The King's Grave: The Discovery of Richard III's Lost Burial Place and the Clues It Holds

by Langley, Philippa

  In Charles II’s reign the bones of two children were found in the Tower of London, and these bones – immediately assumed to be those of the princes – were subsequently reinterred in Westminster Abbey. They were later examined by two experts in the 1930s and as a result declared to be the remains of the princes. For some this was, and is, good enough. But modern science has advanced greatly, and it is fair to say that the majority view among historians is that this evidence is no longer conclusive. More’s testimony is shot through with inaccuracy and ambiguity. And the evidence of the bones is now seen as unsatisfactory. They could be those of the princes – but equally they could not. It is important to stress here that neither More, nor the evidence of the bones, can be dismissed. But they do not offer proof. Ongoing debate is valuable – indeed essential.

  Before we commence, it is important to define more clearly what we are debating about and what we are not. There are three views on Richard III and the princes. The first is that he planned to kill them from the outset. That of course was the viewpoint of the Tudors and ultimately William Shakespeare. It is also an interpretation held by many modern historians. To complicate matters, there are two alternative versions of this view. The first, and most extreme, is that Richard was always plotting to take the throne, certainly from the death of his brother Edward IV in April 1483, if not even earlier. The adherents of this interpretation consider that Richard was motivated by ruthless ambition, his claim to the throne, advanced in June 1483, and subsequently set out in the Titulus Regius, being a transparent falsehood that neither Richard nor those around him really believed.

  The second interpretation is that Richard was not always planning to take the throne, but the political uncertainty in the aftermath of his brother’s death, and his fears for his future once Edward V was crowned, forced his hand. This view is more moderate; both sets of adherents believe that Richard’s claim to the throne, and the pre-contract upon which it was based, was opportunist and had no real plausibility – and thus it was never taken seriously. But in both versions, Richard was compelled to kill the princes because they held the rightful claim to the throne and he did not – and these views cannot be dismissed. They were held by many people at the time, some of whom actually believed, or suspected, that Richard had killed the princes before his accession on 26 June 1483. And, as stated earlier, it is the conviction of many present historians. Yet it is not the belief of either of the co-authors of this book.

  Our common ground can be simply put. We believe that Richard III’s claim to the throne should be taken seriously. We believe that he himself saw it as genuine, in other words that he felt, or came to feel, that he was rightfully king. We believe that he saw no necessity to kill the princes to establish that claim. And finally, from everything we know of Richard’s character, we believe that he would have been most reluctant to have authorized their murder.

  Where we differ can also be summarized simply. The view of Michael Jones is that the attempt to rescue or remove the Princes in the Tower, conducted in late July 1483 while Richard was on progress, forced his hand. He came to realize that he could no longer guarantee the viability of his succession with the princes still alive, and ordered them to be disposed of, a course of action he only undertook with the utmost reluctance and with the deepest regret. Philippa Langley disagrees that the July plot forced Richard’s hand: it was a scheme, easily thwarted, so there was no impetus for the measures suggested, nor were they in Richard’s interests at such a sensitive point at the very outset of his reign.

  One final point needs to be made. It is the conviction of both authors that the life and reign of Richard III deserves a positive reassessment and that Richard is deserving of such a reappraisal whether he ordered the princes’ deaths through dire and cruel necessity, or whether he was innocent of such a charge. And both authors recognize that the state of existing evidence only allows conclusions based on balance of probability and does not permit a definitive statement – one way or the other.

  The Argument for Richard III’s Innocence Regarding the Deaths of the Princes in the Tower

  All anyone can truly say regarding the fate of Edward IV’s sons, the Princes in the Tower, is that they disappeared. Who was responsible for their disappearance, and how it occurred, is not known.

  We don’t know how, why or when, or who moved them, or where to. The widespread belief that they were killed is purely tradition – an assumption based on two things. First, gossip and rumour spread during a (failed) uprising aimed at killing Richard and replacing him on the throne. And second, uncorroborated statements put out by the French-backed invader Henry Tudor and his partisans, to justify the deaths of Richard and so many other loyal Englishmen at Bosworth. Traditional belief also telescopes the events of that summer before they disappeared, supposing that people thought the boys dead at a time when we know the Woodvilles were actually forming alliances to restore them to the succession. The Tudor version would have us believe that the queen mother heard that her sons were dead, accepted the fact unquestioningly, and immediately started plotting to promote the dangerously ambitious Tudors. Real life is not so neat and tidy, and unless she saw their bodies with her own eyes, you have to wonder what evidence of their death would be sufficient to convince her to abandon their cause. This is why we have to be so wary of unsupported claims by Tudor writers.

  The speculation has always been that it was Richard III himself who killed his nephews, an allegation based on hearsay and gossip originating, in the most part, after King Richard’s death. During Richard’s lifetime, there are four sources who quote gossip accusing Richard, all foreign. In 1483 the story was circulating at the court of the French king, England’s enemy Louis XI, but at the time the boys were very much alive. Then, later in 1483, Dominic Mancini, a foreign visitor to England with contacts at court (including the princes’ own doctor) made enquiries but admitted he wasn’t able to discover anything.

  In January 1484, again in France, the French Chancellor, Guillaume de Rochefort, addressing the Estates-General, accused Richard of the murder. With a vulnerable new boy-king on the French throne, and attempting to counteract a backlash against royal authority, his speech was a calculated rallying cry urging his listeners not to emulate the dreadful English and their ‘regicidal proclivities’ as one historian has put it. The reciting of catalogues of murdered English monarchs seems to have been a favourite theme in French politics, and one needs to bear in mind Franco-English hostility before taking Rochefort’s accusations at face value. Moreover, this speech came after Buckingham’s rebellion when many of Richard’s enemies had fled to Henry Tudor in nearby Brittany. The fourth contemporary reference is one from the visiting German knight Nicolas von Poppelau, who spent several days in Richard’s company. Recording his thoughts in his private journal, presumably for his eyes only, Poppelau noted down some rumours he had heard, including one that said Richard had killed the princes, but added that he didn’t believe it.

  Indeed, if Richard were indicted with the crime today no court would, or could, convict him. In 1984 Channel 4 broadcast a unique programme, The Trial of King Richard III, which put him in the dock on the charge of murder. After four hours of deliberation, Richard was declared not guilty.

  There had been a shift in the speculation that Richard killed his nephews, from suspicion that he carried out the murders himself to supposition that he ordered others to do it. The princes were last heard of in the summer of 1483: Richard was then in the north on his royal progress around the kingdom. Would he be likely to send men south to do his dirty work for him, and trust that no one in the Tower of London, a busy royal palace, got word of it? This seems not only illogical, but inordinately risky. Richard was the anointed king, declared as such by the Three Estates, the Lords, Church and Commons, whereas the boys had been declared illegitimate. But he was also newly crowned, and yet to make his mark. To order the murder of the sons of Edward IV, even if he felt able to divert suspicion away from himself, would l
ay him open to the danger of the worst kind of odium at the vulnerable start of his reign. Is it reasonable to assume he believed his nephews were such a threat that it was worth taking this risk? Did the failed attempt to rescue (or abduct) them from the Tower in the summer of 1483 change Richard’s perception of the threat they posed?

  Let’s imagine that it did. Does this reckless act fit with everything else we know about Richard? Certainly he could be decisive, brutal even, and authorize executions. In his role as Constable of England under Edward IV he had sweeping powers, including those of conviction and sentence without appeal in cases of insurrection and treason.

  However, he is not known to have executed anyone who in his day would have been presumed innocents – women, priests, children – or against whom no proof of guilt could be found. Summary executions would only become a regular means of disposal during the reigns of the Tudor monarchs. In fact, there are at least two occasions when Richard showed clemency, possibly even naïvety. In autumn 1483 Margaret Beaufort, wife of Thomas, Lord Stanley and mother of Henry Tudor, was found guilty of conspiring against Richard during Buckingham’s rebellion. As the act of a traitor this warranted the death penalty. Instead she was simply confined under house arrest under the control of her husband.

  In 1483, at the Council meeting of 13 June that led to the execution of William, Lord Hastings for treason, there were seven arrests. These included Beaufort’s husband, Thomas, Lord Stanley, Thomas Rotherham, Archbishop of York, and John Morton, Bishop of Ely. All were released, Morton into the care of the Duke of Buckingham. Rotherham and Stanley remained in government circles, and Morton was offered a pardon. The latter two, though treated mercifully by Richard, later acted against him. With hindsight, had Richard considered executing such ‘innocents’, it could be argued that he might never have needed to fight the Battle of Bosworth.

  The princes’ mother, Elizabeth Woodville, is known to have made her peace with Richard early in 1484 when she emerged from Westminster, where she had taken sanctuary, and Richard promised to treat her well and arrange appropriate marriages for her daughters. Richard acted honourably in this, and the following year negotiated a marriage for Elizabeth’s eldest daughter, Elizabeth of York, to the Portuguese Duke of Beja, who later became King Manuel I. Elizabeth of York was the princess who, according to Henry Tudor, was supposedly promised to him by her mother. After Richard’s death the marriage negotiations were halted. Richard treated the women fairly, especially since the Yorkist claim to the throne came through the female line, and Edward IV’s daughters could be perceived as a threat to him.

  Not only did Elizabeth Woodville reconcile herself to Richard, but she also wrote to her eldest son, Thomas, Marquis of Dorset, who was in France with Henry Tudor, asking him to return to England so that he too could make his peace with Richard. Dorset tried to do so, but was caught and imprisoned by Henry Tudor before he could escape. It seems most unlikely that if Elizabeth believed Richard had murdered the two princes, she would risk the life of a third son. And if she was under duress, after Richard died she would surely have denounced him for murdering her sons.

  But Elizabeth Woodville said nothing about the fate of her sons. However, she did take action; she immediately supported a rebellion against Henry Tudor, now King Henry VII, in the name of Lambert Simnel, a possible stalking horse for the return of Edward V. This, when her eldest daughter Elizabeth of York was Tudor’s wife and Queen of England. The rebellion against Henry Tudor failed and as a result of her involvement, Elizabeth was imprisoned by Henry in Bermondsey Abbey where she died in poverty. Elizabeth Woodville’s actions tell us two things: she either had incontrovertible knowledge that her sons were alive, or not enough proof that they were dead; either way she knew that Richard hadn’t killed them.

  There is another point. For the deaths of the two boys to be of any benefit to Richard, he had to show their bodies. Without visible proof that Edward IV’s sons were dead (of some suitable illness, of course) it would always remain open to pretenders to assume their identities and lead rebellions against Richard.

  The third prince, Richard’s other nephew, Edward, Earl of Warwick, son of George, Duke of Clarence was legitimate but his father had been attainted so leaving no inheritance and certainly no claim to the throne. But attainders could be reversed by a simple Act of Parliament: the taint of illegitimacy was much more difficult to reverse. So it follows that if Richard had believed that the removal of his illegitimate nephews would secure him his throne, he would have had to remove Edward of Warwick too who was legitimate and living in the royal nursery in Richard III’s household in the north. But Richard did nothing of the kind. It was Henry Tudor who sought out and imprisoned this prince immediately after the Battle of Bosworth, eventually executing him on trumped-up charges in 1499 after he had languished in the Tower for at least twelve years.

  The two independent studies I commissioned for the Looking for Richard project, to try to understand Richard’s character, both dealt with the princes and whether or not Richard killed them. The first was by master graphologist Bridget Hickey, whose findings were published in the September 2000 issue of the Ricardian Bulletin:

  If there is something so provoking, so tremendous, then everyone is capable of murder, and according to their temperament would set about it differently. I cannot see him setting out, without provocation, to do harm to anybody. My gut feeling after doing this analysis, after living with this man for three weeks, is that he could not have killed the Princes in the Tower without a very good reason. He was so analytical; he would have asked so many questions, he would not act on impulse. He was not emotionally deranged. There is a side which didn’t like the business of the day – the executions etc. – but of course he would do them when it was necessary, or when he was threatened.

  My second commission was the Psychological Analysis by Professor Mark Lansdale and Dr Julian Boon of the University of Leicester, which they undertook in great detail and with considerable professional interest. The result was a lengthy article in the Ricardian Bulletin of March 2013.

  Their conclusions as to the likelihood of Richard having the princes put to death were contextualized within their overall psychological profile, which is summarized in Appendix 2. They were careful to review the possible necessity for the boys’ removal against the historical background of the time. Elimination of deposed kings had been done by previous monarchs, and Richard might have found himself in similar circumstances and compelled, albeit reluctantly, to follow that precedent. The key questions were why he might do so, and whether his psychology provided a clue.

  As to why, this seemed problematical for two reasons: first, he may have believed his legal position as rightful king was very strong compared to theirs; and consequently he may not have seen them as a major threat. Second, at the time they were said to have disappeared he showed no sign of perceiving any serious threat from them.

  As to Richard’s psychological impetus, the over-riding assessment was that he seemed to have been, above all other things, a controlled and careful person. Thus, if the princes ended up dead (however it happened), it would be out of character for him to leave the matter untidy, uncertain and unexplained. Nor would he derive any particular benefit from keeping it to himself. Looking at the alternative proposition of sending them to a secret place of safety, in such a scenario utter silence was the only way to make it work. This, they felt, was more in keeping with his personality than complicity in their death.

  For me the mystery of the Princes in the Tower is crucial. For more than 500 years, Richard has been held responsible for their murder. This belief has shaped the study of both the man and his reign. If we could apply the principle of innocent until proven guilty, rather than convicting him on a balance of probabilities, it would open up serious research which may well shed new light on an ages-old mystery.

  The Argument for Richard III being responsible for the deaths of the Princes in the Tower

  In July 1483 the tw
o sons of Edward IV disappeared into the inner recesses of the Tower of London. Their servants were dismissed and they were never seen again. A rebellion against Richard’s rule in October 1483, which involved a coalition of those who had previously been implacable enemies – on the one hand Lancastrians, on the other loyal members of the household of Edward IV – was clearly grounded in the conviction that the princes were no longer alive. As a result, all parties had become willing to advance the little-known Lancastrian exile, Henry Tudor, to the throne, on condition that he marry Edward IV’s eldest daughter, Elizabeth of York.

  If the princes were at this stage still alive, Richard III could have quashed this conspiracy by parading them through the streets of London, a course undertaken by Henry VII in 1487 when the pretender Lambert Simnel announced that he was the Earl of Warwick, the Duke of Clarence’s son and heir. Henry immediately produced the real Earl of Warwick – held in custody in the Tower of London – and publicly displayed him. It is telling that Richard never undertook such an action.

  Richard III’s responsibility for the deaths of the princes was not fabricated by the Tudors. It was the belief of many contemporary or near-contemporary sources. It is important to say that this verdict is not unanimous – a few sources implicated the Duke of Buckingham, or confessed that the ultimate fate of the princes was not known. But the majority believed that Richard was responsible for their deaths, including Dominic Mancini, our earliest source, along with the Croyland Chronicler and other near-contemporary London or foreign chronicles. And when new accounts are unearthed they tend to substantiate the same conclusion.

  Such a survey needs to be nuanced. In his main narrative, the Croyland Chronicler was circumspect, reporting the general belief by September 1483 that the princes were dead, but also making clear that no one knew exactly what had happened to them. But elsewhere the chronicler revealed his own suspicion that Richard had ‘suppressed his brother’s progeny’.