X marks the spot - or does it?

The ‘Bloody Tower’ in the Tower of London is ‘traditionally’ the place where the two princes, Edward and Richard, sons of Edward IV, were reputed to have been murdered by, or on the order of, their ‘wicked’ uncle, Richard III.

 

In the 15th century, it was known as the Garden Tower, because it overlooked the gardens of the Lieutenant’s lodging in the Tower (now called the Queen’s House). It’s worth noting that the Tower at this time was a royal residence, and a contemporary French chronicler mention the boys playing and practising archery in the garden in the summer of 1483.

 

Nothing more was seen or heard of them but this doesn't necessarily mean they had been killed. Reams have been written about them, including the theory that they had been taken elsewhere for safety, possibly in Flanders, but I don’t intend to go into all this now.

 

The first ‘evidence’ came during the reign of Henry VII who defeated and killed Richard at the battle of Bosworth in 1485. One of Richard's knights, Sir James Tyrrell, ‘confessed’ (under torture) that he ) had killed the princes, with the assistance of two others, but was unable to say where their bodies were. However, there is no evidence that Tyrell's alleged co-murderers were ever interrogated, and Tyrell was not charged with regicide.

Thomas More, who gives the most detailed account of the supposed murder, says the bodies were first buried 'at the stayre foot, metely depe in the ground under a great heape of stones' and then moved to a 'better' site 'because thei were a kinges sonnes'. The priest who reburied them had died by this time, and so no one knew where the bodies were buried. How very convenient!
 

In 1674 (i.e. nearly 200 years later) workmen demolishing a stone staircase connecting the royal apartments with the White Tower, found bones in a wooden chest, about “ten feet in the ground”. This has been taken to mean they were found under the stairs, rather than ten feet further down. It was decreed that the bones were those of the two princes, and King Charles II commissioned a marble casket for them which still stands in Westminster Abbey.

 

The whole story seems to have more holes than a sieve! More says the princes were buried at the stair foot, and then moved to a ‘better site’ and the information board at the Tower reiterates this. It says the bodies were buried for 24 hours under the stairway leading to the Wakefield Tower which adjoins the Bloody Tower, and were then removed by a priest and buried under an exterior staircase leading to the White Tower. One wonders how that could possibly be called a ‘better site’? And pity the poor priest who supposedly dug up the bones from under one staircase - and promptly buried them under another! At the time, probably dozens, if not hundreds, of people lived in the Tower of London. So no one saw a priest digging under a couple of staircases and asked questions? Add to that the fact that, if (and this is a big 'if') the princes had been murdered, it would have been far easier to take the bodies through the gate very near the Bloody Tower which led to steps down to the River Thames, from which a boat could take them and dump them out at sea.

 

In 1933, experts were allowed to examine the bones in the casket, but scientific knowledge at that time was scanty at best, and concentrated mainly on dental evidence, much of which has now been discredited.

However, until the royal family allow further examination of the bones, with modern methods of dating etc, there is no way of proving whether or not the bones in the casket are really the bones of the princes. And even if they are, there is still no proof that Richard III killed them. There were others with far greater motives for wanting the princes dead.

The memorial in Westminster Abbey,
supposedly containing the bones of the Princes

 

 

P.S. For true Ricardians, I apologise for this much abridged version of ‘ what happened to the princes?’ I’m well aware it is far more complex than my basic summary here!

Uncles - good or wicked?

When Edward IV died unexpectedly at the age of forty in 1483, two uncles played a dominant part in the events which followed.

 

The new king, Edward’s twelve year old son, also called Edward, was at Ludlow Castle in Shropshire at the time of his father’s death, under the supervision of his uncle, Anthony, Earl Rivers. Anthony was the brother of Edward IV’s queen, Elizabeth Woodville. After making hurried preparations to travel, he set off for London with the young king, Edward V. At the time, this would have been a journey of several days.

 

The king’s other uncle, Richard of Gloucester, had been named as Lord Protector by Edward IV, which indicated Edward’s trust in Richard to rule the kingdom during the minority of the young king. When Edward died, Richard was at Middleham Castle in Yorkshire. He received information from the Duke of Buckingham that the Woodville family intended to take control of the young king, and of the kingdom.

 

Richard set off south from Yorkshire, intending to meet the royal retinue in the midlands. On April 29th, he met with Buckingham at Northampton, but Anthony Woodville informed them that the king’s party had moved on about twelve miles further south to a small town called Stony Stratford. His excuse was that there were not enough lodging places for both parties in Northampton.

 

Suspecting that the Woodvilles intended to make an early start the next morning to get to London first, Richard acted quickly. Very early the next morning, Anthony Woodville’s lodgings in Northampton were surrounded, and he was arrested. Richard and Buckingham headed straight for Stony Stratford and took the boy kindg into protective custody, so forestalling the attempted coup by the Woodvilles. A small cottage in Stony Stratford, which was once the Rose and Crown Inn, has a plaque commemorating this event.

 

Anthony Woodville and his nephew Richard Grey (the queen’s son by her first marriage) were both executed at Pontefract Castle on 25 June 1483.

 

So, having despatched the young king’s ‘other’ uncle, how did Richard III then become king himself, and earn the epithet of ‘wicked uncle’?

 

Reams have been written about Richard III’s path to the throne. There are those who believe he was consumed with ambition to be king; equally others are adamant that it was forced on him by circumstances. Certainly, after his arrival in London with Edward V, nothing seemed amiss. Plans were made for the young king’s coronation, but at the end of June, it emerged that Edward IV had already been contracted in marriage to Eleanor Butler before he married Elizabeth Woodville. This made his Woodville marriage invalid, and any children of that marriage illegitimate. Thus, it seemed, Edward V could not succeed to the throne, and Richard was next in line.

 

By J.E.Millais, 1829-96

And what of the ‘Princes in the Tower’? In a previous post, I mentioned James Tyrell who is supposed to have confessed (when being tortured) to murdering the princes on Richard’s orders. Of course, Henry VII had every reason to squash any rumours that the princes were still alive. He’d already had to cope with two ‘pretenders’ posing as Edward V or his younger brother, so what better than to announce they had been murdered by their uncle? This also fulfilled another Tudor need. Henry had basically usurped the throne with no strong ‘royal blood’ claim to it, therefore it suited his agenda to paint his predecessor as black as possible, and reassure his subjects that he had saved the kingdom from this monster who had killed his own nephews.

Did he therefore announce this immediately after Tyrell’s confession? Was Tyrell executed on a charge of regicide? The answer to both is no. Tyrell was executed, but on a much lesser charge of supporting another Yorkist claim to the throne, and it was several years before Henry made public Tyrell’s alleged confession.

 

John Morton and Thomas More, and later Shakespeare (who based his play on Thomas More’s ‘History of Richard III’) perpetuated the myth of the ‘wicked uncle’.

 

Did Richard III have his nephews murdered? The question still remains, and is still argued about by both sides.

 

For more information, the website http://home.cogeco.ca/~richardiii/tyrell.html has a good summary about James Tyrell and the Princes, and I would also recommend ‘The Daughter of Time’ by Josephine Tey. I don’t agree with her on some of her conclusions, as I think she has over-simplified some things, but it’s certainly a very readable introduction to the mystery of the Princes.

Old Churches

Here are some of the dozens of churches we visited during out 15th century tour.

Bere Regis

We visited this church in Dorset mainly to see its magnificent 15th century carved oak beams, even though these were said to be the gift of John Morton.
Morton became Archbishop of Canterbury in Henry VII’s reign, and it is possible (probable?) he conspired with Margaret Beaufort to put Henry on the throne instead of Richard III.
What is more certain is that Thomas More served as a page in Morton’s household and his later ‘History of Richard III', if not written by Morton himself, certainly contained Morton’s 'invented' account of the murder of the princes, and the Richard later portrayed by Shakespeare as
Deformed, unfinish'd, sent before my time Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionable
That dogs bark at me as I halt by them.
One of the central bosses of the roof shows Morton’s face, so he wasn’t particularly handsome himself, was he?

Chelsea Old Church

Actually, this one is not as old as many churches in Britain. Although it was originally built in the 13th century, it was extensively damaged by bombing during World War II, and was rebuilt after the war.
Ironically, the least damaged part of the church was the chapel on the south side, which had been rebuilt in 1528 as the private chapel of Sir Thomas More – who is definitely persona non grata to supporters of Richard III, as explained in the previous section!

Outside the church is a statue of More, and inside is a monument composed by him, commemorating his first wife, and expressing the wish that he and his second wife should be buried in the same tomb. More was beheaded in 1535, and his head, after being displayed on London Bridge for a month, was placed in a niche in the Roper Vault at St Dunstan’s Church in Canterbury. It’s likely that his headless body was buried in the chapel at the Tower of London, but there is a tradition that his daughter Margaret Roper, brought his body to Chelsea to be buried at the old church.

After those two churches with their Lancastrian links, we need some Yorkist links!

Sheriff Hutton

Sheriff Hutton is a small village about 10 miles north of York. It has the ruins of what was once a Neville Castle, which came into royal possession after Richard Neville’s death at the battle of Barnet, and was used by Richard of Gloucester when he was Lord of the North.
Tradition says that an unnamed alabaster tomb in the church is that of Edward of Middleham, Richard’s only son who died in 1484. However, there are doubts about this. One historian maintains that the figure on the tomb was wearing clothes that were fifty years out of date; another that as the son of the king, Edward would not have been buried in an ordinary parish church. On the other hand, it’s possible that this was a temporary resting place, as Richard intended to build a chantry chapel at York for himself and his family. Maybe it’s one of those questions to which we’ll never know the answer!

Gipping Chapel

This small chapel in the tiny village of Gipping in Suffolk has an interesting connection with Richard III. There had been an earlier chapel on the spot, but the present chapel was built by Sir James Tyrell, one of Richard’s knights, in the 1470s. The inscription around the doorway reads Pray for Sr James Tirell : Dame Anne his wyf.
It was this same James Tyrell who, in Henry VII's reign, supported Edmund de la Pole, the leading Yorkist claimant to the throne. He was accused of treason and, under torture, he ‘confessed’ to the murder of the two princes in the Tower of London, on Richard’s orders. Many questions have been asked about this supposed confession, since anything confessed under torture is suspect. You can read more about him here http://home.cogeco.ca/~richardiii/tyrell.html

15th century pew with the carved Tyrell knot