My sister contacted me recently, telling me I had to read this book, by Philippa Langley, about the Princes in the Tower.
For those who do not know, Philippa Langley was the inspiration behind the project to find the remains of King Richard III, which was eventually found beneath a car park in the City of Leicester, UK. For her role in this find, the Queen awarded her an MBE in 2015.
The Princes in the Tower are the long-disappeared sons and heirs of Edward IV, elder brother of Richard III. They were Edward Prince of Wales (born 2 November 1470) and Richard, Duke of York (born 17 August 1473.) When their father King Edward died suddenly on 3 April 1483, they were 12 and 9 years old. We know that Prince Edward was in the Tower of London shortly after his arrival in London on 19 May 1483. His younger brother Richard joined him on 16 June 1483. The boys were lodged in the Royal Apartments, the plan being that they would stay there until Edward’s coronation on 22 June 1483.
However, Edward V (as he is now known) was never actually crowned, because on 22 June, the day of his coronation, news broke that he, his brother and his five sisters were bastards, his father having married his mother while another wife was still alive.
Edward’s first wife was Lady Eleanor Talbot, the youngest daughter of the Earl of Shrewsbury. In 1449, when she was about 13 years old, she was married off to Sir Thomas Butler, son of Ralph Butler, Lord Sudeley. When Thomas died suddenly, her father in law Ralph took back one of the two manors he settled on her, even though he didn’t have legal authorization to do so. When Edward IV became King on 4 March 1461, he seized both manors. Fearing a life of penury, Lady Eleanor went to the King to plead her cause. Not only did he give her back both manors, but he was so enchanted that he actually married her ~ without telling a soul. It is not clear when Edward and Eleanor married, but it would have been some time between 4 March 1461, when he became King, and May 1464, when he married Elizabeth Woodville, another (beautiful) Lancastrian widow pleading for the return of her confiscated estates.
In any event, the fact that Lady Eleanor was still alive in May 1464, invalidated Edward’s marriage to Elizabeth Woodville, making bastards of the ten children that Edward and Elizabeth had together. Lady Eleanor died in 1468, taking her secret to the grave. And so it was not until 22 June 1483 that this matter came to light. As Richard of Gloucester (Richard III’s title before he became King) was the senior Yorkist heir, various dignitaries petitioned for him to become King of England. And so he was crowned at Westminster Abbey on 6 July 1483.
On 19 July 1483, the newly-minted King Richard III set off for the North of England on a Royal Progress. This was what we would nowadays call a tour, in which the monarch would go to important places like the City of York, to meet the local dignitaries, discuss local grievances, hold assizes and talk about policy. Richard’s power base was in the North of England, so it is natural that he would want to head up there as soon as he could.
Around this time, the Princes in the Tower disappeared. Accounts of the time describe how they were seen playing outside, but then were taken inside never to be seen again. Most historians assume they were murdered, on Richard III’s orders, possibly by James Tyrell. But is that what actually happened?
Ms. Langley posits that instead they were taken out of the country. This seems plausible because both boys had a price on their heads. If Richard III was content to let them be, there were others who would have been delighted to see them dead, including Richard’s cousin the Duke of Buckingham and Lady Margaret Beaufort, who was the mother of Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, the Lancastrian Pretender to the Throne of England, then living in Brittany, at the court of Francis II.
Various attempts were made to spirit both boys out of the Tower of London around 21 July, but all attempts failed. On 2 November 1483, Buckingham was executed for treason in Salisbury and some time between that date and Christmas, Richard must have returned to London. Therefore the dates that the boys were actually spirited away would most likely have been between 21 July and early November.
Philippa Langley persuaded a group of Dutch researchers to comb through the Dutch archives and one of them found a first-person account from Prince Richard, in which he says that after waiting several weeks, his head was shaved, he was put into dirty clothes and the Percy brothers took him to St. Katherine’s dock where they boarded a ship to France. Prince Richard spent the next 8 years traveling from pillar to post, going to Paris, Rouen and various other places before winding up in Portugal. It is not yet known who these Percy brothers were, but they probably associated with King Richard in some way.
What actually happened to Edward V is a lot less clear as the boys were separated early on (probably as a precaution.) It seems likely that Edward was also spirited out of the country, but he may have spent time in the Channel Islands instead.
In any event, when Henry Tudor, the Lancastrian Pretender defeated Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth on 22 August 1485, he became King Henry VII of England. Instead of making a triumphant progress to London, he flew to the North of England, to Sheriff Hutton where he found 18 Plantagenet heirs, including his future wife Elizabeth of York.
But where were Edward IV’s sons and heirs? Henry tried, but couldn’t find them. What was Henry to do? He had made a solemn (and very public) promise to wed Elizabeth of York, so that he could unite the Houses of Lancaster and York. But his future wife had been declared a bastard. And so, in order to marry her, he had to overturn Titulus Regius, Richard III’s act of 1484, which declared her and all of her siblings to be bastards.
On the other hand, if Elizabeth of York was no longer a bastard, what did that make her brothers? Edward V had reached his majority (on 2 November 1484) and could now ~ at the age of 15, claim the Throne of England, while his brother Richard, Duke of York would be the Heir Presumptive.
It now seems as if the last battle of the Wars of the Roses, the Battle of Stoke, fought on 16 June 1487, may have been Edward V’s stab at claiming the throne of England. Someone calling himself Edward V was crowned in Dublin on Sunday 27 May 1487, and then proceeded to invade England. The battle was a close call, but eventually Henry VII’s army prevailed.
Henry VII’s spin doctors went to town with a story about a boy named Lambert Simnel, who was the 10-year-old son of ~ a baker, a tradesman or even an organ builder ~ whom Henry graciously pardoned by sending him to work in the kitchens as a turnspit.
But why would the Yorkists spend money, raise men, and organize a fleet of ships for a 10-year-old cook? Henry put it about that Lambert Simnel was trying to impersonate the 10-year-old son of the Duke of Clarence, another brother of Edward IV. This story seems to have been concocted because Henry could drag out of prison the poor 10-year-old Plantagenet heir Edward of Warwick that he had shut up in the Tower for the past two years.
But would men really risk their lives and livelihood for a baker’s son?
It seems much more likely that the actual person they were fighting for was Edward V, now 16 going on 17 years old, who was setting out to claim his throne.
No-one knows what actually happened to Edward V. He could have died in battle and been buried in a mass grave. Or perhaps he went to live in the remote village of Coldridge in Devon, on land owned by his half-brother the Marquess of Dorset. There is a glorious stained glass window dedicated to Edward V dating from 1511. Why would Edward V abandon his claim to the throne if he were still alive? The Battle of Stoke was a brutal battle, so perhaps he was so badly injured he could no longer speak.
A few years later, in 1493, Richard Duke of York appeared at his Aunt Margaret’s court in Burgundy. Staking his claim to the throne as Richard IV, he mounted another campaign against Henry VII. Most foreign royalty supported him, perhaps because he was also a Burgundian prince on his mother’s side of the family. Eventually, Henry VII captured him and he was executed on 23 November 1499 along with his cousin Edward, Earl of Warwick. so that Henry’s heir Prince Arthur could marry Katherine of Aragon with no Plantagenets heirs left to make trouble for the House of Tudor.
If you are one of those people who think a great injustice was done to Richard III, and you love historical crimes, you will adore this book! Five stars.
