scottish king imprisoned by Edward I from 1296-99, was kept in the Salt Tower, a mural enclosure far removed from possible escape routes. And the White Tower, right at the heart of the fortress, served as prison for both King John ‘the Good’ of France and Charles, Duke of Orleans, a prisoner of war captured at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415.

The princes were not the first royal claimants to enter the Tower of London never to emerge alive. In 1471, the deposed Lancastrian King Henry VI had died while imprisoned there. His Yorkist captors claimed the cause of death was “pure displeasure and melancholy”, but Henry’s corpse was seen to bleed in the city streets as it was conveyed towards burial. Displaying the body of a fallen foe in this way, even if you did not publicly acknowledge your role in their death, was commonplace in the Wars of the Roses. As well as ordering that Henry VI’s body be exhibited in London “open-visaged” (with his face visible), Edward IV had commanded that the naked corpse of his rebel kinsman Warwick ‘the Kingmaker’ be left on display at St Paul’s.

When did the Princes in the Tower disappear?

There were no such morbid memorial parades for the two young princes in the Tower. They simply disappeared, leaving a lingering unease about their fate. Whispers soon spread that they had been murdered – smothered with a feather-bed, perhaps, or poisoned.

In his account, Mancini related that even before Richard III was crowned, mention of the princes inspired grown men to pitying tears, for “already there was a suspicion that he [Edward V] had been done away with.” He also recorded the words of a physician who attended Edward V in the Tower: “The young king, like a victim prepared for sacrifice, sought remission of his sins by daily confession and penance, because he believed that death was facing him.”

In his calendar for the year ending 15 September 1483, the Bristolian Robert Ricart similarly suggested that “the two sons of King Edward were put to silence in the Tower of London.” Gradually, rumours about the princes’ deaths spread overseas, being reported from Poland to France, and there was a name put forward as the most likely identity of the murderer: their uncle, and usurper, Richard III. Such belief would fuel a rebellion against his rule in October 1483.

Illumination depicting Anthony Woodville

It united surprisingly disparate forces, including the late Edward IV’s followers, Queen Elizabeth, the Lancastrian born Margaret Beaufort and her exiled son Henry Tudor, and even the Duke of Buckingham – the man who had recently been one of Richard’s most public supporters. Such a cohesion of unnatural allies, and their focus on the decidedly distant royal claimant Henry Tudor as a rival to Richard’s throne, would not have been possible without a widespread acceptance of the princes’ demise in the Tower.

That rebellion failed, but Richard III was unable to shake the dark legacy of the coup that brought him to power. In August 1485, on Bosworth battlefield, he was defeated and killed by Henry Tudor, which was seen as apparent proof of divine favour for the Lancastrian.

Could the Princes in the Tower have escaped?

The accession of King Henry VII ought to have drawn a line under the troubling rumours about the princes. Their ‘usurper’ had been killed and, in a politically astute display of unity, Henry married the princes’ eldest sister, Elizabeth of York, to bring together their warring dynasties. Although, he did wait for nearly three months to pass from his coronation, lest he be considered king by dint of his wife.

As soon as he was king, though, the question of the princes’ fate might have been settled. Henry could have produced the boys’ bodies from the Tower and taken them for honourable burial, or revealed that they still lived.

He did neither. Was it because he could not, or would not? Like Richard III, the lingering uncertainty over the princes left his regime vulnerable – not to charges of murder, but to the possibility they had survived and could challenge him for the throne.

Henry’s enemies took advantage of this situation. As early as 1487, an Oxfordshire teenager named Lambert Simnel was briefly put forward masquerading as Prince Richard, before instead claiming to be the Yorkist Earl of Warwick. To quell support for Simnel, Henry VII paraded the real Earl of Warwick through the streets of London, before safely depositing him back in his cell at the Tower and defeating Simnel’s supporters in battle.

But the spectre of Prince Richard arose again in late 1491, and this time, the threat was to endure. According to the story he spun to the powers of Europe, ‘Prince Richard’ – in reality Perkin Warbeck of Tournai – had escaped the Tower with the aid of a powerful lord. Warbeck was convincing enough that he won the support of a wide array of European princes, including the king of Scotland and Edward IV’s sister Margaret, duchess of Burgundy.

It took Henry years to bring the ghost to heel. Only in October 1497, as the rebel army melted away, did the pretender-prince confess that he was really a continental official’s son. Under his real name, and with a final public confession of his subterfuge, Perkin Warbeck was hanged as a traitor in 1499.

Nonetheless, some have claimed that the princes could indeed have escaped, pointing to a royal warrant providing clothing for ‘lord bastard’ in 1485. In fact, this probably referred to Richard III’s illegitimate son John. Henry VII certainly had no desire to foster the notion that royal rivals could still be alive, and if their remains were discovered during his reign, he would have been equally reluctant to remind his subjects of his own dynastically weak royal claim by publicly commemorating the princes.

The guilt of Richard III

Perhaps to ensure no more pretenders rose up against him, Henry VII extracted and disseminated a confession from condemned traitor Sir James Tyrrell that he had murdered the princes on Richard’s orders. The confession in 1502 was reported by contemporaries, most nenduringly by Thomas More.

In his History of King Richard III, he went further, claiming that to hide evidence of the crime, the murderer buried the princes at the foot of a staircase, “deep in the ground under a great heap of stones”. Later, More claimed, a priest connected to the Constable of the Tower dug up and reburied them in an unknown location.

These stories were interwoven to dramatic effect by William Shakespeare at the end of the Tudor period, forging a lasting narrative of Richard III as a callous murderer of children.

Then in 1674, the mystery of the princes’ disappearance finally seemed resolved. During building work beside the White Tower, the “bones of two striplings” were discovered buried three metres beneath a staircase. This eerie echo of More’s story was too compelling to ignore. The remains were proclaimed to be those of the murdered boys, and, in 1678, interred in an urn in Westminster Abbey.

The discovery was undeniably timely for the then-king, Charles II, whose own father had been murdered in the midst of civil war, and was facing ongoing wrangling with parliament about the royal succession. The princes’ story served as a reminder to his restive subjects of the dangers of deposition and of opposing the true succession.

But a question mark hangs over the Westminster Abbey sarcophagus, where these bones reside in a Christopher Wren monument. They are far from the only bones of adolescents found in the Tower of London in the centuries since the princes disappeared, and examination of the remains has only once been undertaken since the 17th century. Even then, the findings were far from satisfactory.

It is possible the princes have still not been found. Despite attempts by monarchs and writers either to silence the enigma of the princes, or spin the tale of their disappearance for their own ends, the mystery endures. Perhaps it always will.

Do the skeletons found in 1674 really belong to the Princes in the Tower?

As well as the two skeletons discovered in 1674, a number of other remains have been found inside the Tower of London over the centuries, which only further the mystery of the boys’ fate. In the early 17th century, there were curious reports of walled-up chambers in which skeletons were discovered, while an account from the time Sir Walter Raleigh was imprisoned at the Tower mentions a hollow-sounding wall, which led to a secret room with the skeletons of two children lying on a table. Another version of the story described a chamber in which “upon a bed two little carcasses” were found “with two halters around their necks”. In both reports, the room was then mured up again so as not to revive the memory of the princes’ deaths. Most recently, in 1977, archaeologists discovered a young male skeleton in the southeast corner of the inmost ward of the Tower, on the site of the medieval palace. This would, at one time, have seemed highly suggestive. Yet radiocarbon dating established that the skeleton came from around AD 70, meaning it cannot be one of the princes. Although this level of forensic testing has never been applied to the remains discovered in 1674, they were examined in 1933 by an archivist, an anatomist and the president of the British Dental Association. This examination conclusively identified the remains as being the Princes in the Tower, but its findings are now rejected by many, not least because no attempt was made to establish if the two sets of bones were related to each other. Forensic science has progressed to the point where radio carbon dating could determine a probable date of death for the skeletons, and mitochondrial DNA could resolve the question of their identity. But for such testing to occur, the remains in Westminster would have to be once again disturbed. So far, both Westminster Abbey and Buckingham Palace have refused permission.

Lauren Johnson is a historian specialising in the 15th and early-16th centuries

This content first appeared in the March 2019 issue of BBC History Revealed

]]> HistoryExtra <![CDATA[How could the son of Henry VIII become Edward VI?]]> https://www.historyextra.com/membership/how-could-the-son-of-henry-viii-become-edward-vi/ 2025-02-14T15:30:36.000Z 2016-12-12T10:00:01.000Z A king is still a king if he has not been crowned. Edward V is one of only four English monarchs since the Norman conquest not to have been crowned (the others being ‘Empress’ Matilda, Lady Jane Grey and Edward VIII). Although the date – and circumstances – of his death are uncertain, it is likely that he died before his 15th birthday, which would make him the shortest-lived monarch in English history.

Edward was the son of the Yorkist king Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville. He was born in November 1470 in a sanctuary within Westminster Abbey, where his mother had sought refuge from the Lancastrians who had temporarily removed her husband from power during the Wars of the Roses. Upon his father’s restoration to the throne in 1471, Edward was created Prince of Wales and was formally recognised as the heir to the English crown a year later.

Edward IV died in April 1483, and his eldest son and namesake became king. Edward V’s uncle, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, was appointed protector during his minority. He wasted no time in escorting the young king to the Tower of London, where Edward was joined by his younger brother, Richard, Duke of York. Edward’s coronation was repeatedly postponed while his uncle plotted to seize the crown for himself.

Evidence was brought forward that Edward IV had been precontracted when he had married Elizabeth Woodville, thus rendering their union invalid and their offspring illegitimate. Richard of Gloucester was declared king on 25 June. What happened to Edward and his brother (known as the Princes in the Tower) has been the source of intense controversy ever since.

The Lancastrian Henry Tudor, who defeated Richard at the battle of Bosworth in 1485, portrayed Richard as a murderous usurper, so strengthening his own tenuous claim to the throne.

Henry’s successors took up the theme, notably Henry VIII, whose choice of name for his son was highly significant. By christening him Edward, he was reminding the people of the last king of that name, whose usurpation and murder the Tudors had avenged.

Answered by Tracy Borman, author of Matilda: Queen of the Conqueror (Jonathan Cape, 2011).

This Q&A was first published in BBC History Magazine in 2011

]]> HistoryExtra <![CDATA[The princes in the Tower: why was their fate never explained?]]> https://www.historyextra.com/period/medieval/the-princes-in-the-tower-why-was-their-fate-never-explained/ 2022-08-30T14:48:29.000Z 2013-10-01T16:51:45.000Z This article was first published in the October 2013 issue of BBC History Magazine

Locked in the Tower in June 1483 with his younger brother, the 12-year-old Edward V was certain “that death was facing him”. Two overthrown kings had died in suspicious circumstances already that century. Yet it was still possible their uncle, Richard III, would spare them. The princes were so very young, and if it were accepted that they were bastards, as their uncle claimed, they would pose little threat. The innocent Richard, Duke of York, only nine years old, remained “joyous” and full of “frolics”, even as the last of their servants were dismissed. But the boys were spotted behind the Tower windows less and less often, and by the summer’s end they had vanished.

It is the fact of their disappearance that lies at the heart of the many conspiracy theories over what happened to the princes. Murder was suspected, but without bodies no one could be certain even that they were dead. Many different scenarios have been put forward in the years since. In the nearest surviving contemporary accounts, Richard is accused of ordering their deaths, with the boys either suffocated with their bedding, or drowned, or killed by having their arteries cut. There were also theories that one or both of the princes escaped.

In more modern times, some have come to believe that Richard III was innocent of ordering the children’s deaths and instead spirited his nephews abroad or to a safe place nearer home, only for them to be killed later by Henry VII who feared the boys’ rival claims to the throne. None of these theories, however, has provided a satisfactory answer to the riddle at the heart of this mystery: the fact the boys simply vanished.

If the princes were alive, why did Richard not say so in October 1483, when the rumours he had ordered them killed were fuelling a rebellion? If they were dead, why had he not followed earlier examples of royal killings? The bodies of deposed kings were displayed and claims made that they had died of natural causes, so that loyalties could be transferred to the new king.

That the answer to these questions lies in the 15th century seems obvious, but it can be hard to stop thinking like 21st-century detectives and start thinking like contemporaries. To the modern mind, if Richard III was a religious man and a good king, as many believe he was, then he could not have ordered the deaths of two children. But even good people do bad things if they’re given the right motivation.

In the 15th century it was a primary duty of good kingship to ensure peace and national harmony. After his coronation, Richard III continued to employ many of his brother Edward IV’s former servants, but by the end of July 1483 it was already clear that some did not accept that Edward IV’s sons were illegitimate and judged Richard to be a usurper. The fact the princes remained a focus of opposition gave Richard a strong motive for having them killed – just as his brother had killed the king he deposed.

The childlike, helpless, Lancastrian Henry VI was found dead in the Tower in 1471, after more than a decade of conflict between the rival royal Houses of Lancaster and York. It was said he was killed by grief and rage over the death in battle of his son, but few can have doubted that Edward IV ordered Henry’s murder. Henry VI’s death extirpated the House of Lancaster. Only Henry VI’s half nephew, Henry Tudor, a descendent of John of Gaunt, founder of the Lancastrian House, through his mother’s illegitimate Beaufort line, was left to represent their cause.

Trapped in European exile, Henry Tudor posed a negligible threat to Edward IV. However, Richard was acutely aware of an unexpected sequel to Henry VI’s death. The murdered king was acclaimed as a saint, with rich and poor alike venerating him as an innocent whose troubled life gave him some insight into their own difficulties. Miracles were reported at the site of his modest grave in Chertsey Abbey, Surrey. One man claimed that the dead king had even deigned to help him when he had a bean trapped in his ear, with said bean popping out after he prayed to the deposed king.

Edward IV failed to put a halt to the popular cult and Richard III shared his late brother’s anxieties about its ever-growing power. It had a strong following in his home city of York, where a statue of ‘Henry the saint’ was built on the choir screen at York Minster. In 1484 Richard attempted to take control of the cult with an act of reconciliation, moving Henry VI’s body to St George’s Chapel, Windsor. In the meantime, there was a high risk the dead princes too would attract a cult, for in them the religious qualities attached to royalty were combined with the purity of childhood.

An insecure king

In England we have no equivalent today to the shrine at Lourdes in France, visited by thousands of pilgrims every year looking for healing or spiritual renewal. But we can recall the vast crowds outside Buckingham Palace after the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. Imagine that feeling and enthusiasm in pilgrims visiting the tombs of two young princes and greatly magnified by the closeness people then felt with the dead. It would have been highly dangerous to the king who had taken their throne. The vanishing of the princes was for Richard a case of least said, soonest mended, for without a grave for them, there could be no focus for a cult. Without a body or items belonging to the dead placed on display, there would be no relics either.

Nevertheless, Richard needed the princes’ mother, Elizabeth Woodville, and others who might follow Edward V, to know the boys were dead, in order to forestall plots raised in their name. According to the Tudor historian Polydore Vergil, Elizabeth Woodville fainted when she was told her sons had been killed. As she came round, “She wept, she cryed out loud, and with lamentable shrieks made all the house ring, she struck her breast, tore and cut her hair.” She also called for vengeance.

Elizabeth Woodville made an agreement with Henry Tudor’s mother, Margaret Beaufort, that Henry should marry her daughter, Elizabeth of York, and called on Edwardian loyalists to back their cause. The rebellion that followed in October 1483 proved Richard had failed to restore peace. While he defeated these risings, less than two years later at the battle of Bosworth, in August 1485, he was betrayed by part of his own army and was killed, sword in hand.

The princes were revenged, but it soon became evident that Henry VII was in no hurry to investigate their fate. It is possible that the new monarch feared such an investigation would draw attention to a role in their fate played by someone close to his cause – most likely Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham. The duke, who came from a Lancastrian family, was a close ally of Richard in the overthrow of Edward V, but later turned against the king. Known as a “sore and hard dealing man”, it is possible he encouraged Richard to have the princes murdered, planning then to see Richard killed and the House of York overthrown. Richard executed Buckingham for treason in November 1483, but Buckingham’s name remained associated at home and abroad with the princes’ disappearance.

What is certain, however, is that Henry, like Richard, had good reasons for wishing to forestall a cult of the princes. Henry’s blood claim to the throne was extremely weak and he was fearful of being seen as a mere king consort to Elizabeth of York. To counter this, Henry claimed the throne in his own right, citing divine providence – God’s intervention on earth – as evidence that he was a true king (for only God made kings). A key piece of vidence used in support of this idea was a story that, a few months before his murder, ‘the saint’ Henry VI had prophesised Henry Tudor’s reign.

It would not have been wise to allow Yorkist royal saints to compete with the memory of Henry VI, whose cult Henry VII now wished to encourage. In 1485, therefore, nothing was said of the princes’ disappearance, beyond a vague accusation in parliament during the autumn that Richard III was guilty of “treasons, homicides and murders in shedding of infants’ blood”. No search was made for the boys’ bodies and they were given no rite of burial. Indeed even the fate of their souls was, seemingly, abandoned.

I have not found any evidence of endowments set up to pay for prayers for the princes that century. Henry may well have feared the churches where these so-called ‘chantries’ might be established would become centres for the kind of cult he wanted to avoid. But their absence would have struck people as very strange. Praying for the dead was a crucial part of medieval religion. In December 1485 when Henry issued a special charter refounding his favourite religious order, the Observant Friars, at Greenwich, he noted that offering masses for the dead was, “the greatest work of piety and mercy, for through it souls would be purged”. It was unthinkable not to help the souls of your loved ones pass from purgatory to heaven with prayers and masses. On the other hand, it was akin to a curse to say a requiem for a living person – you were effectively praying for their death.

A surviving prince?

The obvious question posed by the lack of public prayers for the princes was, were they still alive? And, as Vergil recalled, in 1491 there appeared in Ireland, as if “raised from the dead one of the sons of King Edward… a youth by the name of Richard”. Henry VII said the man claiming to be the younger of the princes was, in fact, a Dutchman called Perkin Warbeck – but who could be sure?

Henry was more anxious than ever that the princes be forgotten and when their mother, Elizabeth Woodville, died in June 1492, she was buried “privily… without any solemn dirge done for her obit”. It has been suggested this may have reflected her dying wishes to be buried “without pomp”. But Henry VII also asked to be buried without pomp. He still expected, and got, one of the most stately funerals of the Middle Ages. Elizabeth Woodville emphatically did not receive the same treatment. Much has been made of this in conspiracy theories concerning the princes (especially on the question of whether she believed them to be alive) but Henry’s motives become clear when recalled in the context of the period.

This was an era of visual symbols and display: kings projected their power and significance in palaces decorated with their badges, in rich clothes and elaborate ceremonies. Elizabeth Woodville, like her sons, was being denied the images of a great funeral with its effigies, banners and grand ceremonial. This caused negative comment at the time. But with Warbeck’s appearance, Henry wanted to avoid any nostalgia for the past glories of the House of York.

It was 1497 before Perkin Warbeck was captured. Henry then kept him alive because he wanted Warbeck publicly and repeatedly to confess his modest birth. Warbeck was eventually executed in 1499. Yet even then Henry continued to fear the power of the vanished princes. Three years later, it was given out that condemned traitor Sir James Tyrell had, before his execution, confessed to arranging their murder on Richard’s orders. Henry VIII’s chancellor, Thomas More, claimed he was told the murdered boys had been buried at the foot of some stairs in the Tower, but that Richard had asked for their bodies to be reburied with dignity and that those involved had subsequently died so the boys’ final resting place was unknown – a most convenient outcome for Henry.

While the princes’ graves remained unmarked, the tomb of Henry VI came to rival the internationally famous tomb of Thomas Becket at Canterbury as a site of mass pilgrimage. Henry ran a campaign to have his half-uncle beatified by the pope, which continued even after Henry’s death, ending only with Henry VIII’s break with Rome. The Reformation then brought to a close the cult of saints in England. Our cultural memories of their power faded away, which explains why we overlook the significance of the cult of Henry VI in the fate of the princes.

In 1674, long after the passing of the Tudors, two skeletons were recovered in the Tower, in a place that resembled More’s description of the princes’ first burial place. They were interred at Westminster Abbey, not far from where Henry VII lies. In 1933, they were removed and examined by two doctors. Broken and incomplete, the skeletons were judged to be two children, one aged between seven and 11 and the other between 11 and 13. The little bones were returned to the abbey, and whoever they were, remain a testament to the failure of Richard and Henry to bury the princes in eternal obscurity.

The players in the princes’ downfall

Henry VI (1421–71)

Succeeding his father, Henry V, who died when he was a few months old, Henry VI’s reign was challenged by political and economic crises. It was interrupted by his mental and physical breakdown in 1453 during which time Richard, 3rd Duke of York, was appointed protector of the realm. Both men were direct descendants of Edward III and in 1455 Richard’s own claim to the throne resulted in the first clashes of the Wars of the Roses – fought between supporters of the dynastic houses of Lancaster and York over the succession.

Richard died at the battle of Wakefield in 1460 but his family claim to the throne survived him and his eldest son became king the following year – as Edward IV. Richard’s younger son would also be king, as Richard III. Henry VI was briefly restored to the throne in 1470 but the Lancastrians were finally defeated at Tewkesbury in 1471 and Henry was probably put to death in the Tower of London a few days later.

Edward IV (1442–83)

Edward succeeded where his father Richard, the third Duke of York failed – in overthrowing Henry VI during the Wars of the Roses. He was declared king in March 1461, securing his throne with a victory at the battle of Towton. Edward’s younger brother Richard became Duke of Gloucester. Later, in Edward’s second reign, Richard played an important role in government. Edward married Elizabeth Woodville in 1463 and they had 10 children: seven daughters and three sons. The eldest, Elizabeth, was born in 1466. Two of the three sons were alive at the time of Edward’s death – Edward, born in 1470, and Richard, born 1473. Edward is credited with being financially astute and restoring law and order. He died unexpectedly of natural causes on 9 April 1483.

Elizabeth, Queen Consort (c1437–92)

Edward IV’s marriage to Elizabeth Woodville, a widow with children, took place in secret in 1464 and met with political disapproval. The king’s brother, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, was among those allegedly hostile to it. The preference the Woodville family received caused resentment at court, and there was friction between Elizabeth’s family and the king’s powerful advisor, Hastings. On Edward IV’s death in 1483, Gloucester’s distrust of the Woodvilles was apparently a factor in his decision to seize control of the heir, his nephew. Elizabeth sought sanctuary in Westminster, from where her younger son, Richard, Duke of York, was later removed. The legitimacy of her marriage and her children was one of Gloucester’s justifications for usurping the throne on 26 June.

Once parliament confirmed his title as Richard III, Elizabeth submitted in exchange for protection for herself and her daughters – an arrangement he honoured. After Richard III’s death at the battle of Bosworth, her children were declared legitimate. Her eldest, Elizabeth of York, was married to Henry VII, strengthening his claim to the throne.

Edward V (1470–83) & Richard, Duke of York (1473–83)

Edward IV’s heir was his eldest son, also named Edward. When the king died unexpectedly, his will, which has not survived, reportedly named his previously loyal brother, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, as lord protector. On hearing of his father’s death, the young Edward and his entourage began a journey from Ludlow to the capital. Gloucester intercepted the party in Buckinghamshire. Gloucester, who claimed the Woodvilles were planning to take power by force, seized the prince.

On 4 May 1983, Edward entered London in the charge of Gloucester. Edward’s coronation was scheduled for 22 June. On 16 June, Elizabeth was persuaded to surrender Edward’s younger brother, Richard, apparently to attend the ceremony. With both princes in his hands, Gloucester publicised his claim to the throne. He was crowned as Richard III on 6 July and a conspiracy to rescue the princes failed that month. By September, rebels were seeing Henry Tudor as a candidate for the throne, suggesting the princes were already believed to be dead.

Richard III (1452–85)

Richard was the youngest surviving son of Richard, 3rd Duke of York, and was still a child when his 18-year-old brother became Edward IV after Yorkist victories. Unlike his brother George (executed for treason in the Tower in 1478 – allegedly drowned in a butt of malmsey wine), Richard was loyal to Edward during his lifetime. On his brother’s death, he moved swiftly to wrest control of his nephew Edward from the boy’s maternal family, the Woodvilles. At some point in June 1483 his role moved from that of protector to usurper. He arrested several of the previous king’s loyal advisors, postponed the coronation and claimed Edward IV’s children were illegitimate because their father had been pre-contracted to marry another woman at the time of his secret marriage to Elizabeth. Richard was crowned, but he faced rebellion that year and further unrest the next. Support for the king decreased as it grew for Henry Tudor, the rival claimant who returned from exile and triumphed at the battle of Bosworth in 1485. 

Henry VII (1457–1509)

Henry Tudor was the son of Margaret Beaufort (great-great-granddaughter of Edward III) and Edmund Tudor, half-brother of Henry VI. In 1471, after Edward IV regained the throne, Henry fled to Brittany, where he avoided the king’s attempts to have him returned. As a potential candidate for the throne through his mother’s side, Henry became the focus for opposition to Richard III. After the failed 1483 rebellion against the king, rebels, including relatives of the Woodvilles and loyal former members of Edward IV’s household, joined him in Brittany. In 1485 Henry Tudor invaded, landing first in Wales, and triumphed over Richard III at Bosworth on 22 August.

Henry was crowned on the battlefield with Richard’s crown. The following year he further legitimised his right to rule by marrying Elizabeth of York. When the king died in 1509, his and Elizabeth’s son came to the throne as Henry VIII.
Leanda de Lisle is a historian and writer. She is the author of Tudor: The Family Story (1437–1603) (Chatto and Windus, 2013)

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