History tells us that the fate of the two young sons of Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville was death, smothered in their beds by two men on the order of Richard III and their bodies buried at the foot of a set of stairs in the Tower of London. This tale comes from the pen of Thomas More in his History of Richard III.
More writes
"About midnight (the sely children lying in their beddes) came into the chamber, and sodainly lapped them vp among the clothes so be wrapped them and entangled them keping down by force the fetherbed and pillowes hard vnto their mouthes, that within a while smored and stifled, theyr breath failing, thei gaue vp to god their innocent soules into the ioyes of heauen, leauing to the tormentors their bodyes dead in the bed."
and
"Whiche after that the wretches parceiued, first by the strugling with the paines of death, and after long lying styll, to be throughly dead: they laide their bodies naked out vppon the bed, and fetched sir Iames to see them. Which vpon the sight of them, caused those murtherers........... to burye them at the stayre foote, metely depe in the grounde vnder a great heape of stones....... Than rode sir Iames in geat haste to king Richarde, and shewed him al the maner of the murther, who gaue hym gret thanks."
Thomas More is not only responsible for the fact we consider a set remains, now resting in Westminster Abby, to be those of the two princes, but that their uncle was responsible for their deaths.
I don't know what happened to these two boys in the summer of 1483, but what if More was wrong, what happened if they did survive?
We are about to find out ......
"About midnight (the sely children lying in their beddes) came into the chamber, and sodainly lapped them vp among the clothes so be wrapped them and entangled them keping down by force the fetherbed and pillowes hard vnto their mouthes, that within a while smored and stifled, theyr breath failing, thei gaue vp to god their innocent soules into the ioyes of heauen, leauing to the tormentors their bodyes dead in the bed."
and
"Whiche after that the wretches parceiued, first by the strugling with the paines of death, and after long lying styll, to be throughly dead: they laide their bodies naked out vppon the bed, and fetched sir Iames to see them. Which vpon the sight of them, caused those murtherers........... to burye them at the stayre foote, metely depe in the grounde vnder a great heape of stones....... Than rode sir Iames in geat haste to king Richarde, and shewed him al the maner of the murther, who gaue hym gret thanks."
Thomas More is not only responsible for the fact we consider a set remains, now resting in Westminster Abby, to be those of the two princes, but that their uncle was responsible for their deaths.
I don't know what happened to these two boys in the summer of 1483, but what if More was wrong, what happened if they did survive?
We are about to find out ......
Matthew Lewis's new book, The Survival of the Princes in the Tower: Murder, Mystery and Myth that is set for release at the beginning of September may tell us.
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