The Princes in the Tower refers to the mystery of the fate of the deposed English King Edward V and his younger brother Prince Richard, Duke of York, heirs to the throne of King Edward IV. The brothers were the only surviving sons of the king by his queen, Elizabeth Woodville, and were aged 12 and 9 years old, respectively, at the time of their father's death in April 1483. They were lodged in the Tower of London by their paternal uncle and England's regent, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, in preparation for Edward V's forthcoming coronation. Before the young king's coronation, however, he and his brother were declared illegitimate by Parliament. Gloucester ascended the throne instead as Richard III.Tim Thornton, "More on a Murder: The Deaths of the 'Princes in the Tower', and Historiographical Implications for the Regimes of Henry VII and Henry VIII." History 106.369 (2021): 4–25.
It is unclear what happened to the two princes after the last recorded sighting of them in the tower. It is generally assumed that they were murdered; a common hypothesis is that the murder was commissioned by Richard III in an attempt to secure his hold on the throne. Their deaths may have occurred sometime in 1483, but apart from their disappearance, the only evidence is circumstantial. As a result, several other theories about their fates have been proposed, including the suggestion that they were murdered by their kinsman Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham, their future brother-in-law King Henry VII, or his mother Lady Margaret Beaufort, among others, although theorised culprits besides Stafford and Richard III are generally not given much credence. It has also been suggested that one or both princes may have escaped assassination. In 1487, Lambert Simnel initially claimed to be Prince Richard and was crowned in Dublin as "King Edward VI", but later claimed by others to be the Princes' cousin, Edward Plantagenet, 17th Earl of Warwick. Again, several years later, from 1491 until his capture in 1497, Perkin Warbeck claimed to be the younger prince, Richard, Duke of York, having supposedly escaped to Flanders. Warbeck's claim was supported by some contemporaries, including York's aunt Margaret, Duchess of Burgundy.
In 1674, workmen at the Tower of London excavated, from under a staircase, a wooden box containing two small human skeletons. The bones were widely accepted at the time as those of the princes, but this has not been proven and is far from certain. King Charles II had the bones buried in Westminster Abbey, where they remain.
Background On 9 April 1483, King Edward IV died unexpectedly after an illness lasting around three weeks. At the time, his son, the new King Edward V, was at Ludlow Castle in Shropshire - the traditional seat of the Prince of Wales - and the dead king's brother, Richard III (then Duke of Gloucester), was at Middleham Castle in Yorkshire. The news reached the Duke of Gloucester around 15 April, although he may have been forewarned of Edward's illness. It is reported that he then went to York Minster to publicly "pledge his loyalty to his new king". The Croyland Chronicle states that, before his death, Edward IV designated his brother Gloucester as Lord Protector.The Crowland Chronicle Continuations, 1459–1486, Nicholas Pronay and John Cox (eds.), (Richard III and Yorkist History Trust, Gloucester: 1986), p. 153. Edward's words may not have mattered, however, since "as the precedent of Henry V showed, the Privy Council was not bound to follow the wishes of a dead king".
Edward V and Gloucester set out for London from the west and north respectively, meeting at Stony Stratford on 29 April. The following morning, Gloucester arrested Edward V's retinue including the boys' uncle, Anthony Woodville, and their half-brother Sir Richard Grey. They were sent to Pontefract Castle in Yorkshire where, on 25 June, Woodville and Grey were beheaded. Gloucester then assumed custody of Edward V himself, prompting his mother Elizabeth Woodville to take her other son, Prince Richard, and her daughters into sanctuary at Westminster Abbey.
Edward V and Gloucester arrived in London together. Planning continued for Edward's official coronation, but the date was postponed from 4 May to 25 June. On 19 May 1483, Edward was lodged in the Tower of London, then the traditional residence of monarchs prior to the coronation. On 16 June, he was joined by his younger brother, Prince Richard, who was previously in sanctuary. At this point, the date of Edward's coronation was indefinitely postponed by their uncle, Gloucester (later Richard III). On Sunday 22 June, a sermon was preached by Dr. Ralph Shaa, brother of the Lord Mayor of London, at St Paul's Cross claiming Gloucester to be the only legitimate heir of the House of York.Skidmore, Chris. Richard III. 2017, St. Martins Press, , p. 180Weir, Alison. The Princes in the Tower. 1992, Random House, , p. 116 On 25 June, "a group of lords, knights and gentlemen" petitioned Richard III to take the throne. Both princes were subsequently declared illegitimate by Parliament; this was confirmed in 1484 by an Act of Parliament known as Titulus Regius. The act stated that Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville's marriage was invalid because of Edward's pre-contract of marriage with Lady Eleanor Talbot. Gloucester was crowned King Richard III of England on 6 July.Peter Hammond and Anne Sutton, The Coronation of Richard III: the Extant Documents (Palgrave Macmillan, 1984) The declaration of the boys' illegitimacy has been described by historian Rosemary Horrox as an ex post facto justification for Richard III's accession.
Disappearance Dominic Mancini, an Italian friar who visited England in the 1480s and who was in London in the spring and summer of 1483, recorded that after Richard III seized the throne, Edward V and his younger brother Prince Richard were taken into the "inner apartments of the Tower" and then were seen less and less, until they disappeared altogether. Mancini records that, during this period, Edward V was regularly visited by a doctor, who reported that Edward, "like a victim prepared for sacrifice, sought remission of his sins by daily confession and penance, because he believed that death was facing him"."The Usurpation of Richard the Third", Dominicus Mancinus ad Angelum Catonem de occupatione regni Anglie per Riccardum Tercium libellus; Translated to English by C.A.J. Armstrong (London, 1936) The Latin reference to "Argentinus medicus", was originally translated as "a Strasbourg doctor"; however, D.E. Rhodes suggests it may actually refer to "Doctor Argentine", whom Rhodes identifies as John Argentine, an English physician who later served as provost of King's College, Cambridge, and as doctor to Prince Arthur, eldest son of King Henry VII (Henry Tudor).
There are reports of the two princes being seen playing in the tower grounds shortly after Prince Richard joined his elder brother, but there are no recorded sightings of either of them after the summer of 1483.R. F. Walker, "Princes in the Tower", in S. H. Steinberg et al., A New Dictionary of British History, St. Martin's Press, New York, 1963, p. 286. An attempt to rescue them in late July failed. Their fate remains an enduring mystery.
Many historians believe that the princes were murdered; some have suggested that the act may have happened towards the end of summer 1483. Maurice Keen argues that the rebellion against Richard III in 1483 initially "aimed to rescue Edward V and his brother from the Tower before it was too late", but that, when Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, became involved, it shifted to support of Henry Tudor because "Buckingham almost certainly knew that the princes in the Tower were dead."M. H. Keen, England in the Later Middle Ages: A Political History, Routledge: New York, 2003, p. 388. Historian Alison Weir proposes 3 September 1483 as a potential date;Alison Weir, The Princes of the Tower (p. 157) however, Weir's work has been criticised for "arriving at a conclusion that depends more on her own imagination than on the uncertain evidence she has so misleadingly presented".
Clements Markham suggests the princes may have been alive as late as July 1484, pointing to the regulations issued by Richard III's household which stated: "the children should be together at one breakfast". James Gairdner, however, argues that it is unclear to whom the phrase "the children" alludes, and that it may not have been a reference to the princes. It may refer to Edward, Earl of Warwick (son of the Duke of Clarence) and Edward IV's two youngest daughters (Catherine and Bridget), all of whom were living under Richard's care at Sheriff Hutton.
Rumours Several sources suggest there were rumours of the princes' deaths in the time following their disappearance. Rumours of murder appeared in France. In January 1484, Guillaume de Rochefort, Lord Chancellor of France, urged the Estates General to "take warning" from the fate of the princes, as their own king, Charles VIII, was only 13. The early reports, including that of Rochefort, Philippe de Commines (French politician), Caspar Weinreich (contemporary German chronicler), and Jan Allertz (Recorder of Rotterdam), all state that Richard killed the princes before he seized the throne (thus before June 1483). De Commines' Memoirs (c.1500), however, identifies the Duke of Buckingham as the person "who put them to death".Philippe de Commines, Memoirs: the Reign of Louis XI, 1461–83, Translated by Michael Jones (1972), pp.354, 396–7.
Other than their disappearance, there is no direct evidence that the princes were murdered, and "no reliable, well-informed, independent or impartial sources" for the associated events. Nevertheless, following their disappearance, rumours spread in France that they had been murdered. Before November 2023, only one contemporary narrative account of the boys' time in the tower was known to exist: that of Dominic Mancini. Mancini's account was not discovered until 1934, in the Municipal Library in Lille. Later accounts written after the accession of Henry Tudor are usually biased or influenced by Tudor propaganda.
Only Mancini's account, written in London before November 1483, is contemporary. The Croyland Chronicle and de Commines' account were written three and seventeen years later, respectively (and thus after Richard III's death and the accession of Henry VII). Markham, writing long before Mancini's account was discovered, argued that some accounts, including the Croyland Chronicle, might have been authored or heavily influenced by John Morton, Archbishop of Canterbury, in order to incriminate Richard III.
Early writers
Robert Fabyan's Chronicles of London, compiled around 30 years after the princes' disappearance, names Richard III as murderer.