Read Online Tales From the Tower of London by Mark P Donnelly - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Mark P Donnelly
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And, as he was writing for another Tudor, Queen Elizabeth, there would have been good reason for the Bard to paint Richard as unpleasantly as possible.
Just as there were people during Richard’s lifetime who never believed his complicity in the boys’ murder, there were also those in the years after his death who defended him. The first accounts protesting his innocence appeared in 1603, immediately after the death of Queen Elizabeth, the last of the Tudor line. By 1684, the ‘Rehabilitate Richard’ movement moved into full swing when William Winstanley wrote of him, ‘this worthy prince [hath] been blasted by malicious traducers, who like Shakespeare in his play of him, render him dreadfully black in his actions, a monster of nature rather than a man of admirable parts’.
But by Winstanley’s time the case against Richard had already taken a turn for the worse. In 1674, nearly two centuries after the disappearance of the princes, workmen were making renovations to the old Royal Apartments near the White Tower. Buried beneath the foundation of a disused staircase they discovered the skeletons of two children. According to the observations made at the scene by John Knight, Principal Surgeon to Charles II, ‘about Ten Feet in the ground were found the Bones of Two Striplings in (as it seem’d) a Wooden Chest, which upon the survey were found proportional to the Ages of those Two Brothers . . . about Thirteen and Eleven Years’.
These were not the first bones of children found buried in the Tower, but they were the only ones corresponding to the approximate ages of the two princes and, to make the case all the more compelling, they had been buried together. Convinced these were the remains of the princes, King Charles commissioned his Surveyor General of Works, Sir Christopher Wren, to design an urn of white marble in which the bones could be placed and moved to Westminster Abbey where, ironically, it was installed in the Chapel of Henry VII. On the urn is engraved an epitaph stating that within are the remains of the lost princes who were murdered in the Tower of London.
There the bones rested until 1933 when the Dean and Chapter of Westminster Abbey granted permission for the urn to be opened and the bones examined. The examination was only marginally more conclusive than the one made when the bones were discovered more than 250 years earlier. It was simply assumed they were male, and at the time there was no test to accurately determine how old the bones actually were. Consequently, they were replaced in the urn. Even if this is accepted as true, we are still left with the mystery of who, exactly, ordered the boys’ death. There are four possible suspects:
Richard III . Let’s assume for the moment that Richard ordered the murder of his nephews. Why did he never deny the rumours? It would have been easy enough, and far more politically advantageous, to say the boys had simply sickened and died. It was a common enough explanation for an untimely death during the Middle Ages. Having said this, he could have displayed the bodies in public and quashed the rumour mill that was slowly destroying his reputation. It had worked for his elder brother, King Edward IV, when he ordered the murder of his predecessor Henry VI – surely it would have worked for Richard. But the nagging question remains: did Richard have any reason to order their murders?
The Yorkist faction had already accepted that the boys were illegitimate and urged Richard to accept the throne, so neither of the boys presented any political threat to his claim to the throne. Richard was lovingly devoted to his brother, the boys’ father, Edward IV. Would he have killed his nephews out of simple spite?
There were at least nine other legitimate, Yorkist claimants to the crown besides the boys, and three of these were male. One, the young Earl of Warwick (son of Richard’s late brother the Duke of Clarence), was proclaimed heir to the throne by Richard
Just as there were people during Richard’s lifetime who never believed his complicity in the boys’ murder, there were also those in the years after his death who defended him. The first accounts protesting his innocence appeared in 1603, immediately after the death of Queen Elizabeth, the last of the Tudor line. By 1684, the ‘Rehabilitate Richard’ movement moved into full swing when William Winstanley wrote of him, ‘this worthy prince [hath] been blasted by malicious traducers, who like Shakespeare in his play of him, render him dreadfully black in his actions, a monster of nature rather than a man of admirable parts’.
But by Winstanley’s time the case against Richard had already taken a turn for the worse. In 1674, nearly two centuries after the disappearance of the princes, workmen were making renovations to the old Royal Apartments near the White Tower. Buried beneath the foundation of a disused staircase they discovered the skeletons of two children. According to the observations made at the scene by John Knight, Principal Surgeon to Charles II, ‘about Ten Feet in the ground were found the Bones of Two Striplings in (as it seem’d) a Wooden Chest, which upon the survey were found proportional to the Ages of those Two Brothers . . . about Thirteen and Eleven Years’.
These were not the first bones of children found buried in the Tower, but they were the only ones corresponding to the approximate ages of the two princes and, to make the case all the more compelling, they had been buried together. Convinced these were the remains of the princes, King Charles commissioned his Surveyor General of Works, Sir Christopher Wren, to design an urn of white marble in which the bones could be placed and moved to Westminster Abbey where, ironically, it was installed in the Chapel of Henry VII. On the urn is engraved an epitaph stating that within are the remains of the lost princes who were murdered in the Tower of London.
There the bones rested until 1933 when the Dean and Chapter of Westminster Abbey granted permission for the urn to be opened and the bones examined. The examination was only marginally more conclusive than the one made when the bones were discovered more than 250 years earlier. It was simply assumed they were male, and at the time there was no test to accurately determine how old the bones actually were. Consequently, they were replaced in the urn. Even if this is accepted as true, we are still left with the mystery of who, exactly, ordered the boys’ death. There are four possible suspects:
Richard III . Let’s assume for the moment that Richard ordered the murder of his nephews. Why did he never deny the rumours? It would have been easy enough, and far more politically advantageous, to say the boys had simply sickened and died. It was a common enough explanation for an untimely death during the Middle Ages. Having said this, he could have displayed the bodies in public and quashed the rumour mill that was slowly destroying his reputation. It had worked for his elder brother, King Edward IV, when he ordered the murder of his predecessor Henry VI – surely it would have worked for Richard. But the nagging question remains: did Richard have any reason to order their murders?
The Yorkist faction had already accepted that the boys were illegitimate and urged Richard to accept the throne, so neither of the boys presented any political threat to his claim to the throne. Richard was lovingly devoted to his brother, the boys’ father, Edward IV. Would he have killed his nephews out of simple spite?
There were at least nine other legitimate, Yorkist claimants to the crown besides the boys, and three of these were male. One, the young Earl of Warwick (son of Richard’s late brother the Duke of Clarence), was proclaimed heir to the throne by Richard
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