0:01

Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class,

0:03

a production of I Heart Radio. Hello,

0:12

and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy

0:14

B. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry.

0:17

Today we are going to talk about the

0:19

Princes in the Tower, which a

0:21

lot of people have asked us to talk about. This

0:24

almost became part of an Unearthed

0:27

episode earlier on this year because

0:30

the paper came out that argued a direct

0:32

link between Richard

0:34

the Third and then the

0:36

alleged murderers, and

0:38

then Sir Thomas Moore, whose account

0:41

of what happened has really dominated popular

0:43

understanding of all this. But we've gotten

0:45

so many listener requests for a Princess

0:48

in the Tower episode that I decided

0:50

I was just going to hold onto that do

0:53

a full episode about it instead of

0:55

a paragraph on Unearthed. There

0:57

you go. So this happened during the

0:59

War the Roses, which started in fourteen

1:02

five and was a struggle between

1:04

two rival branches of the Royal House

1:06

of Plantagenet in the House of York

1:08

and the House of Lancaster. Both

1:11

houses used various badges, symbols

1:13

and emblems to represent themselves, and

1:15

among those were a white rose

1:17

for the House of York, and a red rose

1:20

for the House of Lancaster. The

1:22

name Wars of the Roses comes from

1:24

these symbols, although that term was

1:26

not coined until later on.

1:28

One of the people who really popularized

1:30

this connection was William Shakespeare,

1:32

who used a lot of red and white

1:35

roses in his plays about this period

1:37

of British history. So

1:39

the Wars of the Roses is not the only

1:42

term in this episode that was coined

1:44

much much later. Another is

1:47

the Princes in the Tower. This

1:49

nickname seems to have come into use in the

1:51

nineteenth century to refer to King

1:54

Edward the five and his brother Richard

1:56

of Shrewsbury, Duke of York. They

1:59

were the sons of King Edward the Fourth

2:01

of the House of York, and they were not princes

2:04

when they were in the Tower, which we will

2:06

get to. They were also a little

2:08

bit older than they look in a lot of artwork.

2:11

Edward was twelve and Richard was about

2:13

to turn ten, but there are some paintings

2:15

where they look more like ten and eight, or

2:18

maybe even younger than that. I

2:20

was looking at one, I was like, these two look

2:22

like toddlers. Here they were definitely not toddlers,

2:27

still kids. The

2:29

conflict between the Houses of York and

2:31

the Lancaster had been going on for about fifteen

2:33

years by the time Edward the fifth was born.

2:36

His father, Edward the fourth, had become king

2:39

in fourteen sixty one after a

2:41

revolt against Lancastrian King Henry

2:43

the sixth. A strategic marriage

2:46

could have given Edward the Fourth more power

2:48

and solidified his reign during this extremely

2:51

turbulent time, and his cousin

2:54

Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, tried

2:56

to negotiate a marriage to a French

2:58

princess to that end, but

3:00

instead, on May one, fourteen

3:03

sixty four, Edward secretly

3:05

married Elizabeth Woodville, which some

3:07

sources today spell as Woodville.

3:10

Edward and Elizabeth kept this marriage

3:13

secret for months, and, according

3:15

to documents from the time, they announced

3:17

their marriage around September of fourteen

3:19

sixty four because Elizabeth was pregnant.

3:22

But if that's the case, that pregnancy

3:24

did not come to term, the couple's

3:26

first child, Elizabeth of York,

3:29

wasn't born until fourteen sixty six.

3:32

Regardless, as soon as words

3:34

spread about the king's secret marriage,

3:36

it was extremely unpopular.

3:39

Elizabeth was the widow of Sir John

3:41

Gray, a Lancastrian who had been killed

3:43

in battle while fighting against the

3:46

Yorks. The Windville family

3:48

also just did not have the kind of power

3:50

that Edward really needed. They were gentry,

3:52

they were not royalty, and they

3:55

were viewed as a bunch of scheming opportunists.

3:58

Right from the beginning, there were rumors that this

4:00

marriage was not legal, and that any

4:03

children Edward and Elizabeth might have

4:05

would have no legitimate claim to the throne.

4:08

This kind of rumor was not new. There

4:10

had been allegations that Edward himself was

4:12

not legitimate. During the

4:14

Wars of the Roses, the English throne

4:17

repeatedly passed back and forth between

4:19

the Yorks and the Lancasters. In

4:21

the late fourteen sixties, Edward

4:23

lost a lot of his more powerful supporters,

4:25

including the Earl of Warwick, who tried

4:28

to imprison the king in late fourteen

4:30

sixty nine before fleeing

4:32

to France. Warwick returned

4:35

with the Lancastrian invasion that was

4:37

backed by King Louis the Eleventh. In

4:40

October of fourteen seventy, Henry

4:42

the sixth supporters freed him from the

4:44

Tower of London and returned him to the

4:46

throne. Edward fled

4:48

to Flanders, and Elizabeth and

4:50

their children took refuge at Westminster

4:53

Abbey. At this point Edward

4:55

and Elizabeth had three daughters, Elizabeth,

4:58

Mary and Cecily. But on

5:00

November two, fourteen seventy Elizabeth

5:03

gave birth to another child while at

5:05

Westminster Abbey, and that was a

5:07

son named Edward. Edward

5:09

the fourth returned from exile in fourteen

5:12

seventy one. With the help of Charles

5:14

of Burgundy and Edward's brother Richard,

5:16

Duke of Gloucester, the Yorks

5:19

defeated the Lancasters at the Battle of Tewkesbury

5:21

on May fourth, fourteen seventy one.

5:24

Warwick had already been killed

5:27

at the Battle of Barnett in April, and

5:29

many of the most powerful Lancastrian

5:31

leaders were killed at Tewkesbury

5:34

or were executed afterward. This

5:36

included Henry the sixth, son and

5:38

heir. Henry himself was

5:40

captured, returned to the Tower of London,

5:43

and then murdered there. With Edward

5:45

the Fourth back on the throne, his son, Edward

5:48

the fifth became the Prince of Wales. Before

5:51

long, the prince was sent to Ludlow Castle

5:53

to be educated and prepared to rule.

5:56

His uncle Anthony Woodville, Earl Rivers

5:59

was designated as his guardian and

6:01

instructed to make sure the prince was quote

6:03

virtuously, cunningly and nightly

6:06

brought up. The prince also

6:08

had a doctor, a nurse, a daily

6:10

schedule that involved lessons and exercise,

6:13

and religious observance and instruction, and

6:15

quote noble stories read

6:18

to him each night as he ate his dinner.

6:21

The king and queen went on to have several

6:23

more children. Five daughters

6:25

survived into adulthood. Those

6:27

where Elizabeth, Cecily, and Catherine

6:29

and bridget. A second son,

6:32

Richard, was born in fourteen seventy

6:34

three and named Duke of York in fourteen

6:36

seventy four. A third son,

6:39

George, followed in fourteen seventy seven,

6:41

but died when he was about to Of

6:44

course, all of the fighting between the

6:46

houses of York and Lancaster and Edward's

6:48

Raine had a lot more going

6:50

on than we can really get into here, but

6:53

in terms of the wars of the Roses, things

6:55

were relatively stable from

6:57

the death of Henry the sixth until

6:59

fourteen eighty three, when King

7:01

Edward the Fourth unexpectedly died

7:03

after an illness. Before

7:06

his death, he named his brother Richard,

7:08

Duke of Gloucester as Lord Protector.

7:11

Edward the Fourth death was announced on

7:13

April nine, four eighty three,

7:16

but he really probably died a few days

7:18

before that. It seems like Elizabeth

7:21

delayed the announcement so that she could try

7:23

to secure the Windville family's political

7:25

future, one in which they would have

7:27

as much power and influence over

7:29

the new king as possible. This

7:32

may have included Elizabeth even trying

7:34

to act as regent for her twelve year

7:36

old son, although at this point in English

7:38

history it would have been a lot more common for

7:40

the regent to be male. Elizabeth

7:43

sent word to her brother Anthony Widville

7:45

Earl Rivers to inform him

7:47

of Edward the fourth death, and arranged to

7:49

have his son, who was now King Edward

7:52

the Fifth, brought to London for his

7:54

coronation. Edward the

7:56

Fifth learned of his father's death on April

7:58

fourteen eighties read,

8:00

and he and his uncle left for London on

8:02

the twenty three after St George's

8:05

Day observances, and what

8:07

seems to have been an intentional move,

8:10

the Queen mother did not notify

8:12

her late husband's brother, Richard, Duke

8:14

of Gloucester, of Edward the fourth's

8:16

death. This may have been because

8:19

of her efforts to secure her family's position,

8:22

or it may have been because of longstanding

8:24

deep animosity between Richard

8:26

and the Windvills. There

8:28

is really a ton of backstory

8:31

here, but among other things, Richard

8:33

and edwards brother George Plantagenet,

8:36

Duke of Clarence, had resented the

8:38

amount of power that was going to the Windville

8:40

family, and George's various

8:42

schemes and allegations had ultimately

8:45

led to his execution in fourteen

8:47

seventy eight. That was something that

8:49

Richard blamed Elizabeth for, at

8:51

least in part. Richard did

8:54

not learn about his brother's death until April

8:56

twenty, likely through William Lord

8:58

Hastings, who had been at were the Fourth

9:00

Chamberlain. The Duke immediately

9:03

set off to meet up with his nephew, the King,

9:05

who was on route to London. So

9:07

there are people who believe that it was at this point,

9:10

or maybe even earlier, that

9:12

Richard started plotting to take the throne

9:14

for himself. And if that's the case, he

9:16

really had to work quickly because

9:19

if he was not successful before

9:21

Edward was formally crowned, it

9:24

would just become a lot harder for him

9:26

to do it, And on the other hand,

9:28

Elizabeth Woodbill was also working

9:30

very quickly hoping to get Edward

9:32

crowned as soon as possible, because

9:35

at this point, Richard's role as

9:37

Lord Protector was supposed to end

9:39

with his nephew's coronation, and that could

9:41

potentially open the door for the wood Fills

9:44

to step in and take control. So

9:46

Elizabeth tried to arrange the coronation

9:49

for May four, which was less than

9:51

a month after the death of Edward the Fourth.

9:54

We'll continue to untangle

9:56

all of this stuff after we

9:58

first paused for a little sponsored by. There

10:09

are some question marks about

10:11

pretty much everything we're going to talk about

10:14

for the entire rest of this episode.

10:17

For some of it, we have concrete documentation

10:19

of some basic details like X happened,

10:21

and then why happened, and then Z happened,

10:24

But we don't have firsthand documentation

10:26

of people's motivations for X,

10:28

Y and Z. Sometimes we don't know who

10:31

actually carried those things out.

10:34

Sometimes accounts even contradict

10:36

on the basic facts of X, Y and Z

10:39

in general, Though most

10:41

sources agree that Richard,

10:44

Duke of Gloucester, was plotting at

10:46

minimum to get rid of the wib Bill family

10:48

and its influence over the king, but

10:51

probably to steal the throne for himself.

10:54

And that's not just people like Sir Thomas

10:56

Moore, whose history of King Richard

10:58

the Third has times been characterized

11:01

as anti Richard propaganda. Italian

11:04

monk Dominic Mancini was in London

11:07

during these events and wrote an official report

11:09

in December of four three,

11:11

one that More and other writers would

11:13

not have had access to. But it corroborates

11:16

a lot of basic details and reports

11:18

a ton of gossip that was circulating.

11:21

Yeah, there's some questions around his account,

11:23

like who all was he talking to,

11:26

what was his circle of acquaintances

11:28

overwhelmingly anti Richard,

11:30

how much English did he actually know, a lot

11:33

of questions. But still

11:35

we have this account that seems

11:37

to back up a lot of the things that lead people

11:39

to conclude that Richard the Third was trying

11:41

to steal the throne. And at

11:44

the same time, there's still a lot that's

11:46

open to interpretation, like, taken

11:48

at face value, a lot of Richard's

11:51

actions could be interpreted as loyal

11:53

to his nephew, taking loyalty

11:55

oaths, publicly bowing to him,

11:58

allowing preparations for his coronation

12:00

to go on in an apparently pretty normal

12:02

way, but a lot of people believed

12:05

that this was all a ruse to lure

12:07

the King and the people around him into

12:10

a false sense of security and to cover

12:12

his own tracks. Richard,

12:14

Duke of Gloucester, arrived at Northampton

12:16

on April. There

12:19

he met up with Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham,

12:22

Anthony Woodville, Earl Rivers, and Richard

12:24

Gray, who was Elizabeth Woodville's son from

12:27

her first marriage. Earl

12:29

Rivers had taken the young king ahead to Stony

12:31

Stratford, then doubled back to Northampton,

12:34

apparently on the pretense that Northampton

12:37

didn't have suitable lodgings to accommodate

12:39

the King and his party, along

12:41

with Gloucester, Buckingham and all their

12:43

retainers. There were a lot

12:45

of retainers, a

12:48

whole lot of them. The next morning, though

12:50

Earl Rivers was locked inside

12:52

the end where he was staying. This was

12:54

probably under the orders of Gloucester,

12:57

were Buckingham or both of them working together.

13:00

Like Gloucester, Buckingham had

13:02

a long history with the wit Bills, including

13:04

being married to Elizabeth's sister

13:06

Catherine when he was just ten or twelve years old.

13:09

He also had a very deep hatred

13:11

and distrust of the entire family. Richard,

13:14

Duke of Gloucester, Henry, Duke of Buckingham,

13:17

and Richard Gray caught up with Edward the

13:19

Fifth at Stony Stratford on

13:21

April, informing him

13:23

that his uncle and others in their party

13:25

had been arrested because they were plotting

13:27

against him. Edward didn't

13:30

believe this at all, saying that he trusted

13:32

these men and then he also trusted

13:34

his mother. Buckingham told

13:36

the young king that he absolutely should not

13:38

trust the Woodvilles. He ordered

13:41

Edwards escort to return home, then

13:43

arrested the king's half brother, Richard

13:45

Gray, in front of him. Some

13:47

accounts described the king as being

13:49

arrested or captured at this point

13:52

as well, and one of those is that

13:54

of Dominic Mancini. But Mancini

13:56

also seems to have misunderstood or

13:59

mistaken at le part of the situation

14:01

here, because he describes Edward's

14:03

brother Richard as being arrested

14:06

at Stony Stratford as well,

14:08

but at that point Richard was still

14:10

at Westminster Abbey with his mother. It

14:13

also doesn't seem like Edward thought he

14:15

was a captive. At this point, he wrote

14:17

a letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury instructing

14:20

him to safeguard the Great Seal of the Realm

14:22

and to safeguard their tour of London and

14:24

the treasure there. It's within the realm

14:27

of possibility that Edward was coerced

14:29

into writing this letter, or that it was forged,

14:32

or that he wrote it believing that he was in danger,

14:35

But it doesn't really read as though he thought

14:37

he was a captive. As

14:39

all of this was happening, though, Elizabeth

14:41

Woodville took refuge in Westminster

14:44

Abbey with her children and an

14:46

entourage. Sometimes this is

14:48

described as a flight for her life,

14:50

and at minimum it would have been clear

14:53

to her at this point, especially if she had

14:55

heard about the arrests of her kim folk,

14:58

that her efforts to put the Whodville familyly

15:00

in an advantageous position were

15:02

crumbling. Gloucester, Buckingham

15:04

and King Edward the Fifth continued on to

15:07

London, and once they got there, Edward

15:09

was taken to the Bishop of London's palace,

15:11

where he stayed for several days. His

15:14

uncle Richard repeated his oaths of fealty

15:16

to the King and was formally acknowledged

15:19

as Lord Protector. Preparations

15:21

continued for edwards coronation,

15:24

and the Great Council discussed where the

15:26

King should stay until the coronation

15:28

took place. While his mother

15:30

had tried to arrange a coronation for May,

15:33

the final date had been set for late June

15:35

to coincide with the feast of the Nativity

15:37

of St John the Baptist. The

15:39

final decision for the king's lodgings

15:42

in the interim, which was suggested

15:44

by the Duke of Buckingham and agreed

15:46

to by the whole Council, was

15:48

to send Edward to the Tower of London. Okay,

15:52

that sounds incredibly suspicious

15:54

to a modern ear because during the Tutor

15:56

era the Tower of London became notorious

15:59

primary only as a prison. We've

16:02

talked about various people's being imprisoned

16:04

in the Tower on the show before, including Sir

16:06

Walter Raleigh, and just in this

16:08

episode, we've talked about King Henry the sixth

16:10

being imprisoned in the Tower two different

16:13

times. And while the Tower

16:15

did have a prison in the fifteenth century,

16:18

at that point it was also a

16:20

royal residence. Buckingham Palace

16:22

did not exist yet and would not be built

16:24

for almost another two hundred fifty

16:27

years. So, in addition to

16:29

the fortress and prison, the Tower of London

16:32

was a place where royals would go stay. It

16:34

was a palace complete with the luxury accommodations

16:37

that were routinely in use by people

16:39

of their station. This is also

16:42

a place that Edward probably would have already

16:44

been familiar with, since his father had frequently

16:46

held court there. Monarchs

16:48

stayed in the tower for at least the night before

16:51

their coronation, and their coronation

16:53

procession started at the tower, so

16:55

when Edward the Fifth first went to the Tower,

16:58

it was to the royal residence and aunt

17:00

the prison. The Duke of Buckingham

17:03

also started trying to convince the Queen

17:05

Mother to send Richard of Shrewsbury, Duke

17:07

of York, to the Tower as well. There

17:11

were several arguments for her to do

17:13

this. Richard could be a source

17:15

of comfort and companionship for his older

17:17

brother, although since Richard had mostly

17:20

lived in London and Edward had

17:22

mostly lived at Ludlow Castle, they

17:24

really might not have known each other all that well.

17:27

Richard was also now next in line

17:30

for the throne, and the Tower was regarded

17:32

as one of the safest places to be, and

17:35

it would have been considered strange or

17:37

even scandalous if Richard didn't

17:39

attend his brother Edward's coronation,

17:41

so taking him to the tower ahead

17:44

of time when his mother would not

17:46

be able to keep him with her at Westminster

17:48

Abbey, or to try to use him as some

17:50

kind of bargaining ship, or

17:54

maybe Buckingham just wanted both of

17:56

them to be in the tower at the same time to make

17:58

it easier to kill them. So many

18:00

possibilities. As Buckingham

18:02

was trying to convince Elizabeth to send Richard

18:05

to the tower, plans for edwards coronation

18:07

were carrying on, and that was now scheduled

18:09

for June. Rits

18:12

were issued for the first Parliament that would assemble

18:14

under the new king to meet on June. Young

18:18

men who were eligible for knighthood were summoned

18:20

to London as well so that they could be knighted

18:22

at the coronation. But then

18:25

in early June all those plans apparently

18:27

went out the window when it was alleged

18:30

that the marriage of the late King Edward

18:32

the Fourth to Elizabeth Woodville had

18:34

not been legal because he

18:37

was already married to Eleanor

18:39

Talbot, the widow of Sir Thomas Butler.

18:42

This information may have come from Robert

18:44

Stillington, Bishop of Bath and Wells,

18:47

who reportedly had performed that

18:49

earlier marriage. Eleanor

18:51

had died before Edward the five was born,

18:54

but that did not matter since she had

18:56

still been living when Edward the fourth

18:58

had married Elizabeth. The most

19:00

likely time for the bishop to have delivered

19:02

this information was at a Royal Council

19:05

meeting that happened on June eight, but

19:07

reports of that meeting said there was nothing significant

19:10

and an allegation that the king's marriage

19:12

had been illegal and that consequently

19:15

his son, whose coronation was weeks away,

19:17

had no claim to the throne. That definitely

19:19

would have been categorized as significant yeah

19:23

the so this bishop would have been in

19:25

London for the coronation. The

19:27

Bishop of Bath and Wells was typically

19:29

one of the bishops who escorted the new

19:31

monarch, and as a bishop, he was also

19:34

a member of Parliament. Parliament had been summoned,

19:37

but there are questions on why he

19:39

would have chosen this particular moment

19:41

to share this information, rather than,

19:43

for example, when Edward the Fifth

19:45

had been born. There as some

19:48

suspicion that Edward the fourth

19:50

had even tried to buy the bishop's

19:52

silence by making him a bishop in the first

19:54

place. He had been a canon when

19:57

this marriage to Eleanor Butler had allegedly

20:00

been performed, and then Bath

20:02

and Wells was the first English bishopric

20:04

to open up after edwards

20:06

marriage to Elizabeth was first announced. There's

20:08

this idea that maybe he was like, if you keep

20:11

your mouth shut about that time you married me to

20:13

a different lady, you get to be

20:15

a bishop right now. It's

20:18

all very speculative, but

20:22

there are also questions about whether

20:24

this marriage story is even true.

20:27

At the time, it was common for couples

20:29

to do what is known as a pre contract

20:31

before witnesses. They would promise to get

20:33

married, and then afterward they would

20:35

consummate the marriage. This

20:38

was regarded as essentially the same

20:40

as a marriage, even though it had not been formalized

20:42

in a church. Some sources

20:45

describe edwards purported marriage to

20:47

Eleanor as a pre contract only,

20:50

but a number of contemporary sources flatly

20:52

disbelieved this entire thing and dismissed

20:55

it as something that Richard had made

20:57

up to undermine his nephew Laura.

21:00

Really this would be the sort of issue that would

21:02

be taken up before Parliament, but

21:04

because the new king had not been crowned

21:07

yet, a formal parliament could not

21:09

be convened. Instead, the

21:11

Estates of the Realm met. This was

21:14

basically the same people, but not a formal

21:16

parliament. In mid June,

21:18

the Estates of the Realm concluded

21:21

that Edward the Fifth was not the legitimate

21:23

king, and they offered the crown instead

21:26

to Richard, Duke of Gloucester. This

21:29

was not unanimous, though not within

21:31

the Estates of the Realm or with him the Royal

21:33

Council. The Royal Council

21:35

split, with the Duke of Buckingham and

21:38

others who supported Richard meeting

21:40

with him in secret, and the rest

21:42

of the Council meeting at Westminster. Immediately.

21:46

At least some of the council meeting at Westminster

21:48

were convinced that Gloucester's private

21:50

meetings involved a plot against

21:52

the king. William Lord Hastings

21:55

had continued to back Edward as

21:57

King and his uncle Richard as

21:59

Lord Protector only, and

22:01

during all of this he and several other men

22:04

armed themselves and went to one of these secret

22:06

council meetings, Hastings

22:09

reportedly attacked Richard,

22:11

who hadn't yet accepted the crown

22:13

and was still technically considered the Duke

22:16

of Gloucester. Hastings was

22:18

arrested and almost immediately beheaded.

22:21

Hastings beheading seems

22:23

to have been what convinced the public

22:25

of London that the Duke of Gloucester

22:27

was trying to steal the throne.

22:30

Elizabeth finally agreed to

22:32

send her younger son to the Tower of London,

22:34

and he arrived there on June six, and

22:38

there are still questions about

22:40

why, since she and her children were

22:42

safe in Westminster Abbey.

22:44

While there are some people who argued that she

22:46

only would have sent her son away if she thought

22:49

it was safe to do so, others

22:51

describe her as under siege,

22:53

with the Duke of Buckingham threatening to remove

22:56

Richard by force if she did not

22:58

comply. And June,

23:01

the Duke of Gloucester issued rits canceling

23:03

the parliament that was supposed to convene on

23:05

June. Then on June,

23:08

which was supposed to have been coronation

23:11

day, Londoners instead heard

23:13

sermons that attacked Edwards claim

23:15

to the throne as illegitimate. On

23:18

June, Anthony Woodbill, Earl

23:20

Rivers, Richard Gray and others

23:22

who had been part of their party to London

23:25

were all beheaded, and on

23:27

June Richard,

23:30

Duke of Gloucester was proclaimed to

23:32

be King. Richard the third. Let's

23:35

take a sponsor break. Let's do We

23:48

said at the top of the show that the princes

23:51

in the Tower, in spite

23:53

of almost ubiquitously being

23:55

called the princes in the Tower, at this point,

23:57

we're not princes. When

24:00

he first arrived at the Tower, Edward

24:02

the fifth was king. His reign

24:04

as king lasted from April ninth to June

24:08

three, and when his brother Richard

24:11

arrived, he was the Duke of York and

24:13

Edwards air presumptive. He hadn't

24:16

formally been crowned as a prince

24:18

that I know of at this point. Once

24:21

Richard the third was proclaimed king, though

24:24

the boys were not kings or princes,

24:26

they were commoners. Formal

24:29

records from the time often nod to Edward's

24:31

status with titles like read

24:34

us best artie. We really

24:36

don't know what happened to them

24:38

in the tower. According

24:40

to the Kroland Chronicle Continuations,

24:42

written around April of fourteen six

24:45

the boys stayed there quote under

24:47

certain guard. The Great

24:49

Chronicle of London contains the last

24:52

written reference to anyone seeing

24:54

the two boys. They were shooting bows

24:56

and arrows and playing in the garden quote

24:58

at sundry times ending

25:00

June sixteenth. But once

25:03

they were considered commoners, they would

25:05

have been moved from the royal residence

25:07

to some other location. They

25:10

weren't royals anymore. Dominic

25:12

Mancini wrote that the boys were quote withdrawn

25:14

to the inner apartments of the tower proper,

25:17

and day by day began to be seen more

25:19

rarely behind the bars and windows,

25:21

until at length they ceased to appear altogether.

25:24

Already there is a suspicion that

25:27

they have been done away with. Mancini

25:30

also describes Edward as confessing

25:32

and doing penance daily, as

25:34

though he thought that his death was eminent. King

25:37

Richard the third was crowned on julyie,

25:41

and there are some references to an attempt

25:43

to get the boys out of the tower after

25:45

he left London on his royal tour, but

25:48

sources contradict as to whether these plans

25:51

were carried out, or if they

25:53

were, whether they were successful. It

25:55

does seem like people believe that at least

25:58

one of the boys was still alive when Richard

26:00

left, though, but as

26:02

that account from Mancini suggests, rumors

26:05

started to spread really quickly that they

26:07

had been killed, and in the subsequent

26:09

decades people reported that they

26:11

had heard that the boys had died

26:14

pretty much by every possible means,

26:17

smothering, poisoning, stabbing,

26:20

drowning, starving, and,

26:22

according to ruy de Susa of Portugal,

26:25

bled into a body of water that

26:27

passed through the fort where they were being held

26:29

until they died. Sometime

26:32

after the last report of Edward and Richard

26:34

being spotted outside the tower, their

26:36

mother and the rest of her children left

26:39

Westminster Abbey. She

26:41

seemed to endorse Richard the third

26:43

is King, possibly because he

26:45

had promised to arrange the most advantageous

26:47

marriages possible for her daughters.

26:51

In fourteen four, Parliament

26:53

passed an act called Titulus

26:55

Reggius, which formally recognized

26:58

Richard the third and laired

27:00

the children of Edward the fourth and Elizabeth

27:02

Wouldville to be illegitimate. It

27:05

cited several reasons, including edwards

27:07

pre contract to another woman, the

27:10

fact that the marriage was secret and

27:12

without the consent of the lords of the land,

27:15

and because Elizabeth and her family had used

27:17

sorcery to entrap the king. Sure,

27:20

sure, um, that's how that

27:22

works. Of course, Richard the third

27:24

was not king for long. His opponents

27:26

characterized him as scheming and cruel,

27:29

the kind of person who would murder his

27:31

own nephews children just

27:33

to take the throne for himself. Richard's

27:36

only son died in fourteen eighty four

27:38

and his wife the following year, and

27:41

the Duke of Buckingham turned against him.

27:43

Yorkists invaded England with the help

27:46

of French and Scottish mercenaries, and

27:48

Richard was killed at the Battle of bosworth Field

27:51

on August five.

27:54

Succeeding him as king was Henry

27:56

Tudor, also known as King Henry

27:58

the seventh. He was the last surviving

28:01

man of the Lancastrian line, and he

28:03

married a york That was Elizabeth

28:06

of York, the oldest sister of Edward.

28:09

The five people who

28:11

thought Richard the third was a usurper already

28:13

really thought Elizabeth was the rightful queen,

28:16

so Henry's marrying her tightened

28:18

his claim to the throne. In

28:20

fact, there had been some discussion, some

28:23

frankly pretty gross discussion

28:25

that Richard the third had thought about

28:27

marrying his niece himself for

28:30

the same reason after his wife

28:32

died, or maybe even before. But

28:34

Henry could not marry Elizabeth if

28:36

she was considered illegitimate, so he

28:39

had to get Parliament to repeal the Titulus

28:41

Reggius, and after they did, Henry

28:44

also ordered all previous copies

28:46

of Titulus Reggius to be destroyed,

28:49

and for a time the text of that document

28:51

was lost until it was rediscovered

28:53

in the Crowland Chronicle, one

28:55

of those chroniclers had copied it in there. It

28:58

does not appear that Henry launched any

29:00

kind of investigation into what

29:03

had happened to the princess in the tower or

29:06

into Richard's actions in fourteen

29:08

eight three, possibly because such an

29:10

investigation would have unearthed

29:12

information that would have undermined Henry's

29:14

own claim to the throne. But

29:17

it was during the reigns of Henry

29:19

the seventh and Henry the eight that

29:21

people started printing more specific

29:23

accounts of what had happened in the

29:25

Tower, including naming names.

29:28

In the sixteenth century Anglica Historia,

29:31

Italian politary Virgil wrote that Richard

29:34

the third had ordered Robert Brackenbury,

29:36

Constable of the Tower, to kill

29:38

Edward the fifth and his brother. When

29:41

Breckenbury did not, Richard told

29:43

Sir James Terrell to do it. In

29:45

Fabian's chronicle, Robert Fabian,

29:47

who died in fifteen twelve, also named

29:49

Terrell or possibly another

29:52

servant of the king. By

29:54

this point Sir James Terrell was dead.

29:57

He had been convicted of treason and

29:59

executed in fifteen o two. I

30:02

had a whole explanation of what happened in

30:04

here, but it was very long. Terrell

30:07

reportedly confessed to killing Edward

30:10

and Richards sometime between his conviction

30:12

on May second and his execution on

30:14

May six, but no copy

30:16

of this purported confession exists

30:19

anywhere. The first really

30:21

specific account of the boy's deaths

30:23

was in the History of Richard the Third

30:25

by Sir Thomas Moore, secretary

30:28

and adviser to Henry the eight.

30:31

More wrote that Richard the third had the boy

30:33

shut up, removing everyone

30:35

from them except a servant called

30:37

black will or William Slaughter. In

30:40

his words, they quote lingered

30:43

in thought and heaviness till this traitorous

30:45

death delivered them of that wretchedness.

30:48

For Sir James Terrell devised that

30:50

they should be murdered in their beds

30:53

to that execution, whereof he appointed

30:55

Miles Forest, one of the four that

30:57

kept them, a fellow fleshed in

31:00

order before time to him,

31:02

he joined one John Dighton, his

31:04

own horsekeeper, a big, broad,

31:06

square, strong nave. This

31:09

is one of those very old documents that

31:11

writes the word murder like murther, which

31:14

I always love. It's

31:16

so good, and

31:19

we could get into a hall of conversation about how

31:21

that linguistic transition happened,

31:23

but we've got more to this show to go on.

31:26

More goes on to say that at

31:28

about midnight, Forest and Dighton came

31:31

into the boy's room, wrapped

31:33

them in their bedclothes, and smothered

31:35

them with their feather beds and pillows.

31:38

Once Terrell had confirmed that they were

31:40

dead, he quote caused those

31:42

murderers to bury them at the stairfoot

31:45

meatly deep in the ground under a

31:48

heap of stones. More

31:50

goes on to say that Richard the Third was brought

31:52

to the scene and ordered their bodies moved

31:54

to a better place because they were sons

31:56

of a king, before adding sarcastically,

32:00

quote low the heart courage

32:02

of a king, for he would recompense

32:04

the detestable murder with a solemn

32:06

obloquy. Of course, William

32:09

Shakespeare, writing during the reign of Queen Elizabeth

32:11

the First, used Moore's work as

32:13

a major source for his play Richard

32:16

the Third, which depicts Richard ordering

32:18

Terrell to carry out the crime, and

32:20

Terrell returning afterwards saying, quote,

32:23

the tyranness and bloody deed is done,

32:25

the most arch of piteous massacre

32:28

that every yet this land was guilty of Dighton

32:31

and Forest, whom I did suburn

32:33

to do this ruthless piece of butchery.

32:35

Although they were fleshed villains, bloody

32:38

dogs, melting with tenderness

32:40

and kind compassion, wept

32:42

like two children in their death sad

32:44

stories. Of course, the

32:46

tutors had very good reasons to want Richard

32:49

the Third to look like a usurper, because

32:51

otherwise Henry the seventh

32:54

had forced a legitimate king off the throne.

32:57

So at this point it is generally but universally

33:01

believed that Edward the five and his brother

33:03

Richard died at the Tower of London by

33:05

the end of three

33:08

and this idea that Richard the Third ordered

33:10

James Terrell to kill them. That's pretty

33:12

widespread, but Richard the Third

33:15

definitely isn't the only suspect. Another

33:18

is Henry Stafford, second Duke of Buckingham,

33:20

who came up a lot in this episode. In

33:23

this idea, he would have been trying to ingratiate

33:25

himself to Richard and to protect Richard's

33:28

claim to the throne. Another

33:30

is John Howard, Duke of Norfolk, who

33:32

became Lord High Steward under

33:34

Richard the Third pretty much with similar

33:37

reasoning. But Richard the Third

33:39

is not the only monarch who stood to benefit

33:41

from Edward and his brother being out of the

33:43

picture. The other is

33:45

actually Henry the seven. Making

33:47

Elizabeth of York legitimate so he can marry

33:50

her would have made Edward and Richard legitimate

33:52

as well, so if they were still

33:55

alive, Henry would have no real

33:57

claim to the throne. So there

33:59

are people who think the boys lived in the tower

34:02

for a couple of years, hidden away, until

34:04

Henry the seventh had them killed so that

34:06

he could become king. Other

34:09

people interpret this more as just confirmation

34:11

that they were definitely dead by this point.

34:13

There are also, though, people who believed

34:16

that at least one of the boys lived

34:18

for much longer, and people who claimed

34:20

that they were one of them.

34:23

A man named Lambert Simnel, who

34:25

pretended to be the son of George

34:27

Plantagenet, first Duke of Clarence, had

34:29

originally planned to claim that he was

34:31

Richard, Duke of York. Then

34:33

in fourteen ninety a man calling himself

34:36

Richard of England made this same claim,

34:38

and this could really be its own episode.

34:41

This man called Perkin Warbeck,

34:43

convinced a number of very powerful people,

34:46

including James the Fourth of Scotland

34:48

and Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian the

34:50

First, that he really was Richard,

34:52

Duke of York. He eventually

34:54

confessed to being an impostor. Though yeah,

34:57

we actually did an episode on Perkin Warbeck

34:59

on Criminilia in our Impostors season.

35:02

Oh nice, I was wondering that, and I forgot

35:04

to ask, oh, yes, that's

35:06

a rich impostor story.

35:08

So there is also a burial record

35:11

in Kent for a Richard Plantagenet

35:13

dated from December twenty two, fifteen

35:15

fifty. Elizabeth Woodville

35:18

had a cousin living not far from the burial

35:20

site, so some people have interpreted

35:22

this to mean that Richard, Duke of York somehow

35:25

escaped the tower, perhaps while

35:27

Richard the Third was on that royal tour

35:29

and secretly lived out the rest of his life

35:32

with his mother's kin. On

35:34

July seventeen, sixteen seventy

35:36

four, human remains

35:38

were found in a chest under a stone

35:40

staircase outside the White Tower

35:43

at the Tower of London during some renovations

35:45

that had been ordered by Charles the second.

35:48

People who examined these remains concluded

35:50

that they belonged to two people who

35:53

were about eleven and thirteen years old.

35:55

John Knight, chief surgeon to the King, concluded

35:58

that they were indeed Edward the fifth and Richard

36:00

of Shrewsbury, Duke of York. These

36:03

remains were put on display before being

36:05

placed in Henry the seventh Lady Chapel

36:07

at Westminster Abbey in an urn

36:09

designed by Sir Christopher wren So.

36:13

Bones of children under a staircase,

36:16

just like Sir Thomas Moore said, but

36:19

More had also written that Richard the third

36:21

had ordered the bodies moved to a

36:23

more suitable location, and

36:25

these were not the first bones found at

36:27

the Tower of London suspected of

36:29

being Edward the fifth and his brother. Other

36:32

bones were unearthed at the tower in sixteen

36:34

ten, sixty two and

36:36

sixteen forty seven. Pretty

36:39

Much every time anyone found

36:41

a smallish set of remains in the tower,

36:44

people immediately thought that it was the prince's,

36:46

including one time when it turned

36:48

out to have been an ape that had escaped

36:50

from the Royal menagerie. It's

36:53

also not clear what happened to these earlier

36:55

finds and whether any of them were the same

36:57

bones later found under the staircase.

37:00

In nineteen thirty three, Lawrence E. Tanner,

37:02

keeper of the Muniments and Librarian

37:05

of Westminster Abbey, and anatomist

37:07

William Wright, dean of the London Hospital

37:10

Medical College, opened up the urn.

37:13

They examined the bones and published

37:15

their findings as recent investigations

37:17

regarding the fate of the princes in the Tower in

37:20

the journal Archaeologia. Dentist

37:23

George Northcroft had also examined

37:25

the teeth to try to determine the age of

37:27

the people whose bones they were, and

37:30

they concluded that, along with a

37:32

lot of other random animal bones that

37:34

were in there, there were two sets of human

37:36

bones in the urn, or belonging

37:38

to children of the right ages to be the

37:41

princess in the tower. Although

37:43

this sounds pretty conclusive, this investigation

37:46

was not particularly thorough. It seems

37:48

in a lot of ways to have been intended to confirm

37:50

that these were the princes and not to like, actually find

37:52

the truth of the situation. It definitely

37:55

didn't follow methods or use technologies

37:57

that would be in use today. In

37:59

twenty eighteen, Dr John ashdown

38:02

Hill traced the mitochondrial DNA line

38:04

of the Princes in the Tower. Ashdown

38:07

Hill's earlier work had been part of the identification

38:09

of the remains of Richard the third.

38:12

This made news in shortly

38:14

after ashdown Hill's death. This

38:17

work could be used to confirm whether the bones

38:19

from the urn at Westminster Abbey, or any

38:21

other bones that might be dug up, really

38:24

belonged to Edward the fifth and his brother.

38:26

And as for that paper we mentioned up

38:28

at the top of the show that was more on

38:31

a murder, the deaths of the Princes in

38:33

the Tower and historiographical

38:35

implications for the regimes of Henry

38:37

the seventh and Henry the eighth, That

38:39

was by Tim Thornton, published in the January

38:43

edition of the journal History.

38:45

Thornton argues that two men

38:47

named Edward and Miles Forest

38:49

were the sons of the Miles Forest

38:52

that Sir Thomas Moore had named as one of the

38:54

murderers. According to Thornton,

38:56

More would have known both Edward

38:59

and the younger Miles Forest. Edward

39:01

was a servant of Henry the Eighth's bed chamber,

39:04

and the younger Miles was an advisor to

39:06

Cardinal Woolsey and a

39:08

messenger between Henry the Eighth court

39:10

and the embassy in Bruges, where

39:13

Moore was working. It's

39:15

also possible that John Dighton was

39:17

living in Calais while Moore was

39:19

also there, so More may have known

39:21

Dighton as well. If

39:24

Thornton is correct in these identifications,

39:26

then Thomas Moore may have personally

39:28

known the sons of one of the alleged

39:31

killers, and possibly one of the alleged

39:33

killers himself. So it's

39:35

possible that Moore's account included details

39:37

he learned directly from them.

39:40

That still leaves some unanswered questions, though,

39:42

like if you or your father had murdered

39:45

the King of England, why would you

39:47

tell Sir Thomas More about it? I

39:49

do wonder and unburdening. Perhaps

39:55

I have a very quick piece of listener mail

39:57

to take us out of this episode. And

40:00

now that we have gone through this whole recording

40:02

and hopefully caught all

40:04

the times where I typed the word Richard

40:06

when I meant the word Edward or vice versa,

40:09

this email seems particularly appropriate

40:12

because it is about confusing names

40:14

in our Unearthed episode recently.

40:17

This is from Gray. Uh.

40:19

Gray's email is titled correction

40:22

Unearthed Columbian Harmony Cemetery

40:24

and it says prefacing this with

40:26

all the love and devotion, but wanted to let

40:28

you know there was a tiny mistake

40:30

in the most recent Unearthed episode. The

40:33

Colombian Harmony Cemetery stones

40:35

are being relocated from King George

40:38

County, Virginia, where they were

40:40

found in the river bank, to a memorial

40:42

park across the Potomac River in

40:44

landover Prince George's

40:46

County, Maryland. To

40:49

make it even more confusing, there is a

40:51

Prince George County no apostrophe

40:54

s in Virginia near Petersburg,

40:57

which is the home of the Tombstone House. All

41:01

the best, Great Gray sent a couple of links,

41:03

one an article from CNN

41:05

about the gravestones and another an

41:08

Atlas Obscure piece about the Tombstone

41:10

House. Uh. This made me laugh.

41:12

Even before we recorded this episode and kept

41:14

just messing up Richard and Edward all over

41:17

the place. Um, partly

41:19

because when I previously used

41:21

to live in Somerville, Massachusetts, I lived

41:23

on a street where

41:26

the street crossed the city line

41:28

into Cambridge. Uh

41:31

and had the house the same house numbers on

41:33

either side. UM.

41:35

And boy did that confuse people

41:37

visiting us, people delivering food?

41:40

Uh, not so much the mail carrier.

41:43

The mail carrier knew what was that that. Uh?

41:45

But you know more, Uh,

41:49

overnight deliveries were often overnight

41:52

it to the other city. Uh.

41:54

And this just reminded me of all that. So thank you Gray.

41:58

I think I just sort of conflated mull comple

42:00

things when I was writing up that installment

42:03

into unearthed. If you would like to write

42:05

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42:07

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42:09

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42:12

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42:14

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42:16

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