The Princes in the Tower

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy B. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. Today we are going to talk about the Princes in the Tower, which a lot of people have asked us to talk about. This almost became part of an Unearthed episode earlier on this year because the paper came out that argued a direct link between Richard the Third and then the alleged murderers, and then Sir Thomas Moore, whose account of what happened has really dominated popular understanding of all this. But we've gotten so many listener requests for a Princess in the Tower episode that I decided I was just going to hold onto that do a full episode about it instead of a paragraph on Unearthed. There you go. So this happened during the War the Roses, which started in fourteen five and was a struggle between two rival branches of the Royal House of Plantagenet in the House of York and the House of Lancaster. Both houses used various badges, symbols and emblems to represent themselves, and among those were a white rose for the House of York, and a red rose for the House of Lancaster. The name Wars of the Roses comes from these symbols, although that term was not coined until later on. One of the people who really popularized this connection was William Shakespeare, who used a lot of red and white roses in his plays about this period of British history. So the Wars of the Roses is not the only term in this episode that was coined much much later. Another is the Princes in the Tower. This nickname seems to have come into use in the nineteenth century to refer to King Edward the five and his brother Richard of Shrewsbury, Duke of York. They were the sons of King Edward the Fourth of the House of York, and they were not princes when they were in the Tower, which we will get to. They were also a little bit older than they look in a lot of artwork. Edward was twelve and Richard was about to turn ten, but there are some paintings where they look more like ten and eight, or maybe even younger than that. I was looking at one, I was like, these two look like toddlers. Here they were definitely not toddlers, still kids. The conflict between the Houses of York and the Lancaster had been going on for about fifteen years by the time Edward the fifth was born. His father, Edward the fourth, had become king in fourteen sixty one after a revolt against Lancastrian King Henry the sixth. A strategic marriage could have given Edward the Fourth more power and solidified his reign during this extremely turbulent time, and his cousin Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, tried to negotiate a marriage to a French princess to that end, but instead, on May one, fourteen sixty four, Edward secretly married Elizabeth Woodville, which some sources today spell as Woodville. Edward and Elizabeth kept this marriage secret for months, and, according to documents from the time, they announced their marriage around September of fourteen sixty four because Elizabeth was pregnant. But if that's the case, that pregnancy did not come to term, the couple's first child, Elizabeth of York, wasn't born until fourteen sixty six. Regardless, as soon as words spread about the king's secret marriage, it was extremely unpopular. Elizabeth was the widow of Sir John Gray, a Lancastrian who had been killed in battle while fighting against the Yorks. The Windville family also just did not have the kind of power that Edward really needed. They were gentry, they were not royalty, and they were viewed as a bunch of scheming opportunists. Right from the beginning, there were rumors that this marriage was not legal, and that any children Edward and Elizabeth might have would have no legitimate claim to the throne. This kind of rumor was not new. There had been allegations that Edward himself was not legitimate. During the Wars of the Roses, the English throne repeatedly passed back and forth between the Yorks and the Lancasters. In the late fourteen sixties, Edward lost a lot of his more powerful supporters, including the Earl of Warwick, who tried to imprison the king in late fourteen sixty nine before fleeing to France. Warwick returned with the Lancastrian invasion that was backed by King Louis the Eleventh. In October of fourteen seventy, Henry the sixth supporters freed him from the Tower of London and returned him to the throne. Edward fled to Flanders, and Elizabeth and their children took refuge at Westminster Abbey. At this point Edward and Elizabeth had three daughters, Elizabeth, Mary and Cecily. But on November two, fourteen seventy Elizabeth gave birth to another child while at Westminster Abbey, and that was a son named Edward. Edward the fourth returned from exile in fourteen seventy one. With the help of Charles of Burgundy and Edward's brother Richard, Duke of Gloucester, the Yorks defeated the Lancasters at the Battle of Tewkesbury on May fourth, fourteen seventy one. Warwick had already been killed at the Battle of Barnett in April, and many of the most powerful Lancastrian leaders were killed at Tewkesbury or were executed afterward. This included Henry the sixth, son and heir. Henry himself was captured, returned to the Tower of London, and then murdered there. With Edward the Fourth back on the throne, his son, Edward the fifth became the Prince of Wales. Before long, the prince was sent to Ludlow Castle to be educated and prepared to rule. His uncle Anthony Woodville, Earl Rivers was designated as his guardian and instructed to make sure the prince was quote virtuously, cunningly and nightly brought up. The prince also had a doctor, a nurse, a daily schedule that involved lessons and exercise, and religious observance and instruction, and quote noble stories read to him each night as he ate his dinner. The king and queen went on to have several more children. Five daughters survived into adulthood. Those where Elizabeth, Cecily, and Catherine and bridget. A second son, Richard, was born in fourteen seventy three and named Duke of York in fourteen seventy four. A third son, George, followed in fourteen seventy seven, but died when he was about to Of course, all of the fighting between the houses of York and Lancaster and Edward's Raine had a lot more going on than we can really get into here, but in terms of the wars of the Roses, things were relatively stable from the death of Henry the sixth until fourteen eighty three, when King Edward the Fourth unexpectedly died after an illness. Before his death, he named his brother Richard, Duke of Gloucester as Lord Protector. Edward the Fourth death was announced on April nine, four eighty three, but he really probably died a few days before that. It seems like Elizabeth delayed the announcement so that she could try to secure the Windville family's political future, one in which they would have as much power and influence over the new king as possible. This may have included Elizabeth even trying to act as regent for her twelve year old son, although at this point in English history it would have been a lot more common for the regent to be male. Elizabeth sent word to her brother Anthony Widville Earl Rivers to inform him of Edward the fourth death, and arranged to have his son, who was now King Edward the Fifth, brought to London for his coronation. Edward the Fifth learned of his father's death on April fourteen eighties read, and he and his uncle left for London on the twenty three after St George's Day observances, and what seems to have been an intentional move, the Queen mother did not notify her late husband's brother, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, of Edward the fourth's death. This may have been because of her efforts to secure her family's position, or it may have been because of longstanding deep animosity between Richard and the Windvills. There is really a ton of backstory here, but among other things, Richard and edwards brother George Plantagenet, Duke of Clarence, had resented the amount of power that was going to the Windville family, and George's various schemes and allegations had ultimately led to his execution in fourteen seventy eight. That was something that Richard blamed Elizabeth for, at least in part. Richard did not learn about his brother's death until April twenty, likely through William Lord Hastings, who had been at were the Fourth Chamberlain. The Duke immediately set off to meet up with his nephew, the King, who was on route to London. So there are people who believe that it was at this point, or maybe even earlier, that Richard started plotting to take the throne for himself. And if that's the case, he really had to work quickly because if he was not successful before Edward was formally crowned, it would just become a lot harder for him to do it, And on the other hand, Elizabeth Woodbill was also working very quickly hoping to get Edward crowned as soon as possible, because at this point, Richard's role as Lord Protector was supposed to end with his nephew's coronation, and that could potentially open the door for the wood Fills to step in and take control. So Elizabeth tried to arrange the coronation for May four, which was less than a month after the death of Edward the Fourth. We'll continue to untangle all of this stuff after we first paused for a little sponsored by. There are some question marks about pretty much everything we're going to talk about for the entire rest of this episode. For some of it, we have concrete documentation of some basic details like X happened, and then why happened, and then Z happened, But we don't have firsthand documentation of people's motivations for X, Y and Z. Sometimes we don't know who actually carried those things out. Sometimes accounts even contradict on the basic facts of X, Y and Z in general, Though most sources agree that Richard, Duke of Gloucester, was plotting at minimum to get rid of the wib Bill family and its influence over the king, but probably to steal the throne for himself. And that's not just people like Sir Thomas Moore, whose history of King Richard the Third has times been characterized as anti Richard propaganda. Italian monk Dominic Mancini was in London during these events and wrote an official report in December of four three, one that More and other writers would not have had access to. But it corroborates a lot of basic details and reports a ton of gossip that was circulating. Yeah, there's some questions around his account, like who all was he talking to, what was his circle of acquaintances overwhelmingly anti Richard, how much English did he actually know, a lot of questions. But still we have this account that seems to back up a lot of the things that lead people to conclude that Richard the Third was trying to steal the throne. And at the same time, there's still a lot that's open to interpretation, like, taken at face value, a lot of Richard's actions could be interpreted as loyal to his nephew, taking loyalty oaths, publicly bowing to him, allowing preparations for his coronation to go on in an apparently pretty normal way, but a lot of people believed that this was all a ruse to lure the King and the people around him into a false sense of security and to cover his own tracks. Richard, Duke of Gloucester, arrived at Northampton on April. There he met up with Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, Anthony Woodville, Earl Rivers, and Richard Gray, who was Elizabeth Woodville's son from her first marriage. Earl Rivers had taken the young king ahead to Stony Stratford, then doubled back to Northampton, apparently on the pretense that Northampton didn't have suitable lodgings to accommodate the King and his party, along with Gloucester, Buckingham and all their retainers. There were a lot of retainers, a whole lot of them. The next morning, though Earl Rivers was locked inside the end where he was staying. This was probably under the orders of Gloucester, were Buckingham or both of them working together. Like Gloucester, Buckingham had a long history with the wit Bills, including being married to Elizabeth's sister Catherine when he was just ten or twelve years old. He also had a very deep hatred and distrust of the entire family. Richard, Duke of Gloucester, Henry, Duke of Buckingham, and Richard Gray caught up with Edward the Fifth at Stony Stratford on April, informing him that his uncle and others in their party had been arrested because they were plotting against him. Edward didn't believe this at all, saying that he trusted these men and then he also trusted his mother. Buckingham told the young king that he absolutely should not trust the Woodvilles. He ordered Edwards escort to return home, then arrested the king's half brother, Richard Gray, in front of him. Some accounts described the king as being arrested or captured at this point as well, and one of those is that of Dominic Mancini. But Mancini also seems to have misunderstood or mistaken at le part of the situation here, because he describes Edward's brother Richard as being arrested at Stony Stratford as well, but at that point Richard was still at Westminster Abbey with his mother. It also doesn't seem like Edward thought he was a captive. At this point, he wrote a letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury instructing him to safeguard the Great Seal of the Realm and to safeguard their tour of London and the treasure there. It's within the realm of possibility that Edward was coerced into writing this letter, or that it was forged, or that he wrote it believing that he was in danger, But it doesn't really read as though he thought he was a captive. As all of this was happening, though, Elizabeth Woodville took refuge in Westminster Abbey with her children and an entourage. Sometimes this is described as a flight for her life, and at minimum it would have been clear to her at this point, especially if she had heard about the arrests of her kim folk, that her efforts to put the Whodville familyly in an advantageous position were crumbling. Gloucester, Buckingham and King Edward the Fifth continued on to London, and once they got there, Edward was taken to the Bishop of London's palace, where he stayed for several days. His uncle Richard repeated his oaths of fealty to the King and was formally acknowledged as Lord Protector. Preparations continued for edwards coronation, and the Great Council discussed where the King should stay until the coronation took place. While his mother had tried to arrange a coronation for May, the final date had been set for late June to coincide with the feast of the Nativity of St John the Baptist. The final decision for the king's lodgings in the interim, which was suggested by the Duke of Buckingham and agreed to by the whole Council, was to send Edward to the Tower of London. Okay, that sounds incredibly suspicious to a modern ear because during the Tutor era the Tower of London became notorious primary only as a prison. We've talked about various people's being imprisoned in the Tower on the show before, including Sir Walter Raleigh, and just in this episode, we've talked about King Henry the sixth being imprisoned in the Tower two different times. And while the Tower did have a prison in the fifteenth century, at that point it was also a royal residence. Buckingham Palace did not exist yet and would not be built for almost another two hundred fifty years. So, in addition to the fortress and prison, the Tower of London was a place where royals would go stay. It was a palace complete with the luxury accommodations that were routinely in use by people of their station. This is also a place that Edward probably would have already been familiar with, since his father had frequently held court there. Monarchs stayed in the tower for at least the night before their coronation, and their coronation procession started at the tower, so when Edward the Fifth first went to the Tower, it was to the royal residence and aunt the prison. The Duke of Buckingham also started trying to convince the Queen Mother to send Richard of Shrewsbury, Duke of York, to the Tower as well. There were several arguments for her to do this. Richard could be a source of comfort and companionship for his older brother, although since Richard had mostly lived in London and Edward had mostly lived at Ludlow Castle, they really might not have known each other all that well. Richard was also now next in line for the throne, and the Tower was regarded as one of the safest places to be, and it would have been considered strange or even scandalous if Richard didn't attend his brother Edward's coronation, so taking him to the tower ahead of time when his mother would not be able to keep him with her at Westminster Abbey, or to try to use him as some kind of bargaining ship, or maybe Buckingham just wanted both of them to be in the tower at the same time to make it easier to kill them. So many possibilities. As Buckingham was trying to convince Elizabeth to send Richard to the tower, plans for edwards coronation were carrying on, and that was now scheduled for June. Rits were issued for the first Parliament that would assemble under the new king to meet on June. Young men who were eligible for knighthood were summoned to London as well so that they could be knighted at the coronation. But then in early June all those plans apparently went out the window when it was alleged that the marriage of the late King Edward the Fourth to Elizabeth Woodville had not been legal because he was already married to Eleanor Talbot, the widow of Sir Thomas Butler. This information may have come from Robert Stillington, Bishop of Bath and Wells, who reportedly had performed that earlier marriage. Eleanor had died before Edward the five was born, but that did not matter since she had still been living when Edward the fourth had married Elizabeth. The most likely time for the bishop to have delivered this information was at a Royal Council meeting that happened on June eight, but reports of that meeting said there was nothing significant and an allegation that the king's marriage had been illegal and that consequently his son, whose coronation was weeks away, had no claim to the throne. That definitely would have been categorized as significant yeah the so this bishop would have been in London for the coronation. The Bishop of Bath and Wells was typically one of the bishops who escorted the new monarch, and as a bishop, he was also a member of Parliament. Parliament had been summoned, but there are questions on why he would have chosen this particular moment to share this information, rather than, for example, when Edward the Fifth had been born. There as some suspicion that Edward the fourth had even tried to buy the bishop's silence by making him a bishop in the first place. He had been a canon when this marriage to Eleanor Butler had allegedly been performed, and then Bath and Wells was the first English bishopric to open up after edwards marriage to Elizabeth was first announced. There's this idea that maybe he was like, if you keep your mouth shut about that time you married me to a different lady, you get to be a bishop right now. It's all very speculative, but there are also questions about whether this marriage story is even true. At the time, it was common for couples to do what is known as a pre contract before witnesses. They would promise to get married, and then afterward they would consummate the marriage. This was regarded as essentially the same as a marriage, even though it had not been formalized in a church. Some sources describe edwards purported marriage to Eleanor as a pre contract only, but a number of contemporary sources flatly disbelieved this entire thing and dismissed it as something that Richard had made up to undermine his nephew Laura. Really this would be the sort of issue that would be taken up before Parliament, but because the new king had not been crowned yet, a formal parliament could not be convened. Instead, the Estates of the Realm met. This was basically the same people, but not a formal parliament. In mid June, the Estates of the Realm concluded that Edward the Fifth was not the legitimate king, and they offered the crown instead to Richard, Duke of Gloucester. This was not unanimous, though not within the Estates of the Realm or with him the Royal Council. The Royal Council split, with the Duke of Buckingham and others who supported Richard meeting with him in secret, and the rest of the Council meeting at Westminster. Immediately. At least some of the council meeting at Westminster were convinced that Gloucester's private meetings involved a plot against the king. William Lord Hastings had continued to back Edward as King and his uncle Richard as Lord Protector only, and during all of this he and several other men armed themselves and went to one of these secret council meetings, Hastings reportedly attacked Richard, who hadn't yet accepted the crown and was still technically considered the Duke of Gloucester. Hastings was arrested and almost immediately beheaded. Hastings beheading seems to have been what convinced the public of London that the Duke of Gloucester was trying to steal the throne. Elizabeth finally agreed to send her younger son to the Tower of London, and he arrived there on June six, and there are still questions about why, since she and her children were safe in Westminster Abbey. While there are some people who argued that she only would have sent her son away if she thought it was safe to do so, others describe her as under siege, with the Duke of Buckingham threatening to remove Richard by force if she did not comply. And June, the Duke of Gloucester issued rits canceling the parliament that was supposed to convene on June. Then on June, which was supposed to have been coronation day, Londoners instead heard sermons that attacked Edwards claim to the throne as illegitimate. On June, Anthony Woodbill, Earl Rivers, Richard Gray and others who had been part of their party to London were all beheaded, and on June Richard, Duke of Gloucester was proclaimed to be King. Richard the third. Let's take a sponsor break. Let's do We said at the top of the show that the princes in the Tower, in spite of almost ubiquitously being called the princes in the Tower, at this point, we're not princes. When he first arrived at the Tower, Edward the fifth was king. His reign as king lasted from April ninth to June three, and when his brother Richard arrived, he was the Duke of York and Edwards air presumptive. He hadn't formally been crowned as a prince that I know of at this point. Once Richard the third was proclaimed king, though the boys were not kings or princes, they were commoners. Formal records from the time often nod to Edward's status with titles like read us best artie. We really don't know what happened to them in the tower. According to the Kroland Chronicle Continuations, written around April of fourteen six the boys stayed there quote under certain guard. The Great Chronicle of London contains the last written reference to anyone seeing the two boys. They were shooting bows and arrows and playing in the garden quote at sundry times ending June sixteenth. But once they were considered commoners, they would have been moved from the royal residence to some other location. They weren't royals anymore. Dominic Mancini wrote that the boys were quote withdrawn to 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. Already there is a suspicion that they have been done away with. Mancini also describes Edward as confessing and doing penance daily, as though he thought that his death was eminent. King Richard the third was crowned on julyie, and there are some references to an attempt to get the boys out of the tower after he left London on his royal tour, but sources contradict as to whether these plans were carried out, or if they were, whether they were successful. It does seem like people believe that at least one of the boys was still alive when Richard left, though, but as that account from Mancini suggests, rumors started to spread really quickly that they had been killed, and in the subsequent decades people reported that they had heard that the boys had died pretty much by every possible means, smothering, poisoning, stabbing, drowning, starving, and, according to ruy de Susa of Portugal, bled into a body of water that passed through the fort where they were being held until they died. Sometime after the last report of Edward and Richard being spotted outside the tower, their mother and the rest of her children left Westminster Abbey. She seemed to endorse Richard the third is King, possibly because he had promised to arrange the most advantageous marriages possible for her daughters. In fourteen four, Parliament passed an act called Titulus Reggius, which formally recognized Richard the third and laired the children of Edward the fourth and Elizabeth Wouldville to be illegitimate. It cited several reasons, including edwards pre contract to another woman, the fact that the marriage was secret and without the consent of the lords of the land, and because Elizabeth and her family had used sorcery to entrap the king. Sure, sure, um, that's how that works. Of course, Richard the third was not king for long. His opponents characterized him as scheming and cruel, the kind of person who would murder his own nephews children just to take the throne for himself. Richard's only son died in fourteen eighty four and his wife the following year, and the Duke of Buckingham turned against him. Yorkists invaded England with the help of French and Scottish mercenaries, and Richard was killed at the Battle of bosworth Field on August five. Succeeding him as king was Henry Tudor, also known as King Henry the seventh. He was the last surviving man of the Lancastrian line, and he married a york That was Elizabeth of York, the oldest sister of Edward. The five people who thought Richard the third was a usurper already really thought Elizabeth was the rightful queen, so Henry's marrying her tightened his claim to the throne. In fact, there had been some discussion, some frankly pretty gross discussion that Richard the third had thought about marrying his niece himself for the same reason after his wife died, or maybe even before. But Henry could not marry Elizabeth if she was considered illegitimate, so he had to get Parliament to repeal the Titulus Reggius, and after they did, Henry also ordered all previous copies of Titulus Reggius to be destroyed, and for a time the text of that document was lost until it was rediscovered in the Crowland Chronicle, one of those chroniclers had copied it in there. It does not appear that Henry launched any kind of investigation into what had happened to the princess in the tower or into Richard's actions in fourteen eight three, possibly because such an investigation would have unearthed information that would have undermined Henry's own claim to the throne. But it was during the reigns of Henry the seventh and Henry the eight that people started printing more specific accounts of what had happened in the Tower, including naming names. In the sixteenth century Anglica Historia, Italian politary Virgil wrote that Richard the third had ordered Robert Brackenbury, Constable of the Tower, to kill Edward the fifth and his brother. When Breckenbury did not, Richard told Sir James Terrell to do it. In Fabian's chronicle, Robert Fabian, who died in fifteen twelve, also named Terrell or possibly another servant of the king. By this point Sir James Terrell was dead. He had been convicted of treason and executed in fifteen o two. I had a whole explanation of what happened in here, but it was very long. Terrell reportedly confessed to killing Edward and Richards sometime between his conviction on May second and his execution on May six, but no copy of this purported confession exists anywhere. The first really specific account of the boy's deaths was in the History of Richard the Third by Sir Thomas Moore, secretary and adviser to Henry the eight. More wrote that Richard the third had the boy shut up, removing everyone from them except a servant called black will or William Slaughter. In his words, they quote lingered in thought and heaviness till this traitorous death delivered them of that wretchedness. For Sir James Terrell devised that they should be murdered in their beds to that execution, whereof he appointed Miles Forest, one of the four that kept them, a fellow fleshed in order before time to him, he joined one John Dighton, his own horsekeeper, a big, broad, square, strong nave. This is one of those very old documents that writes the word murder like murther, which I always love. It's so good, and we could get into a hall of conversation about how that linguistic transition happened, but we've got more to this show to go on. More goes on to say that at about midnight, Forest and Dighton came into the boy's room, wrapped them in their bedclothes, and smothered them with their feather beds and pillows. Once Terrell had confirmed that they were dead, he quote caused those murderers to bury them at the stairfoot meatly deep in the ground under a heap of stones. More goes on to say that Richard the Third was brought to the scene and ordered their bodies moved to a better place because they were sons of a king, before adding sarcastically, quote low the heart courage of a king, for he would recompense the detestable murder with a solemn obloquy. Of course, William Shakespeare, writing during the reign of Queen Elizabeth the First, used Moore's work as a major source for his play Richard the Third, which depicts Richard ordering Terrell to carry out the crime, and Terrell returning afterwards saying, quote, the tyranness and bloody deed is done, the most arch of piteous massacre that every yet this land was guilty of Dighton and Forest, whom I did suburn to do this ruthless piece of butchery. Although they were fleshed villains, bloody dogs, melting with tenderness and kind compassion, wept like two children in their death sad stories. Of course, the tutors had very good reasons to want Richard the Third to look like a usurper, because otherwise Henry the seventh had forced a legitimate king off the throne. So at this point it is generally but universally believed that Edward the five and his brother Richard died at the Tower of London by the end of three and this idea that Richard the Third ordered James Terrell to kill them. That's pretty widespread, but Richard the Third definitely isn't the only suspect. Another is Henry Stafford, second Duke of Buckingham, who came up a lot in this episode. In this idea, he would have been trying to ingratiate himself to Richard and to protect Richard's claim to the throne. Another is John Howard, Duke of Norfolk, who became Lord High Steward under Richard the Third pretty much with similar reasoning. But Richard the Third is not the only monarch who stood to benefit from Edward and his brother being out of the picture. The other is actually Henry the seven. Making Elizabeth of York legitimate so he can marry her would have made Edward and Richard legitimate as well, so if they were still alive, Henry would have no real claim to the throne. So there are people who think the boys lived in the tower for a couple of years, hidden away, until Henry the seventh had them killed so that he could become king. Other people interpret this more as just confirmation that they were definitely dead by this point. There are also, though, people who believed that at least one of the boys lived for much longer, and people who claimed that they were one of them. A man named Lambert Simnel, who pretended to be the son of George Plantagenet, first Duke of Clarence, had originally planned to claim that he was Richard, Duke of York. Then in fourteen ninety a man calling himself Richard of England made this same claim, and this could really be its own episode. This man called Perkin Warbeck, convinced a number of very powerful people, including James the Fourth of Scotland and Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian the First, that he really was Richard, Duke of York. He eventually confessed to being an impostor. Though yeah, we actually did an episode on Perkin Warbeck on Criminilia in our Impostors season. Oh nice, I was wondering that, and I forgot to ask, oh, yes, that's a rich impostor story. So there is also a burial record in Kent for a Richard Plantagenet dated from December twenty two, fifteen fifty. Elizabeth Woodville had a cousin living not far from the burial site, so some people have interpreted this to mean that Richard, Duke of York somehow escaped the tower, perhaps while Richard the Third was on that royal tour and secretly lived out the rest of his life with his mother's kin. On July seventeen, sixteen seventy four, human remains were found in a chest under a stone staircase outside the White Tower at the Tower of London during some renovations that had been ordered by Charles the second. People who examined these remains concluded that they belonged to two people who were about eleven and thirteen years old. John Knight, chief surgeon to the King, concluded that they were indeed Edward the fifth and Richard of Shrewsbury, Duke of York. These remains were put on display before being placed in Henry the seventh Lady Chapel at Westminster Abbey in an urn designed by Sir Christopher wren So. Bones of children under a staircase, just like Sir Thomas Moore said, but More had also written that Richard the third had ordered the bodies moved to a more suitable location, and these were not the first bones found at the Tower of London suspected of being Edward the fifth and his brother. Other bones were unearthed at the tower in sixteen ten, sixty two and sixteen forty seven. Pretty Much every time anyone found a smallish set of remains in the tower, people immediately thought that it was the prince's, including one time when it turned out to have been an ape that had escaped from the Royal menagerie. It's also not clear what happened to these earlier finds and whether any of them were the same bones later found under the staircase. In nineteen thirty three, Lawrence E. Tanner, keeper of the Muniments and Librarian of Westminster Abbey, and anatomist William Wright, dean of the London Hospital Medical College, opened up the urn. They examined the bones and published their findings as recent investigations regarding the fate of the princes in the Tower in the journal Archaeologia. Dentist George Northcroft had also examined the teeth to try to determine the age of the people whose bones they were, and they concluded that, along with a lot of other random animal bones that were in there, there were two sets of human bones in the urn, or belonging to children of the right ages to be the princess in the tower. Although this sounds pretty conclusive, this investigation was not particularly thorough. It seems in a lot of ways to have been intended to confirm that these were the princes and not to like, actually find the truth of the situation. It definitely didn't follow methods or use technologies that would be in use today. In twenty eighteen, Dr John ashdown Hill traced the mitochondrial DNA line of the Princes in the Tower. Ashdown Hill's earlier work had been part of the identification of the remains of Richard the third. This made news in shortly after ashdown Hill's death. This work could be used to confirm whether the bones from the urn at Westminster Abbey, or any other bones that might be dug up, really belonged to Edward the fifth and his brother. And as for that paper we mentioned up at the top of the show that was more on a murder, the deaths of the Princes in the Tower and historiographical implications for the regimes of Henry the seventh and Henry the eighth, That was by Tim Thornton, published in the January edition of the journal History. Thornton argues that two men named Edward and Miles Forest were the sons of the Miles Forest that Sir Thomas Moore had named as one of the murderers. According to Thornton, More would have known both Edward and the younger Miles Forest. Edward was a servant of Henry the Eighth's bed chamber, and the younger Miles was an advisor to Cardinal Woolsey and a messenger between Henry the Eighth court and the embassy in Bruges, where Moore was working. It's also possible that John Dighton was living in Calais while Moore was also there, so More may have known Dighton as well. If Thornton is correct in these identifications, then Thomas Moore may have personally known the sons of one of the alleged killers, and possibly one of the alleged killers himself. So it's possible that Moore's account included details he learned directly from them. That still leaves some unanswered questions, though, like if you or your father had murdered the King of England, why would you tell Sir Thomas More about it? I do wonder and unburdening. Perhaps I have a very quick piece of listener mail to take us out of this episode. And now that we have gone through this whole recording and hopefully caught all the times where I typed the word Richard when I meant the word Edward or vice versa, this email seems particularly appropriate because it is about confusing names in our Unearthed episode recently. This is from Gray. Uh. Gray's email is titled correction Unearthed Columbian Harmony Cemetery and it says prefacing this with all the love and devotion, but wanted to let you know there was a tiny mistake in the most recent Unearthed episode. The Colombian Harmony Cemetery stones are being relocated from King George County, Virginia, where they were found in the river bank, to a memorial park across the Potomac River in landover Prince George's County, Maryland. To make it even more confusing, there is a Prince George County no apostrophe s in Virginia near Petersburg, which is the home of the Tombstone House. All the best, Great Gray sent a couple of links, one an article from CNN about the gravestones and another an Atlas Obscure piece about the Tombstone House. Uh. This made me laugh. Even before we recorded this episode and kept just messing up Richard and Edward all over the place. Um, partly because when I previously used to live in Somerville, Massachusetts, I lived on a street where the street crossed the city line into Cambridge. Uh and had the house the same house numbers on either side. UM. And boy did that confuse people visiting us, people delivering food? Uh, not so much the mail carrier. The mail carrier knew what was that that. Uh? But you know more, Uh, overnight deliveries were often overnight it to the other city. Uh. And this just reminded me of all that. So thank you Gray. I think I just sort of conflated mull comple things when I was writing up that installment into unearthed. If you would like to write to us about this or any other podcasts for at History podcast at I heeart radio dot com, and we're all over social media at miss in History, which is where you'll find our Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram. And you can subscribe to our show on the I heart radio app and wherever else you like to get your podcasts. 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