But sooner or later it always seems to come back to the question of those princes, those two boys who went into the Tower but who, to the best of any certain knowledge, never came out. They are a historical version of the other shoe, waiting to drop. We cannot move on until they have had their day. In this discussion it is important to keep in mind that the case—whether one holds that Richard was their murderer or that he was not (and that therefore someone else must have been, unless they lived out their lives in some secret retreat)—rests on unreliable sources, circumstantial evidence, and inferences based on what we offer as the political logic of the day. There is no “smoking gun” (or “dripping sword”) to clinch either side of the case.
Two lines of argument tell against Richard. One is the contemporary acceptance that the boys were dead; we quoted such a voice above. Their disappearance does seem to argue for their removal. That they might have been spirited away to some remote site such as Fotheringhay Castle, and with no later rumors about their whereabouts, smacks more of fantasy or perhaps a modern police state rather than the leaky world of fifteenth-century retainers and officials. The other heavy count against Richard is simply what we offer as the logic of medieval politics. His deadliest blow at the body politic was the deposition of his nephew—the long-accepted heir to the throne and his older brother’s firstborn son. Once Richard seized the throne, what he then did with or had done to the deposed prince and his brother was more a matter of cleaning up afterward, of dealing with unfinished business, than it was a matter of state. Losers in the game of thrones and scepters had a bleak and a limited future. Neither Edward II nor Richard II had lasted long after they had been deposed; if you were down, you were soon to be out. Such men (and boys) were too attractive as focal points of resistance and rebellion. The difference here is that the bodies of mature kings—unlike those of the princes—had been displayed in public to quell rumors about survival. Once he had been crowned king in early July 1483, it was a little late for Richard to be squeamish. And whether it helps clarify in either direction, when Edward IV’s daughter Elizabeth married Henry VII, we wonder if she would have done so had she thought (or known) that her brothers still lived—one of whom should by rights be king in lieu of her husband.
None of this adds up to more than a likelihood; as Charles Ross said, Richard certainly had motive and opportunity, though those alone do not convict. All in all, does this side of the story give us material for a conviction of Richard beyond reasonable doubt? The defense hardly thinks so. Though the lack of concrete evidence against Richard has always been admitted, even by many on the dark-legend team, the recent case for Richard really begins with The Daughter of Time, a historical detective or mystery novel published in 1951 by Josephine Tey, whom we can think of as the high priestess of the defense team.
The team for the defense mostly concentrates on negative inferences; no bodies were ever offered, no details ever leaked of how/when/where Richard and his minions carried out the deed of shame. In the act of attainder against Richard that was entered into the record after Henry VII’s accession, there was no reference among the list of his crimes to the murder of the princes. In fact, it was the Tudors who seemed determined to eliminate any and all who carried the blood royal, such as Clarence’s children (whom Richard had not harmed). It is hard to know what conclusion to draw from the fact that Edward IV’s widow, Elizabeth, had accepted Richard’s invitation to leave sanctuary in June 1483, which came with an offer to arrange marriages for her daughters; would she have done this if she thought he had murdered her sons? But Queen Elizabeth Woodville seems to have been a leaf in the wind. And though James Tyrell was often considered to be the man who actually did or supervised the fell deed, his supposed confession only came in 1502—after years of service to the Tudors and when he was facing a capital charge on a different matter.
It seems that no matter how we weigh the arguments, they pretty much balance out. Some of Henry VII’s actions can be read to indicate that he had no idea of the boys’ fate, which argues that they were gone when he took over. In other ways, it was even more in his interest, perhaps, than it had been in Richard’s to see that they vanished without trace, since the claim to the throne by a living Edward V would have trumped whatever Henry could have offered. This was especially the case because Henry VII had no choice but to accept Edward IV’s children as legitimate, since his queen was one of Edward’s daughters and her legitimacy, as well as her status as a princess of the House of York, had to be beyond any dispute to assure the legitimacy of their children and to win over support for the new dynasty.
In most of the debates, the ultimate fate of the princes seems more interesting than the question of their legitimacy, though that is a serious issue if we choose to focus on it. If the charges of their father’s pre-contract with Eleanor Butler, and/ or of his questionable marriage with their mother have validity, did this justify the deposition of Edward V? Would a young king of questionable royal blood (and with a dominating mother and her family) have evoked strong support? Most discussions ignore these questions and begin with a tacit acceptance of the boy’s claim as the proper one. But Edward IV’s sex life is a serious issue, beyond its prurient and rather scandalous appeal. The realm, as best we can judge, really did seem to care about the ruler’s blood line and the legitimacy of royal children, born by royal (queenly) mothers from their mating with royal fathers. So perhaps Richard III’s propaganda campaign was not wholly disingenuous.
World History
