The Princes in the Tower, page 34
Luckily, whatever form of record management was undertaken by the first Tudor monarch and his circle within the territory he controlled (probably including Calais and Guînes), it did not, apparently, spread to the wider continent – although the loss of certain records in Flanders, such as those for Erasmus and Maximilian previously noted in this work, may be significant. Whether John Morton or his affiliates had access to the repositories in Rome is not known and investigations in this regard are ongoing.
In Ireland, Henry ordered the burning of all records pertaining to King Edward’s coronation and Parliament. The destruction took place after a Henrican loyalist, Thomas Butler, was made Keeper of the Rolls of Chancery in Ireland during the King’s Pleasure.23 Butler’s specific instructions are not on record.
Together with the destruction of records and control of information, Henry ensured complicity by managing and manipulating points of vulnerability. Hostage-taking was normal practice. York had taken sanctuary at Beaulieu Abbey but with his wife and son (or children) taken by the king, he had no choice but to give himself up.
Henry’s skill with extortion is well attested. Bonds and recognizances would be used to great effect to ensure any who fell under suspicion would be controlled, with the threat of crippling fines and bankruptcy extended to friends, family and associates. For a monarch who was paranoid and deeply suspicious, an extensive network of spies further ensured widespread control. At Beaulieu, the heir to England’s throne had played one last card. Changing out of the monk’s habit he wore as a disguise, Richard, Duke of York, left the abbey sanctuary to meet Henry wearing royal cloth of gold.24 Previously in 1483, by Act of Parliament, Edward IV had placed into law that cloth of gold could only be worn by the king and queen, the king’s mother, his children, and his brother and sisters.25 The heavy fine for the apparent open violation and disregard of this law is not on record despite Henry’s cupidity.
The Question of the Princes’ Later Lives
It is possible that Edward V was taken to Suffolk with John Howard on 11 August 1483; or he remained in London in disguise as a servant in Sir Edward Brampton’s house;26 or he was taken north, staying at Francis Lovell’s estate at Longdendale in Lancashire and/or taken to Barnard Castle by Sir Robert Brackenbury at some point. It is not known if Edward joined the Royal Nursery at Sandal Castle in Yorkshire for any period of time27 or resided at nearby Pontefract Castle by early May 1484 and, having reached his majority, visited Calais with Brackenbury later that year.
Was he sent to live in Coldridge in Devon by early March 1485, with John Goddesland, his footman? And did he meet with his mother at Sir James Tyrell’s home at Gipping in Suffolk, located a few miles from the port of Ipswich and John Howard’s docks. Certainly at some point he was ‘expelled from his kingdom’ and sent to the Channel Islands.
Researchers constantly come up against references to ‘the son of the Duke of Clarence’ – the young Earl of Warwick, also named Edward, of course – about whom Henry VII so successfully muddied the waters with his story that this was who the ‘feigned boy’ of 1487 pretended to be. Was the term ‘Clarence’s son’ used locally to protect Edward’s identity and deflect wagging tongues? By late November 1486, gossip in England, perhaps from Henry’s spies, already spoke about how ‘there will be more speech of ’ the Earl of Warwick ‘after Christmas’.28
Certainly, the research of Gordon Smith in 1996 now seems prescient, where he discusses the confession of the priest Richard Simons, named as the éminence grise behind the ‘Lambert Simnel Affair’:
The changes between Simons’s confession in February and Lincoln’s Attainder of November 1487 tend to confirm that the character of Lambert Simnel emerged at the end of an ad hoc story invented by the English government in response to the events of the 1487 rebellion. Vergil’s narrative transposed Lambert back to the start of the conspiracy and to this transposition can be attributed Vergil’s mistakes (e.g. Warwick’s age … and the capture of Simons) and the implausibility of the pseudo-Warwick plot … The conclusion that the king from Dublin was Edward V not only fits the events of the so-called Simnel rebellion of 1487 but also explains the differences in the narratives of Molinet, André and Vergil.29
If Edward V was killed in battle at Stoke Field, this was a judicial killing, with his body lying in an unmarked mass grave, most likely beside that of his royal cousin, John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln. Had willow staves been thrust through his heart as well as Lincoln’s? Had he died as an unknown person, without a crown on his helmet to mark him as a target on the field? Had this lesson been learnt from Bosworth? (For future archaeological and DNA investigations of the mass grave at Stoke Field, see Chapter 20.)
Had Lincoln died trying to save the young king’s life, or did his sacrifice succeed, and Lincoln’s younger brother lead an injured Edward V to safety from the conflict with his face opened by a sword, dagger or halberd strike. Did Edward survive at Coldridge in Devon (see Appendix 3), badly disfigured and unable to communicate but given the identity of John Evans to live his life in peace and obscurity? Was this an agreement made with King Henry on the pleading of Edward’s elder sister, the mother of Henry’s new young heir? And was it Edward’s removal from public and political life that finally allowed his sister to be crowned?
For Richard of York, the story is more grim. Named by Henry VII ‘Piers Osbeck’ and known to posterity as ‘Perkin Warbeck’, the lad who was captured and imprisoned was beaten by Henry’s men until his face was rendered unrecognisable. Executed in 1499, his lifeless body was cut down, his head struck off and placed on London Bridge for the crows and scavengers. His body is recorded being buried at the nearby Austin Friars,30 where traitorous nobility were laid to rest. A century later, among the ninety or more markers to all those buried there, the antiquarian John Stow found no indication of Perkin’s burial.31
In Leicester, upon Richard III’s death, Henry VII had failed for ten years to provide a marker for King Richard’s grave until Richard of York’s emergence presented the political necessity to denote the defeated Yorkist king’s resting place after Bosworth. Henry was unlikely to follow the same procedure with the grave of the alleged boatman’s son from Tournai. Indeed, would Henry’s queen, who probably knew his real identity, allow her brother’s grave to be denoted this way in a house of God? Or was York’s body removed to the royal vault at Cambuskenneth Abbey near Stirling, as Scottish tradition believes?32 Was James IV’s request granted and the young Yorkist prince buried with quiet dignity and honour in the vault originally intended for the Scottish monarch himself?
Or did King Henry follow the same strategy, deliberate or fortuitous, that had annulled and silenced the elder prince so effectively? Was York beaten so badly to disfigure him permanently so that he too could live out his life as an unknown, unrecognised man? And was he Richard of Eastwell, as some historians have postulated?33 If so, had this strategy saved his life, as it had his brother’s? Was a badly beaten prisoner substituted at Tyburn, a criminal already due to die and sent in York’s place, his sentence commuted from disembowelling to hanging? Criminals would have their heads shaved. As we have seen earlier, the man executed on the scaffold at Tyburn on 23 November 1499 did not speak.
And what of Richard’s young son with Katherine Gordon? Did he survive to live in obscurity and anonymity? Are the Perkins family of Wales his direct descendants, as claimed?34 Was this child’s life used as leverage to prevent his father, Richard of York, ever revealing his true identity as Edward IV’s son?
And finally, is this why Katherine Gordon was never allowed to return to Scotland, for fear of the secrets she might divulge or even mark and honour his grave, and why she went to live in Wales close to the (new) family named Perkins?
The Role of DNA
In 2017, with the help of Dr John Ashdown-Hill, researcher Glen Moran discovered the princes’ mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequence.
Moran had discovered an all-female line of descent from Elizabeth Woodville’s mother, Jacquetta of Luxembourg, to the acclaimed British opera singer Elizabeth Roberts.35 Roberts was honoured as the soprano soloist at the Opening Ceremony of the London Olympic Games in 2012, a few short weeks before the lower leg bone of Richard III was uncovered in a council car park in Leicester. Quite uncannily, Roberts bears a remarkable resemblance to her ancestor and namesake, Elizabeth Woodville, the princes’ mother.
With the princes’ mtDNA and Y chromosome identified (the male Y chromosome through Richard III, their uncle), a simple DNA test of any putative remains will answer this mystery, whether at Coldridge, Eastwell or Cambuskenneth, or if an all-male line of the Perkins family in Wales should come forward. Additionally, if any future development work were to take place in or around the location of the former Austin Friars Church of London, now the Dutch Church, a test could also be carried out on any remains found. Investigations have revealed that an account of exhumation, cremation and reburial of medieval remains (pre-1550) at this site has no apparent evidential basis.36
In 1950, following extensive ground-level bomb damage during the Second World War, when the Austin Friars Church was flattened by a parachute bomb, a limited archaeological dig in two locations in the nave removed several post-medieval burials. If this is Richard of York’s last resting place, his remains lie undisturbed and may be situated in a location immediately outside the footprint of the current (smaller) modern church.37 Perhaps future investigations may reveal more.
19
Summary and Conclusion
Summary
This unique enquiry has employed the methodology of a missing person investigation to solve one of the most enduring of historical mysteries: the apparent disappearance of two children in the summer of 1483. The investigation began by examining the time of the disappearance, analysing it moment by moment and using all available contemporary material to place this period under the spotlight. By employing forensic techniques, we went back to their last known location to recreate the past and build an extensive person of interest file of those around them and connected to them. This allowed us to determine who was where, when, with whom, doing what, and with what consequences at the time of the disappearance.
We also analysed exactly what was known about the two missing individuals at the centre of our endeavours to further inform lines of investigation and enquiry. Profiling revealed that both children (male) had large households and were well known. The elder (age 12) was a pre-teen who may not have been as physically robust as his younger sibling. He had an aptitude for poetry and literature and, facially, resembled his father. He seems to have been prone to melancholia which may have related to the onset of puberty and, very likely, the distressing change in his circumstances. Prior to his disappearance, he had been seen by Londoners ceremonially entering the city as the new king and later as he travelled to the Royal Apartments at the Tower Palace. On both occasions he would have been accompanied by leading members of Church, state and commons.
The younger boy (9) presented as a happy and energetic child who was strikingly pretty and considered to be in general good health. He had an aptitude for music, dancing, singing and, it seems, sport, possibly including archery and later tennis. Unlike his elder brother, he lived in the capital. Immediately prior to his disappearance, he was seen by Londoners travelling by barge from Westminster to join his brother at the Tower Palace. The flotilla consisted of at least eight barges and included leading members of Church and state.
Both boys may be described as celebrities and were last seen playing in the gardens of the busy Tower Palace on several occasions. They were blond and seem to have displayed a noticeable degree of charm.
Investigation of the timeline for the disappearance revealed a potential window of two months (18 or 21 July to 20 September), which could be extended to three months (28 October). Intelligence gathering revealed a disparity between local accounts at the time of the disappearance and those from abroad.
Wider analysis revealed that a pretender from France (Henry Tudor) introduced the charge of murder into England immediately prior to the Battle of Bosworth. The accusation of murder then took hold until the demise of the Tudor dynasty, when contemporary documents were investigated and the descendants of several families interviewed. These challenged the Tudor story of murder and presented instead the possibility of survival.
Further forensic analysis of the immediate post-Bosworth period revealed no evidence of murder or witnesses, and a rapid search in the north by Henry Tudor failed to locate the missing individuals, as did his later investigations at the Tower.
Analysis of potential suspects uncovered no obvious motive for murder.
Further investigation uncovered a contemporary blueprint for physical removal of the princes which did not involve or require harm.
As evidence for their survival mounted, the investigation was widened to consider two claimants to the throne. These presented post-Bosworth (in 1486 and 1491 respectively). Both claimants were of the right age and description for the missing individuals. The project then uncovered documented proof of life for both missing individuals: the elder in 1487; his younger sibling in 1493.
Actions Speak Louder than Words
The actions of the princes’ mother, Elizabeth Woodville, have never been properly explained. She came to terms with Richard III and his government and advised her eldest son, Dorset, to do the same and thereby desert the pretender Henry Tudor in France. Shortly afterwards, she supported a rebellion against King Henry, ostensibly in the name of a common boy pretending to be the son of the Duke of Clarence, Elizabeth’s erstwhile enemy. All this despite her eldest daughter having given birth to a grandson, the heir to the throne of England.
The only explanation for Elizabeth Woodville’s actions, and those of Dorset, is the known survival of her sons by Edward IV. Other Woodville family members also acted in ways which contradict the later Tudor narrative. Sir Edward Woodville left England and its new Tudor monarch at what might be viewed as the height of his success. In 1487, he failed to engage with King Edward’s rebels and took little or no part in the Battle of Stoke, then was absent from his niece’s coronation and finally died in 1488, having taken an armed force overseas to fight for Brittany (Maximilian’s ally) – flagrantly disobeying Henry VII’s prohibition ‘on pain of death’.
Events in York in 1487 have been presented to support the Tudor narrative of an impostor crowned in Dublin who was pretending to be Edward, Earl of Warwick. Much has been made of a document that gave the Dublin King a regnal number of ‘VI’, which was lodged in the city’s archives after the Earl of Northumberland raised a local army to fight for Henry VII against the impostor. Upon forensic investigation, however, the claims made for its authority have been found to be inaccurate.
The document ascribing King Edward the regnal number of ‘VI’ is a copy and forms part of an introductory description to the originally appended text,1 with the original text having been lost or destroyed. In extant communications from the Dublin King, he does not assign himself a regnal number; indeed, as king, this followed established procedure.
Those contemporaries reading communiqués would have understood who ‘King Edward’ was. York had been Ricardian, its city fathers were loyal to King Richard, but their loyalty had transferred to King Henry, who had informed them about the identity of the Dublin King prior to the young king’s invasion.
Henry’s control of information at this time had been countrywide.2 Hence, when King Edward asked for help from the city fathers he was refused.
Not all supported the new direction. York recorded many arrests as trouble broke out across the city, with a former mayor murdered.3
Significantly, following the withdrawal of Sir Edward Woodville’s cavalry from any military engagement with the rebel forces for three days from Doncaster to Sherwood Forest, the city of York declared itself for King Edward.4 After the Battle of Stoke Henry visited York, issuing a royal proclamation commanding the citizens to keep the peace during his visit.5 Following his visit, the city wrote its account and lodged the copy of Edward’s letter in its records. No mention was made of the city’s support for King Edward.6 It is not known if Henry took King Edward’s original letter with him.
Northumberland is another person whose actions were ambiguous. He had raised a northern army and set off to fight for Henry VII, but he returned to York to quell unrest. Two supporters of King Edward shouted the king’s name at Bootham Bar, one of the city’s gates, and made an assault with a company of horsemen but were quickly put to flight.7
Returning with an army of many thousands of men seems a rather heavy-handed response, but perhaps Northumberland suspected the city was under real threat. He waited in York for two days, saw there was no danger – and then took the army north at a time when King Henry was waiting for him in the south. Was the commotion caused by the Scrope Yorkist Lords of Bolton and Upsall at Bootham Bar a feint, intended to force redeployment of the northern levies? Or was it a previously agreed strategy to allow Northumberland to present the appearance of loyalty to the new Tudor monarch without having to fight for him? Northumberland’s apparent prescient knowledge concerning the rebels’ movements suggests he may have been in contact with them.8
We may also reflect on what kind of kings Edward V and Richard IV may have been had their drive for the throne been successful. Their individual characteristics, particularly the love of literature and music, suggests they may have been viewed as Renaissance monarchs, following the example of their father and uncle. Both, it seems, would have also respected and upheld the rule of law.
With the repeal of King Richard’s legal title to the throne (Act of Succession) by Henry VII in Parliament on 23 January 1486, Edward V was able to pursue his right to the throne from the first opportune moment. That this was 1486 is evidenced in his only surviving grant in Ireland from August of that year. Here, King Edward clearly states this to be the first year of his reign. Respecting the will of Parliament during that reign would be an important factor for the new king in gaining support, particularly from those in government.
