Edward V (1483)

Since Edward V was not of age, on his father’s death the same factional struggle for power that had marred Henry VI’s reign erupted between the Woodvilles and the older nobility. To Edward’s ministers, the real threat to the government of England was not Richard of Gloucester, whom posterity knows as the murderer of the princes, but the Woodville family. It seemed clear that the Woodvilles were about to mount a coup d’état: Queen Elizabeth had removed the king’s treasure into her safekeeping, her brother Sir Edward Woodville had commandeered the Fleet, and her son the Marquis of Dorset started rallying his troops on his estates. Ministers lost no time in urging Richard of Gloucester, Edward IV’s representative in the north who had been named the young king’s guardian by his dying brother, to come south and to take up his position as protector or regent, to which the royal Council had nominated him, as quickly as possible.

The triumph of the Woodvilles at Edward IV’s court had driven many former courtiers out of the King’s Council and back to their estates. Chief among their enemies was the Duke of Buckingham, brother-in-law of the queen. When it became clear that Elizabeth had decided that the new king should be crowned as soon as possible to prevent Gloucester assuming power as protector, Buckingham acted on Gloucester’s behalf to prevent the coronation. The Woodville riding party escorting the new king rapidly into London from the west was ambushed by Gloucester and Buckingham. These two men then proceeded with Edward V into London, which they reached on 4 May 1483.

With 24 June being mentioned as a date for Edward’s coronation there was a real possibility that Richard of Gloucester’s Protectorate might end before it had begun. In considering what happened next it is hard to achieve a completely objective view of Gloucester, his character having been so blackened by Tudor propagandists, including Shakespeare. Even his appearance counted against him. What seems to have been simply one shoulder a little higher than the other has been exaggerated into a hump back–‘crookback Dick’–and equated with moral deformity. Richard of Gloucester was secretive by nature, one of life’s loners. But though he was not personable and charming like his elder brother he was admired for his statesmanlike qualities, and in contrast to his brother Clarence he was always devoted to his brother Edward IV’s interests. His austere religious nature was viewed as a welcome contrast to the frivolity of the queen and indeed of Edward IV himself. In the north, which he had governed for the previous twelve years, he had acquired a reputation for exceptional competence, his dutifulness, his rebuilding of the local administration after the anarchy of war and his rooting out of corruption attracting a great deal of personal loyalty.

Until June 1483 in fact Richard of Gloucester seems to have led an exemplary life. Nevertheless it cannot be disputed that he was the moving spirit in the sinister events of that summer. The facts speak for themselves. By 6 July Gloucester had assumed the throne as Richard III in Edward V’s stead and been crowned in Westminster Abbey. The disinheriting of his nephew had been carefully prepared. An influential preacher Dr Ralph Shaw had given a public sermon at St Paul’s on the theme that ‘bastard slips shall not take root’. Shaw’s argument was that, owing to Edward IV’s pre-contract with another lady before he married Elizabeth Woodville, the marriage was invalid. Edward V and his brother the Duke of York were therefore illegitimate. Two days later Buckingham repeated this theory in a speech to the Mayor of London and important citizens in the Guildhall. Coming from the elder line, Clarence’s son would have taken precedence over Gloucester, but his father’s treachery disqualified him. The real heir to the throne therefore was Richard of Gloucester.

In the meantime any potential opposition had been ruthlessly disposed of by Gloucester. Most importantly, two leading Woodvilles had been executed without trial. Next some 20,000 of Gloucester’s soldiers descended from the north and began encircling London. Their presence and threats of violence persuaded Queen Elizabeth to release the Duke of York from protective sanctuary in Westminster Abbey so that he could be prepared for his brother’s coronation. However, once the eleven-year-old duke had joined his brother in the Tower of London the ceremony was mysteriously postponed until November. Richard was then invited by the Lords in Parliament to accept the crown–they could hardly do otherwise, with his troops surrounding London–and he took over the coronation planned for his nephew. The two little boys vanished into the Tower and after the autumn of 1483 appear never to have been seen again.

Much ink has been expended over whether Richard III had his nephews murdered there. The rumour was first given chapter and verse in the next reign. In the time of Henry VII, Sir James Tyrell–who had been a follower of Richard III and was a well-known conspirator–supposedly confessed to their murder when he was arrested on another charge. He claimed to have been commissioned by Richard III to drug the princes’ jailers in the White Tower and smother the children at night in their beds while they slept. While Sir James waited outside the Tower in the moonlight the murderers crept into their room and then disposed of their bodies by thrusting them under the stairs into the foundations. Certainly in 1674, almost 200 years later, workmen digging beneath the staircase of the White Tower discovered a wooden chest containing the bones of two children, one aged about twelve or thirteen, the other about ten. Pieces of rag and velvet were still sticking to their bones.

It was, however, impossible to sex the bones or really date them and now they are no longer in very good condition. In any case, where the Tower complex stands has been a population centre for at least 2,000 years–it was a fort even in Roman times. A laundry list itemizing children’s clothing and dated September 1485, by which time Richard had been replaced by his Tudor successor Henry VII, is sometimes quoted as evidence that the boys came to their deaths at his hands. Alive the boys were just as much a threat to the Tudor dynasty as they were to Richard III. However, the weight of the evidence points to Richard as their murderer.