The Princes in the Tower, page 13
Following his capture in 1464, Henry had been kept in the Royal Apartments at the Tower of London by Edward IV. On King Edward’s return to London from Tewkesbury on 21 May 1471, the Arrival of Edward IV reports:
… the said Henry, late called King, being in the Tower of London; not having, before that, knowledge of the said matters [death of his supporters and son] he took it to so great despite, ire and indignation that, of pure displeasure and melancholy, he died the xxiiij. [24] day of the month of May.30
Edward and his government asserted that the former monarch died of ‘pure displeasure and melancholy’.
To our modern sensibilities, this seems suspiciously woolly. When subjected to scrutiny, however, ‘melancholy’ is used today in autopsy reports but is more commonly known as ‘broken heart syndrome’ or ‘takotsubo cardiomyopathy’. This is an abrupt form of heart failure brought about by emotional or physical stress, caused, for example, by bereavement.
In 1471, the former monarch was informed of his queen’s imprisonment, the deaths of his supporters and, most importantly, the death of his son in battle. Modern medical knowledge understands ‘melancholy’ as a plausible (and possibly accurate) report of the former monarch’s demise. The date given for Henry’s death is Thursday, 24 May, the Feast of the Ascension. The short form of Edward IV’s Arrival was in circulation two days later, on 26 May 1471, and sent abroad to Burgundy and Bruges on 28 and 29 May.31 This is the most contemporaneous account of the former monarch’s death.
Following King Richard’s death at Bosworth, foreign and Tudor accounts reported Henry VI’s decease as a murder committed by Richard as Duke of Gloucester. A chronicle32 claims that Henry was put to death on the night of Tuesday, 21 May 1471, between eleven and twelve o’clock, adding that the Duke of Gloucester was at the Tower that day with ‘many other’. The others are not named. The date of this chronicle is sometime after March 1482 to 1500.33
The convenient timing of Henry VI’s death is today viewed with suspicion, with most traditional commentators supporting the view of murder, or judicial killing, by Edward IV. The motive is that Henry’s death brought the direct Lancastrian line to an end. This report places Gloucester at the scene of the crime. Gloucester was in London on 21 May but left the following day. For Gloucester to be considered a suspect, the king’s death would need to take place on the 21st.
Henry’s death is variously reported in later accounts as 20, 21, 22, 23 and 24 May.34 Polydore Vergil, Henry VII’s historian, attributes the murder to Gloucester but places the crime at the end of May (when Gloucester was no longer in the capital). Most significantly for the enquiry, in 1483 the French agent Domenico Mancini records no murder of Henry VI. This is important because the killing of a former monarch (particularly one who was considered saintly by this time) was an opportunity to denigrate both the English and the new Yorkist king.
Henry was later said to have been stabbed to death by Gloucester with a dagger or sword.35 When Henry’s tomb was opened in 1910, no attempt was made by the specialist (Dr MacAlister) to determine a cause of death by analysis of the bones, a notoriously difficult undertaking. A lay person who was present (Mary Clive) pointed out that Henry’s remains had proved ‘neither death by violence or a fractured skull’.
The king’s skull was in pieces, but this was thought to have arisen from later exhumation, transference and reburial.36 If Henry VI suffered from porphyria (through his French antecedents), the result of this genetically transmitted mental condition would have been an abnormally thin skull. This was noticed in the king’s remains. Henry could have died instantly if he fell on a hard surface, or perhaps his heart stopped beating on receipt of the news from Tewkesbury. A later suggestion by another lay person that Henry’s hair was ‘matted with blood’ was not corroborated by an anatomist. Based on an unattributed report of blood or material from decomposition processes, it is conjecture whether this might suggest Henry fell, potentially after his heart stopped.
Do we know who may have delivered the bad news to Henry, and when? If delivered on 21 May, it is possible this was Gloucester. This would be unusual as Henry was attended by ten people, two of whom were named as William Say and Robert Radclyf.37 The confused monarch may have been more familiar with these individuals and recognised them, although it is recorded that some weeks earlier Henry, ‘far gone in simplicity’, had recognised the newly returned Edward IV from exile as ‘My cousin of York’.38
Among the ‘many other’ at the Tower on 21 May were King Edward, Queen Elizabeth and their children, the king’s family and Council having resided at the Tower at this time for safety. Very likely, the queen’s brother, Anthony Woodville, Earl Rivers was also present. Rivers had been placed in charge of London and the Tower by Edward IV. The Constable of the Tower, John Sutton, 1st Baron Dudley, and Lieutenant, Richard Haute were also likely to have been there. As key Tower officials, it would have been appropriate (and customary) for one of them to have delivered the news to Henry. Their names, along with Rivers, Say and Radclyf,39 have never been associated with Henry’s death. This may further suggest that no murder took place.
It may also be significant that the first recorded attribution of murder was made by the Welsh bard Dafydd Llwyd, shortly after the Battle of Bosworth. As we have seen in Chapter 5, Llwyd met Henry Tudor a few days before the confrontation. Llwyd labelled Gloucester as the murderer but added that the Lancastrian monarch died on the Thursday (24 May).40 Previously in France, Henry Tudor had been (incorrectly) proclaimed as the son of Henry VI and, as a result, feted as the heir of the House of Lancaster.41 In this light, Richard’s alleged murder of Tudor’s ‘father’ can perhaps be viewed as not unexpected in terms of foreign and Tudor propaganda (also see Carmeliano’s poem of 1486, Chapter 5).
Other crimes attributed to King Richard by later accounts have been found to be unfounded. These include a role in Clarence’s death in 1478 and the murder of his wife and queen in 1485. A more recent crime attributed to Gloucester has also been investigated and found to be unsubstantiated. This was the alleged mistreatment of Elizabeth Howard, the ageing Countess of Oxford, in 1472–73.42 The countess was John Howard’s cousin.
In hindsight, it is evident that once Gloucester was labelled as a murderer (and illegal king), a growing catalogue of crimes was added to the charge sheet. However, the charge we are examining is that of ordering the deaths of his nephews, the sons of Edward IV.
As a comparison, we have examined what happened to Edward of Warwick during the reign of Henry VII. As King Richard’s nephew and potential claimant to the throne (should the attainder against Warwick’s father have been reversed by Parliament), it’s important to consider the young man’s fate.
In 1478, following the death of his parents, 3-year-old Warwick became an orphan. In 1481, King Edward awarded the 6-year-old’s wardship to Thomas, Marquess of Dorset (Queen Elizabeth’s eldest son).43 In June 1483, with Dorset in sanctuary, Gloucester brought the 8-year-old to the capital and placed him in his wife’s household.44
Anne Neville was Warwick’s aunt (his mother was Anne’s sister). He was present at Richard and Anne’s coronation and joined the royal progress at the town of Warwick with Queen Anne and her household. Warwick was knighted in York and remained in the royal household, possibly travelling with his servants and the king and queen.45
After King Richard’s death, Warwick was discovered by Henry Tudor’s supporters, unharmed in the royal nursery at Sheriff Hutton in Yorkshire. Richard’s other nephews and nieces, eighteen Plantagenet claimants to the throne, also survived his reign. There is no evidence of them being harmed.
Modern specialists have established through experience and case study that we are all capable of killing, given the right circumstances.46 The killing of children, then as now, is a particularly heinous crime, most generally focused on concerns relating to character (psychiatry and psychopathy) and criminality. Narratives that described the killing of the princes depicted it as premeditated with malice aforethought, recognised today as murder in the first degree.
If we consider Richard as the main suspect in this depiction of the murder of Edward IV’s sons, it is of primary importance to establish his motive (as duke and king). In the absence of motive, there is no evidence to suggest he was involved in any murders (illegal killings or assassinations) or considered a danger to children.
Foreign and Tudor accounts state that Richard had the princes killed because his own claim to the throne was based on a lie. As a consequence, he was an illegal king (usurper). This rendered Edward V the rightful king and a direct threat to Richard’s accession and reign. It also made Edward’s younger brother, Richard of York, heir presumptive to his brother.
In the next chapter, we will examine this important question to establish whether Richard, Duke of Gloucester (Richard III) had a motive to murder the sons of Edward IV.
7
Richard III
King by Right – The Evidence
Many of the specialist investigators involved in The Missing Princes Project have raised the importance of Edward IV’s first marriage to Eleanor Talbot as potential evidence in the disappearance of the sons of Edward IV. Put simply, if the Talbot marriage was a fabrication (as stated in the later Tudor narrative), then Richard III had a clear motive to eliminate the sons of Edward IV as the true heirs to the throne. However, if the Talbot marriage – and its implications – were true, then Richard III had no clear motive.1 Consequently, we have now brought together all available marriage evidence.
On 25 June 1483,2 a petition was drawn up asking Richard, Duke of Gloucester to become king on the following four grounds:
1 The existence of a secret pre-contract [because Edward IV subsequently married Elizabeth Woodville, his first marriage to Eleanor Talbot is known as a ‘pre-contract’] without subsequent annulment
2 A second secret marriage (which constituted bigamy in modern terms), of which the fact of secrecy compounded the first sins and rendered them incapable of expiation
3 This resulted in the bastardisation of Edward IV’s offspring of the second (Woodville) marriage
4 The ineligibility of Edward, Earl of Warwick (aged 8), due to his father’s attainder.3
The next day, he accepted his election as King Richard III.
What is a Pre-Contract?
A pre-contract is a legal contract that precedes another contract. In medieval canon law, a pre-contract refers to an existing contract of marriage that predates a subsequent contract of marriage. A pre-contract with a living partner would, unless dissolved, legally nullify any later marriages into which either party entered.4 Therefore, Edward IV’s contract of marriage with Eleanor Talbot became a pre-contract when he subsequently entered into a second (and consequently bigamous) contract of marriage with Elizabeth Woodville while Eleanor was still alive.5 As a result, the children of Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville were declared illegitimate. Bastard children were unable to inherit anything and therefore they were barred from succession to the throne.
It must be emphasised that a pre-contract is therefore a previous and legally binding contract of marriage and not a form of betrothal or engagement prior to a later contract of marriage. The term ‘pre-contract’ in medieval matrimonial law meant ‘marriage’.6
The Pre-Contract (the Talbot Marriage): Supporting Evidence7
The validity of the pre-contract and, therefore, the legitimacy of Richard III’s royal title is, in fact, supported by a range of contemporary and near-contemporary sources. In June 1483, the Three Estates of the Realm accepted the legality of Edward IV’s secret marriage with Lady Eleanor Talbot and, consequently, ruled that the bigamous and clandestine nature of Edward IV’s subsequent union with Elizabeth Woodville rendered Edward V and his siblings illegitimate. There being no senior legitimate heir, the Three Estates petitioned Richard to take the throne. Evidence authenticating this account of Richard III’s accession is set out below.
There are six principal sources for the pre-contract (the Talbot marriage):
1 The Titulus Regius
2 Richard III’s letter of 28 June 1483 to the Captain of Calais
3 The Crowland Chronicle
4 Philippe de Commynes
5 Eustace Chapuys
6 The Year Book, 1486.
The Titulus Regius
The Titulus Regius of January 1484 is an Act of Parliament ratifying Richard III’s royal title. The Act stated that before the coronation of Richard III (6 July 1483), the Three Estates of the Realm presented to Richard, Duke of Gloucester a petition detailing his rightful title to the crown of England. In this ‘roll of parchment’, the Three Estates stated that Edward IV had made a contract of matrimony with Eleanor Talbot, daughter of the Earl of Shrewsbury, long before he contracted a second, ‘feigned’ marriage with Elizabeth Woodville. The children of this second ‘marriage’ were therefore bastards, ‘unable to inherit and claim anything by inheritance by the law and custom of England’.8 Thus, Richard, Duke of Gloucester ascended the throne as King Richard III.
Richard III’s Letter of 28 June 1483 to the Captain of Calais
Richard III’s letter of 28 June 1483 to the Captain of Calais stated that two days earlier, on 26 June, the king’s ‘sure and true title’ was ‘declared in a bill of petition which the lords spiritual and temporal and the commons of this land solemnly porrected [delivered] unto the king’s highness at London’. Richard duly enclosed a copy of the bill of petition with the letter to Calais, ‘there to be read and understanded’ by the garrison. Richard III thus dated his reign from 26 June 1483. This is the petition presented to Gloucester by the Three Estates of the Realm and subsequently ratified in the Titulus Regius by the Parliament of January 1484 as the Act of Succession.9
The Crowland Chronicle
In November 1485,10 the Crowland Chronicle confirmed the testimony of Titulus Regius and Richard’s letter to Calais. The chronicler reported that Richard became king ‘by means of a supplication contained in a certain parchment roll, that King Edward’s sons were bastards, by submitting that he had been precontracted to a certain Lady Eleanor Boteler [née Talbot] before he married Queen Elizabeth’.11
Taken together, the Titulus Regius, Richard’s letter to Calais and the Crowland Chronicle collectively establish that on 26 June 1483 the Three Estates of the Realm had presented to Richard a petition in the form of a parchment roll, requesting him to take the throne on the basis of Edward IV’s invalid marriage with Elizabeth Woodville and the consequent illegitimacy of their offspring. However, these sources are silent on the origin of the information which convinced the Three Estates of Edward IV’s pre-contract (see notes 2 and 3).
Philippe de Commynes
It was Philippe de Commynes, a Flemish knight and the leading diplomat in the service of the French king, Louis XI, who reported that Robert Stillington, the Bishop of Bath and Wells,12 had revealed to Richard, Duke of Gloucester, that he (Stillington) had married King Edward ‘to a certain English lady’ when ‘only he and they were present’. ‘Later,’ Commynes added, ‘King Edward fell in love again and married the daughter of an English knight, Lord Rivers’ (Elizabeth Woodville). It should be noted that Commynes states Edward IV’s marriage ‘to a certain English lady’ to be a real event and does not attempt to discredit the pre-contract (the Talbot marriage) as a political fiction. According to Commynes, Stillington’s revelation provided the grounds for Edward IV’s Woodville offspring to be declared illegitimate.13
Eustace Chapuys
Two letters written in 1533 and 1534 by Eustace Chapuys, Imperial Ambassador in England to the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, support Commynes’ identification of Bishop Stillington as the source of the precontract. Chapuys stated that ‘many respectable people’ in England told him that Henry VIII ‘only claims [the crown] by his mother, who was declared by sentence of the Bishop of Bath a bastard, because Edward [IV] had espoused another wife before the mother of Elizabeth of York’.14 As Chapuys refers specifically to the Bishop of Bath – which the Titulus Regius does not – he cannot have obtained his information from the Titulus Regius. Chapuys’ evidence therefore represents a corroborative English source, independent of both the Titulus Regius and Philippe de Commynes.
The Year Book of 1486
A Year Book is a legal record compiled by lawyers. It is broken down into four terms: Hilary, Easter, Trinity and Michaelmas. The Year Book of 1486 (Hilary term) provides further supporting evidence. The relevant passage describes the process by which Henry VII’s first Parliament planned to annul the Titulus Regius of 1484.
Several lords wished to question Stillington, as ‘they said that the Bishop of B made the bill’.15 As Stillington’s eyewitness knowledge of the precontract underpinned the petition presented to Richard in June 1483, it therefore follows that he should play a principal role in drafting the Titulus Regius. Stillington was a former Chancellor of England and a Doctor of Civil and Canon Law. With a wealth of legal, diplomatic and administrative expertise, Stillington possessed the necessary skills to compose the ‘parchment roll’ of 1483, later passed into law as the Titulus Regius. Stillington’s role as pre-contract witness and principal author of the Titulus Regius is therefore logical and substantiated.
Even though Stillington’s offences against Henry VII are described as ‘horrible and heinous’, ‘imagined and done’,16 Henry refused to allow the lords to interrogate Stillington. Henry stated instead that ‘he had pardoned him, and therefore he didn’t want any more to put it to him’.17
Henry’s reticence is entirely consistent with his nervous approach to the pre-contract (the Talbot marriage). He ordered the destruction of the enrolled parliamentary copy of the Titulus Regius, as well as additional documentary evidence described as appendices, ensuring their dangerous content ‘may be forever out of remembrance and also forgot’, ‘cancelled, burned and put into oblivion’.18 In addition, all remaining copies of the Act were to be returned to the Chancellor on pain of imprisonment. Furthermore, on the advice of Henry’s justices, the Titulus Regius was repealed unread; a highly unusual (possibly unprecedented) event. James Gairdner argued that a point ‘which is perhaps rather an evidence of the truth of the story [of the pre-contract], is the care afterwards taken [by Henry VII] to suppress and pervert it’.19
