The Princes in the Tower, page 19
Furthermore, in view of the project’s new line of enquiry regarding the survival of Edward IV’s sons beyond King Richard’s reign, do we have a historical blueprint for times when royal heirs were set aside?
Remarkably, we do, and it relates to Richard III and Edward IV’s grandmother, Anne Mortimer (aged 7), her brothers, Edmund, 5th Earl of March (6) and Roger (5), and their sister Eleanor (3). As we have seen (Chapter 3), Edmund Mortimer was the named heir of the childless King Richard II. After him, his younger brother Roger would have been the next heir. However, in 1399, their claim was set aside by the usurpation of the first Lancastrian king, Henry IV. Henry was the boys’ uncle.
So, what happened to the Mortimer children, and how might this inform the investigation?
Edmund and Roger Mortimer
On Henry IV’s accession, Edmund and Roger’s estates were transferred to the Percy family and the boys placed at Windsor Castle (Berkshire) and Berkhamsted Castle (Hertfordshire), in the custody of Henry’s most loyal supporters. Fifteen months later, the eldest, Edmund, was granted a small inheritance.1
Six years later, there was a plot to free the boys, now aged 13 and 12, and deliver them to their uncle, Sir Edmund Mortimer, in Wales. On 13 February 1405, the boys were removed from Windsor Castle by their aunt, Constance of York, Countess of Gloucester. Close to Cheltenham, the party was apprehended by forces loyal to Henry IV. During interrogation at Westminster, Constance implicated her elder brother, Edward, Duke of York, as the ‘principal instigator’ in the royal kidnapping.2
The boys were placed under strict supervision at Pevensey Castle on the south coast, almost directly opposite Calais, where they stayed for the next four years.3 Their uncle, Edward of York, was imprisoned in the Tower of London and at Pevensey for about seven months.4 Constance was imprisoned in the Midlands at Kenilworth Castle for eighteen months.
In February 1409, the boys, now 18 and 17, were transferred to the custody of the king’s heir, Henry of Monmouth (23). The boys remained in royal custody for fourteen years until the death of Henry IV. At the time of their release in 1413, Edmund Mortimer was 21 and Roger was 20. Both were made Knights of the Bath by the new Lancastrian king, Henry V (Monmouth), with Edmund kept in close attendance.
In 1415, despite his status as senior claimant to the throne, Edmund informed Henry V of a Yorkist plot. The conspiracy named Edmund as rightful king. The Southampton Plot involved Edmund’s brother-in-law, Richard, Earl of Cambridge. Cambridge was caught and executed.
Edmund now married Anne, daughter of the Earl of Stafford, who was descended from Edward III (see the family tree on p. 10). This infuriated Henry V, who fined Edmund 10,000 marks, leaving him ‘bound to the king and deeply in debt’.5
Edmund Mortimer, 5th Earl of March, died aged 33 in Ireland without issue. Roger had died shortly after release, apparently of natural causes. During their long incarceration, the boys had been kept variously at secure locations away from London, and at a time of crisis, on the coast. They seem to have been well treated, and for part of the time at Windsor and Berkhamsted, brought up with Henry IV’s children in the Royal Nursery.6
Documentation of the period describes Edmund as the king’s ‘ward’ (May 1400, 1411, 1412), ‘kinsman’ (September 1400, 1401, 1413), in the ‘king’s custody’ (February 1402) and ‘keeping’ (February 1408, 1411).7 It also seems that both boys were allowed a servant8 and the presence of a nursemaid.9
Anne and Eleanor Mortimer
Anne and Eleanor Mortimer were allowed to stay with their mother but within five years were orphans. The girls were not well treated by Henry IV, and Anne (12) and Eleanor (8) became destitute.10 In spite of this, both eventually made good marriages.
In 1408 Anne (20) married Richard, Earl of Cambridge (executed 1415). Anne died on 22 September 1411 after giving birth the previous day to Richard, Duke of York (father of Richard III and Edward IV).
Eleanor married Sir Edward Courtenay, who died in 1418 and was the heir of the Earl of Devon. They had no issue. She next married Sir John Harpenden and moved to Normandy, France. Harpenden was granted a general pardon by Henry V for marrying Eleanor without royal consent. Eleanor is believed to have died in 1422.11
Conclusion
The fate of Edmund Mortimer and his brother Roger is important for the enquiry. It reveals that, within living memory, King Richard and all those at his court were aware of an obvious example of how to set aside a child heir. It was also clear that in times of crisis, it was of the utmost importance to conceal their whereabouts. There was a precedent for an abduction attempt, but also an apparent rapprochement and, over time, loyalty to the new regime.
It is of further significance that all this was undertaken on behalf of two legitimate heirs, who were a far greater threat to Henry IV, a supremely ruthless king. We must also note that within five years of Henry IV’s accession, the Mortimer children were orphans; something Elizabeth Woodville will have been aware of with regard to her own situation as a single parent.
Does this new intelligence provide a window onto why in May 1483 the King’s Council, led by Richard, Duke of Gloucester as Protector, prepared an oath of security for Elizabeth and her daughters so they could leave sanctuary? An oath that Richard swore to as king in March 1484 in full view of the Three Estates of the Realm: the King’s Council, prelates, and Mayor and Aldermen of London.
Richard’s promise to marry the girls to gentlemen and provide for their wellbeing seems to have persuaded Elizabeth of the government’s sincerity (see Chapter 16). Is this why only the girls were mentioned in the oath (see Chapter 5 and Appendix 1)? Were the Royal Council aware that Elizabeth Woodville would not countenance the release of her daughters if they faced the possibility of destitution following her death, a fate that had befallen the Mortimer girls?
Given the apparent attempt, on or around 21 July 1483, to abduct Edward V and Richard, Duke of York, from the Tower of London while King Richard was on royal progress, the project now needed to widen its investigation to consider the removal of the princes to secure locations outside London. These would encompass Richard’s heartlands in the north, including the royal nurseries (see Chapter 10), the Yorkist Channel Islands of Jersey and Guernsey and Yorkist Ireland. It would also consider key locations on the continent.
What the project now uncovered was astonishing.
12
Edward V: Proof of Life
by Nathalie Nijman-Bliekendaal and Philippa Langley
The Missing Princes Project cold-case investigation now brings to light two remarkable discoveries supporting the survival of the sons of King Edward IV, the Princes in the Tower, thereby offering proof of life. The importance of these discoveries cannot be overstated.
In this chapter, Nathalie Nijman-Bliekendaal and Philippa Langley consider a discovery made by Albert Jan de Rooij in the Archives Départementales du Nord in Lille on 5 May 2020. In Chapter 14, Nathalie and Philippa consider a further discovery made by Nathalie in the Gelderland archive in the Netherlands on 21 November of the same year.
With special thanks to the project’s Dutch Research Group in bringing to public attention these important new discoveries.
‘The Dublin King’
‘… to serve her nephew, son of king Edward, late her brother …’
What a Receipt from 1487 Tells Us About the Identity of the ‘Dublin King’
In the first years of his reign, Henry VII was confronted with a serious Yorkist uprising. Its military preparation took place in Flanders and Zeeland in the spring of 1487. The Dowager Duchess of Burgundy, Margaret of York, sister of Edward IV and Richard III, played an active role in the organisation of the invasion force, together with Yorkist nobles John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln; Francis, Viscount Lovell; and other supporters of the House of York.1 Their aim was to overthrow the new regime in England and replace Henry VII with an heir of the House of York who held a superior claim to the English throne.
On 15 May 1487, a Yorkist fleet left the small harbour town of Arnemuiden in the municipality of Middelburg in Zeeland and set sail for Ireland.2 The ships carried a professional army of German mercenaries (Landsknechte) and Zeeland soldiers – raised with financial support from Margaret of York and led by Commander Martin de Zwarte and Lords Lincoln and Lovell.
Twelve days later, on Sunday, 27 May 1487,3 a young man, the Yorkist heir was crowned King of England, France and Ireland in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin. He would also be known as the ‘Dublin King’.
Shortly after the coronation and Parliament, on 4 June 1487, the Yorkist army invaded England. On 16 June 1487, the ‘Dublin King’ lost his fight for the English throne at the Battle of Stoke.4 He may have also lost his life,5 or escaped and been injured.6
There are remarkably few surviving contemporary sources with which to reconstruct this important historic event. Although several sources confirm the Yorkist invasion took place in the name of ‘King Edward’, the true identity of the young man crowned in Dublin is still shrouded in mystery and remains a subject of debate.
The Lambert Simnel Affair
For Henry VII, in contrast, the identity of this Yorkist pretender was not in doubt, at least as presented to the outside world.7 At an early stage of the conspiracy, the ‘Dublin King’ was characterised as an impostor, the son of an organ maker from Oxford who claimed to be Edward, Earl of Warwick.8 According to an Act of the November 1487 Parliament, which followed the Battle of Stoke, the boy impostor was identified as one Lambert Simnel.9 Somewhat confusingly, the boy was also described variously by the Tudor government as the son of a joiner, tailor, baker and shoemaker.10
Although the official English account of the uprising stated that he was an impostor claiming to be the Earl of Warwick, in records of the Habsburg Netherlands, the individual in whose name the revolt took place was seldom viewed as an impostor: his identity was usually simply recorded as ‘the son of Clarence’. This is documented in the Danzig Chronicle (see note 5) and in two contemporary Flemish sources and a Dutch source from 1487.
One of the Flemish sources concerns an entry in the City Accounts of Malines, in which ‘the son of Clarence’ is mentioned as the recipient of a gift of wine.11 The ‘Chronicon ab anno 1465 usque ad 1487’, written by the Flemish monk Adrian De But, refers to ‘the count of Warwick’ and ‘son of Clarence’ as the Yorkist pretender.12 In the County Accounts of Holland, we find the name of ‘the duke of Clarence’ as the challenger to Henry VII.13 Unlike these documents from continental Europe, there are no surviving close contemporaneous sources in England (and Ireland), other than the official government accounts, connecting the name of Edward, Earl of Warwick to the Yorkist uprising (which is intriguing in itself ).
To support his claim of this Edward being an impostor, Henry was quick to provide evidence of fraud. Early in the conspiracy, he ‘exhibited’ Warwick, who he kept imprisoned in the Tower of London, to the inhabitants of London and the nobles in the capital.14 Henry thus made it clear that the real Earl of Warwick was in his custody and the Yorkist pretender was therefore an impostor.15
This is the traditional and generally accepted story of the identity of the first Yorkist pretender. It is hard to understand just how easily this Tudor narrative, the ‘Lambert Simnel Affair’, is so universally accepted, given the lack of objective evidence. The possibility that this pretender really was a descendant of the House of York with a legitimate claim to the throne has rarely been subjected to serious study.16
The Missing Princes Project
The Missing Princes Project seeks to challenge this type of historiography, based as it is on non-objective sources and hearsay. Consequently, there is an active search for new and neglected archival material to reconstruct events surrounding the disappearance of the sons of King Edward IV and to clarify the identity of the two Yorkist claimants to the English throne – in 1486, ‘King Edward’, alias Lambert Simnel, and in 1491, ‘Prince Richard, Duke of York’, alias Perkin Warbeck. At face value, this seems to present a scenario, as previously proposed in Chapter 1, in which a former King Edward and a former Prince Richard disappeared, and a King Edward and a Prince Richard reappeared.
Therefore, is this simple correlation what actually happened?
Both attempts on the English throne were largely prepared on the continent in the Habsburg Netherlands, with the support of the Burgundian-Habsburg monarchs and leading nobles. The archives in the Low Countries are therefore an important source of new information. Much of the archive material in England and Ireland was destroyed during the reign of Henry VII.17 The archives on the continent, by contrast, seem to have survived relatively intact.
A Receipt from the Year 1487
The Archives Départementales du Nord in Lille, France, is just such an archive. It contains a considerable quantity of late-medieval documentation from the Burgundian (1384–1482) and Habsburg (1492–1581 and 1795) periods.
A remarkable document was recently discovered in this archival treasure trove which confirms that at least one of the sons of King Edward IV was alive in 1487.18
It is a proof of payment located among the accounting documents of the ‘Recette de l’Artillerie’.19 The receipt, written in French and dated 16 December 1487, records the payment of 120 livres made by Laurens le Mutre, Counsellor and Receiver of ‘The Artillery of the king of the Romans and his son the Archduke’, to a certain Jehan de Smet, who, according to the document, was a merchant and maker of wooden objects living in Malines. De Smet was paid for supplying 400 long pikes to King Maximilian in June 1487. The receipt then states that the long pikes were taken away by King Maximilian himself and delivered to one of his highest and most trusted courtiers, Jan van Bergen, Lord of Walhain.20
The content of the receipt leaves no doubt as to which expedition these weapons were intended for: the first great Yorkist rebellion of 1487 against Henry Tudor. What makes this document so valuable and of great historical importance, however, is the fact that it not only describes the purpose of the expedition in great detail, but it also reveals the identity of the person in whose name the military support was intended: ‘the son of King Edward’.
Translated into modern English the receipt runs as follows:
[These pikes were] to be distributed among the German-Swiss pikemen, who were then under the command of my lord Martin de Zwarte, a knight from Germany, to take and lead across the sea, whom Madam the Dowager21 sent at the time, together with several captains of war from England, to serve her nephew – son of King Edward, late her brother (may God save his soul), [who was] expelled from his dominion – and obstruct the King of the forementioned England in his activities. [Emphasis added.] 22
This is a most remarkable find, not only because it is the first close contemporary source to identify a son of the late King Edward IV as the beneficiary of the uprising of 1487, but also because of the relevance and weight of the evidence offered.
The receipt in which Jehan de Smet declares that he received the sum of 120 livres from the ‘Kings councillor and receiver of the Artillery’ (‘with which sum I am satisfied’) was witnessed, signed and dated by another leading official from the Burgundian-Habsburg court, namely one of King Maximilian’s own secretaries, Florens Hauweel. We may assume that the secretary drew up this document personally and was responsible for its textual content, clearly detailing the purpose of the weapons.
It is hard to imagine that someone in such a position, so close to the political centre of power (and on top of the events of the day), would have made a mistake regarding the identity of the person for whom the weapons were ultimately intended, namely ‘the son of King Edward’. Indeed, in a brief, written and signed statement at the bottom of the document, two other high-ranking officials reconfirm the accuracy of the receipt and conclude that the payment and distribution of the weapons had actually taken place ‘in the manner, contained and extensively described in the receipt above’.
This short, added statement is an accounting control to ensure the reliability and accuracy of the Artillery’s financial statements. It is signed by Lienart de la Court, Chamberlain and Master of the Artillery of the Kings of the Romans, and Andrieu Schaffer, Controller of the same Artillery.
The fact that the document was drawn up, inspected and signed by three leading officials at the Burgundian court, including a secretary to King Maximilian, renders the possibility of an error in the identification of the royal claimant for whom the weapons were intended extremely unlikely. Furthermore, there is no reason to assume that erroneous information was intentionally incorporated, as the receipt served no purpose other than that of an internal accounting mechanism validating a payment for the purchase of weapons. The probative value of this piece of evidence is therefore considerable, providing a probability bordering on certainty that the first Yorkist rebellion took place in the name of one of the sons of King Edward IV.
King Edward V
There is documentary evidence from two English sources and one Irish source, all contemporary with these events, that the uprising which culminated in the Battle of Stoke took place in the name of a King Edward. First, an account of the Battle of Stoke, laid down in the Heralds’ Memoir, reveals that the rebels called their leader ‘King Edward’.23 Second, a memorandum of the City of York, written in June 1487, reports that the rebels shouted the name ‘King Edward’.24 Finally, an Irish patent was issued in the name of ‘Edwardus, King of England, France and Ireland’ and witnessed by the Earl of Kildare, dated to the first regnal year of this King Edward. This is an important example of where our forensic searches need to avoid assumptions made in the past.25
