Sir James Tyrell devised that they should be murdered in their beds. To the execution whereof he appointed Miles Forest … a fellow flushed in murder beforetime. To him he joined one John Dighton, his own horsekeeper, a big broad strong square knave. Then all the others being removed from them, this Miles Forest and John Dighton about midnight (the innocent children lying in their beds) came into the chamber and suddenly lapped them up among the clothes – so bewrapped them and entangled them, keeping down by force the featherbed and pillows hard unto their mouths, that within a while, smothered and stifled, their breath failing, they gave up to God their innocent souls into the joys of heaven, leaving to the tormentors their bodies dead in the bed. [The Great Chronicle of London records, long before More, how ‘some said they were murdered atween two feather mattresses’ – though it also mentions rumours of other methods.]
After the wretches perceived them – first by the struggling with the pains of death and after, long lying still – to be thoroughly dead, they laid their bodies naked out upon the bed and fetched Sir James to see them. Who, upon the sight of them, caused those murderers to bury them at the stairfoot, meetly deep in the ground under a great heap of stones.
More adds that a priest of Brackenbury’s later disinterred them and reburied the bodies, since the King did not like to leave them ‘in so vile a corner’. However, the priest died, and with him the secret of the Princes’ burial place.
Sir Thomas’s account has been dismissed as a tale of melodramatic invention, full of errors and incongruities. Certainly it contains many mistakes, though this becomes understandable when one realizes that it was at most a very approximate reconstruction of what had happened, much of it based on guesswork. In his History of the Reign of King Henry VII Francis Bacon explains why. More gives as his source the reports ‘of them that much knew and little cause had to lie’, rather than the actual confessions of Tyrell and Dighton. Bacon tells us that though Henry was informed of the confessions, he ‘made no use of them in any of his declarations; whereby, as it seems, these examinations left the business somewhat perplexed’. But while Tyrell went to the block, Dighton – who does not even seem to have been arraigned – was set free, after which, according to Bacon, he told the story of the Princes’ death to anyone who would listen. More had not met Dighton, though he says that he is still alive at the time of writing – he ‘yet walketh on alive in good possibility to be hanged ere he die’. (Modern scholarship has traced a number of Dightons and Forests, who may or may not have been the men in question.) He must therefore have had to glean details of the confessions indirectly, perhaps from tavern gossip, and to balance them against other rumours which were circulating.
Many historians are puzzled as to why Henry VII did not publish the confessions to discredit Richard III and discourage further spurious pretenders like Lambert Simnel and Perkin Warbeck. But the Tudor King had an excellent reason for not reminding the English people of royal murders; only three years before, he himself had legally murdered the last male Plantagenet – the mentally subnormal Earl of Warwick, whom he had kept in the Tower since Bosworth – by deliberately involving him in a pathetic little plot with Warbeck and then beheading him for treason. In any case Henry was secretive by nature and disliked reopening unprofitable debates; in Bacon’s words, he preferred ‘showing things by pieces and by dark lights’. Above all, he cannot have wanted publicity for the House of York, since there was still a Yorkist Pretender in the person of Edmund de la Pole.
Polydore Vergil definitely accepts Tyrell’s guilt, but merely says that he killed the boys. He ignores the confessions – ‘with what kind of death these sely [poor] children were executed is not certainly known’. He also tells us that Tyrell was dispatched not from Warwick, but from York. Much has been made of this by Richard’s defenders in order to discredit Sir Thomas’s version. However, Vergil was an excessively self-conscious stylist, who believed in the elegance of brevity, and who in any case had no experience of criminal investigation. More, on the other hand, as cannot be too much emphasized, was a professional lawyer with very considerable experience of investigating crimes, of assessing evidence and weighing probabilities, and of trying to establish what had really happened. He makes it perfectly clear that several conflicting versions of the confessions by Tyrell and Dighton were circulating. ‘I shall rehearse you the dolorous end of those babes, not after every way that I have heard, but after that way that I have so heard by such men and such means as methinketh it were hard but it should be true.’ What he does not say, but which is obvious from his treatment of other incidents in the History is that the version which he had accepted was in part his own reconstruction. Vergil may not make use of Sir Thomas’s reconstruction, but that does not mean he rejected it – if, indeed, he even knew of it.
The author of the Great Chronicle of London is another contemporary who supports More. He believed that the murderer was either Sir James Tyrell or an unnamed ‘old servant’ of the King. He wrote before the publication of More’s History. It is surely significant that both he and Vergil as well as Sir Thomas identify Tyrell as the prime murderer.
Kendall tries to demolish More on the most specious grounds. He claims it is inconceivable that King Richard would have sent letters to Brackenbury ordering him to kill the Princes. But the letters were carried by well-trusted men and even in the fifteenth century ‘sealed dispatches’ were far from unknown. He makes great play (as do all Richard’s partisans) of Sir Thomas’s ignorance of Tyrell’s previous employment by the King, yet this is surely irrelevant; a curriculum vitae or an obituary cannot have been exactly easy to come by in the sixteenth century. Tyrell’s recommendation by the ‘secret page’ in particular carries conviction rather than otherwise; for ‘secret page’ one should read modern ‘secret agent’, a man employed by Richard to spy on and report on his household – it would obviously make sense to consult him about which of the henchmen was most suitable for such a tricky job.
Beyond question, More’s account of the murders is full of errors – one serious – and partly based on sheer surmise, and cannot be accepted in every detail, but as a reconstruction it is a tour de force. It is also probably very near the truth. Instead of being criticized for mistakes or too much imagination, Sir Thomas deserves to be congratulated for an inspired piece of detective work.
What gives More’s account such conviction are the two skeletons discovered in 1674. A staircase to the White Tower was being demolished when, at a depth of ten feet, the workmen found a wooden chest. (It may have been an arrow chest of the sort in which Anne Boleyn was coffined so hurriedly.) Inside were the bones of two children, the taller on its back, the smaller lying face down on top of it. Some of the bones were stolen by souvenir hunters – and replaced by animal bones – until in 1678 King Charles II ordered the remainder to be interred in a fittingly regal urn in the Henry VII Chapel at Westminster Abbey – near the tomb of their sister, Elizabeth of York. Furious attempts have been made to show that these are not the remains of the Princes. However, when the urn was opened in 1933 and the skeletons were examined, both were found to be male, the larger four feet ten inches tall and the smaller four feet six and a half inches, and each slenderly built; a dental surgeon estimated their ages at about twelve and ten (roughly those of the Princes in 1483) and also deduced that the elder suffered from a painfully diseased jaw which might well have caused melancholy. Twenty years later these findings were submitted by Kendall to a group of anthropologists and dentists, who differed in their opinions; some believed that the conclusions of 1933 were probably more or less correct, others disagreed about the larger skeleton’s age and even sex. Richard’s partisans have argued that it would have been impossible to dig ten feet down into solid stone in a single night; in fact, the murderers need not have dug downward but could have dug from the side, into the rubble which composed the foundations of the staircase, since it is known to have been an external stair. This would certainly tally with Sir Thomas’s des
cription of the boys being buried ‘at the stair-foot, meetly deep in the ground under a great heap of stones’. If these are not the Princes, it is an almost miraculous coincidence that the bones of two medieval adolescents should have been buried in this particular place.
More’s most serious mistake is his tale of a priest having later reburied them. But perhaps this was the impression of Tyrell and Dighton themselves since ‘whither the bodies were removed they could nothing tell’. It might have been the King’s original intention, but it was never carried out. It could also be accounted for by Brackenbury having a priest say the prayers De Exequis or even a Mass over the spot where they lay, although it was unconsecrated ground – this would undoubtedly be in keeping with Richard’s always obsessive anxiety that the souls of the dead should rest in peace.
In the meantime their uncle was basking in the seeming adulation of his new subjects. When he was still at Warwick, he received an ambassador bearing letters from Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic, King and Queen of the Spains. The envoy, Sasiola, made ‘by mouth’ the barely credible though unquestionably tactful assertion that his sovereign had been ‘turned in her heart’ against Edward IV because he had refused her hand for that of Elizabeth Woodville; she and Ferdinand wanted Richard to join them in a war against Louis XI of France. The English King was in no position to wage a long and expensive campaign against the French, but he sincerely welcomed the idea of a treaty of amity with the Spaniards. Also at Warwick on this occasion he saw once more his old comrade-in-arms, the egregious Alexander Albany, who had quarrelled yet again with his brother. Technically England was still at war with the Scots, but a letter was sent by James III on 16 August in which he asked for an eight-month truce with a view to negotiating lasting peace. Nevertheless, the Duke of Albany might well prove useful to Richard III.
The day before King James sent his letter Richard had left Warwick to continue his progress, going by way of Coventry, Leicester and Nottingham. From the last town his secretary, John Kendall, wrote to the Corporation of York asking them to give the King a particularly splendid welcome, ‘to receive His Highness and the Queen as laudably as their wisdom can imagine’. Kendall assisted their wisdom’s imagination by suggesting that the streets of York should be adorned by hangings and tapestries. He confided to the Corporation that this was to impress the ‘many Southern lords and men of worship’ who were accompanying Richard. We know from Rous, who had been an eyewitness at Warwick, that the royal retinue included the Bishops of Worcester, Coventry, Lichfield, Durham and St Asaph, the Earls of Warwick, Lincoln, Huntingdon and Surrey (Thomas Howard), the Lords Stanley, Dudley, Morley, Lovell and many others, together with a multitude of knights and gentlemen. ‘And ladies of similar rank with the Queen.’ No doubt Kendall’s letter to York emanated from the King. Clearly Richard wanted his magnates and his courtiers to appreciate his popularity in the North and the fact that he still had a strong power base there.
At Pontefract the King and Queen were joined by their nine-year-old son, Edward of Middleham, Earl of Salisbury, probably on 24 August. This was the day on which the boy was given the heir apparent’s traditional titles of Prince of Wales and Earl of Chester. Clearly he had been too sickly to come south for his parents’ Coronation, and he had had to travel from Middleham to Pontefract by ‘chariot’ – a conveyance used only by delicate women or invalids. Yet he seems to have been a normal enough child. He kept a fool called ‘Martyn’ and a pack of hounds, besides two running footmen to accompany him during the hunt. And his health was at least good enough for him to visit fairly frequently the local religious houses of Coverham, Fountains and Jervaulx – the latter still famous for its horses. As soon as his father had ‘ascended’ the throne, the Corporation of York had ridden out to Middleham to pay their respects to the small boy who might one day be their King. As presents the burgesses brought such delicacies as six herons, six cygnets, twenty-four rabbits, a barrel of red wine and a barrel of white wine.17
During the family’s stay at Pontefract, Richard took the opportunity of making yet another ostentatious display of piety, which at the same time conveniently blackened his late brother’s name. Edward IV had appropriated twenty-four acres of land belonging to a local priory. The new King gave it back
calling to remembrance the dreadful sentence of the Church of God given against all those persons which wilfully attempt to usurp into themselves, against good conscience, possessions or other things of right belonging to God and his said Church, and the great peril of soul which may ensue by the same.
In all probability it was only a few days since he had ordered the liquidation of his nephews.
York gave the Royal Family the magnificent reception for which Kendall had asked, and much more besides. On Friday 29 August Richard and his cortège were met at Brekles Mills, just outside the city, by its Mayor and Corporation in their furred gowns of scarlet velvet and by an attendant host of leading citizens expensively dressed in red. They escorted their guests through the chief gateway, Mickle-gate, to be cheered to the echo by a mass of more ordinary citizens, though everyone was in their best clothes. The people of York vied with one another in staging special displays in welcome. As the King and Queen and the Prince passed through the densely thronged and richly bedecked streets, they were greeted by three splendid and elaborate pageants in token of the city’s rejoicing. Richard was presented with two great silver-gilt basins filled with gold coins, while Anne received a gold plate piled high with more gold coins, to the value of a hundred pounds.
The southern lords and men of worship with the King must have been gratifyingly impressed by such solid testimony to his northern popularity. Richard himself was plainly delighted. He decided, obviously on impulse, to invest his son as Prince of Wales in this rich and friendly city, sending to London in haste for suitable robes and hangings – in particular for 13,000 tapestries bearing the badge of the white boar. (No doubt these were the hangings used at his Coronation; some would have been cloth badges to be worn by royal retainers.) The messenger was none other than Sir James Tyrell, who presumably had speedily rejoined his master with the news that he had successfully accomplished his delicate mission. The three weeks at York which followed were one long celebration, during which the Corporation entertained the King and his court to two memorably extravagant dinners and many other entertainments. These were ‘stage plays, tournaments and other triumphal sports’. On 7 September, a Sunday, the Corpus Christi Guild – which Richard and Anne had joined in 1477 – put on a special performance of the Creed mystery play for their benefit, in the superb Perpendicular Guildhall with its brilliantly coloured glass windows. He reciprocated by giving ‘most gorgeous and sumptuous feasts and banquets, for the purpose of gaining the affection of the people’.
However, the visit’s highlight was the investiture of the Prince of Wales in York Minster. The King placed a golden circlet on his son’s head and put a sceptre into his hand. To enhance the solemnity of the occasion he also knighted the Spanish ambassador, Sasiola. Finally, preceded by forty trumpeters, Richard, Anne and the Prince, still wearing their diadems, walked in procession through the city streets – the Queen holding Edward’s hand. (The streets they walked must have been narrow, winding, tall gabled lanes very like today’s Shambles.) The King wore a crown of notable richness and magnificence and ‘the common people of the North so rejoiced that they extolled him above the stars’. It should of course be borne in mind that as yet probably no whisper of his nephews’ murder could have reached Yorkshire. The day’s ceremonies were so majestic, Richard’s crown so imposing and the crowds so large that some spectators thought a second Coronation had taken place.
The King was intoxicated by such an enthusiastic reception. He remitted more than half a year of York’s taxes, a characteristic display of prodigality which probably he later regretted. Then he took the opportunity to revisit his favourite houses of Sheriff Hutton and Middleham. Anne and Prince Edward remained at Middleham – no dou
bt the sickly child had been exhausted by the celebrations.
Certainly Dr Thomas Langton – a Westmorland man – Bishop of St David’s, who accompanied Richard’s progress, had no reservations at all about his new sovereign’s popularity, as he wrote the same September to the Prior of Canterbury. It would be too cynical to attribute his exuberant approval entirely to the fact that the King had made him a Bishop and appears to have told him to expect further preferment. In a much-quoted letter, Langton says,
He contents the people where he goes best that ever did Prince for many a poor man that hath suffered wrong many days have been relieved and helped by him and his commands now in his progress. And in many great cities and towns were great sums of money give to him, which all he hath refused. On my troth, I never liked the conditions of any prince so well as his. God hath sent him to us for the weal of us all.
However, the Bishop then breaks into Latin in a sentence which is smudged and faint but appears to read: ‘I do not take exception to the fact that his sensuality [voluptas] seems to be increasing.’ This last comment goes quite contrary to the modern theory that Richard was something of a puritan.
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