Who would have the power to demand to inspect the bodies? (And in an era before refrigeration and widespread embalming*, who would have the power to demand to inspect the bodies before natural decay rendered any signs of violence and/or illness indiscernible?) Further, some forms of the plague didn’t mark the body; septicemic plague, e.g., could kill within 8 to 24 hours, before many symptoms were visible. Various fevers, food poisoning, some kinds of infections … there are lots of perfectly natural deaths that leave few or no signs visible to the untrained.
*Yes, royalty was typically embalmed. It was expensive, though, and after June 1483 the boys weren’t royalty, but simply two more of Edward IV’s numerous by-blows.
Elizabeth Woodville was always interested in looking out for herself. Mother to the Queen would certainly have been in her best interest. Although I don’t think she expected how Henry treated her after the coronation.
Turn that argument around, though: in 1484, Elizabeth Woodville emerged from sanctuary and agreed to allow Richard to arrange marriages for her daughters. (Richard at the time of his death was working on a deal to marry Lady Elizabeth to a Portuguese prince [also related to Lancaster].) Meanwhile, Henry Tudor is said to have opened negotiations for the hand of a sister of the Earl of Huntingdon, just in case.
The scarce contemporary sources say the boys disappeared from sight from the Tower during the reign of Richard not Henry. I believe we can safely assume they died at some point in their childhood. I think it likely the boys died soon after they disappeared.
One story is they were drowned in a barrel of wine. It could be that they died naturally and their bodies were preserved in a barrel of wine until the politics of the day were sorted out
A remote one through his mother, who was descended from John of Gaunt. But the point was that Lancastrians recognised him as a potential claimant, and that in itself was the strength of his claim.
My understanding is that Richard was accused by the boys’ mother of their murder during Buckingham’s revolt. If they were still alive, they could have been produced. If they had died of disease, there could have been some public announcement and funeral, though, if after the event, that might not have been believed, any more than a counter-accusation that Buckingham had murdered them, whether or not on Margaret Beaufort’s instigation. Nevertheless, the apparent silence is suspicious.
I don’t really know how he treated her unusually or badly. She took up a contemplative life in Bermondsey Abbey, was given a pension, received regular visitors and stayed in contact with her daughters. So she wasn’t exactly hard up.
Perhaps if Elizabeth Woodville had mysteriously disappeared from *all *forms of public life & outside communication Ricardians would suggest she were well treated? I think it takes a special type of logic to believe that Elizabeth Woodville was badly treated by Henry but the Princes were fairly treated by Richard.
Why? They were two different men, with two different personalities, facing two different sets of political circumstance.
It is at least plausible that the dowager was shuffled off to Bermondsey to get her away from the court and any chance of scheming intrigues (remember that the princes were not her only sons). Her pension was recompense for having her various properties taken away by Henry, a decision made in the middle of a Privy Council meeting to discuss the Yorkist rebellion of 1487.
If they died of illness or disease, they would have been attended by a priest. And Richard would have been far dumber than he appears to have been not to have made a big darn deal over last rites, making sure the Princes were attended by several priests, including those who were not loyal to him, so that word would have spread throughout London quickly that they boys were dying.
That leaves accident as the other possible cause - but two boys simultaneously falling down the steps and breaking their necks seems less likely than foul play.
They weren’t seen after the Summer of 1483, that makes it more likely to have been Richard’s faction than Henry’s.
I wasn’t talking of the respective personalities of the men I was talking of the known treatment of Elizabeth Woodville and the Princes. One was relatively well treated & well financed during their final years and free to communicate with all and sundry; the other disappeared into obscurity & became unable to communicate with the outside world. Elizabeth’s treatment was par for the course, the treatment of the Princes was not.
Seriously, who’s position would you rather place yourself in, Elizabeth’s or Edward V’s? Knowing what you know today who between them received better treatment?
No, but Thomas Grey had been guardian to the young Earl of Warwick, and stood a good chance of becoming regent and maybe even father-in-law if that young man, the last scion of the Plantagenets, had become king. In 1487 Warwick was a boy of 12; if he were king, whoever controlled him would control great wealth and power. Meanwhile, Henry Tudor was a man full-grown and beyond the Woodville/Grey control; even if he had died young, his own mother Margaret Beaufort and her supporters were likely candidates for the regency. If Elizabeth Woodville and her eldest son wanted to retain power, influence, and wealth, Warwick’s ascension offered more opportunity than Henry Tudor’s continued reign.
It was reasonably well-known that Edward V was being attended by doctors that summer and was in fact attended by priests, who heard his daily confessions and penance (see the reports of the French spy Dominic Mancini).
There are several alternate theories, of varying degrees of plausibility:
One or both boys really did die a natural death in the tower, but Richard didn’t want to draw attention to them because that brought attention back to the unorthodox manner of his own ascension to the throne. If he made a big damn deal of Edward V’s passing, that was equivalent to making a big damn deal about Edward V, and thereby increasing the value of Edward’s sisters as potential rivals for Richard’s own throne. Better to simply ignore his death as that of a nobody.
The boys were killed by Buckingham, who had about as good a claim to the throne as Henry Tudor, and as much ambition. By this theory, Richard couldn’t produce the bodies because he had no idea where they were; he might have known beforehand of Buckingham’s intentions or might have been presented with a fait accompli.
One or both boys were spirited out of the country to safe-keeping on the continent, perhaps merely to remove them as potential rallying-points. He can’t produce them because they’re not there, and it doesn’t serve his purpose to announce, “oh, they’re not here; they’re with Sir So-n-So in Flanders.” (As potential support for this theory, Richard’s sister Margaret of Burgundy later publicly recognized Perkin Warbeck as the younger of the princes; Warbeck’s wife was eventually the Chief Mourner at the funeral of Elizabeth of York in 1503.)
As I posted above, that’s not true. Richard and Edward had an older sister, Anne, who had children. Her eldest daughter, in fact, was married to Thomas Grey but she died young. Anne’s only surviving child at the time of the accession of Henry VII was, however, a nine-year-old girl, Anne St Leger.
Anne St Leger had a stronger claim than Henry, but she was a young girl.
Anne, Edward and Richard had another sister, Elizabeth, Duchess of Suffolk. Elizabeth’s son, John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln, rose up in rebellion in support of Lambert Simnel, and was killed in battle. De la Pole was apparently recognized as Richard’s heir, but never formally.
Anne St Leger and John de la Pole were relatives, but they weren’t Plantagenets, being descended from female lines. Warwick was the son of Richard and Edward’s brother George.
Edward III -> Edmund of Langley, Duke of York -> Richard of Conisburgh -> Richard, 3rd Duke of York -> Richard and Edward
The House of York took their main claim to the throne from Richard of Conisburgh’s wife Anne de Mortimer, herself a descendant of Edward III’s second son (the Lancastrians descend from the 3rd son, Edmund of Langley being the 4th), but they were Plantagenets through and through, and genealogically they were the legitimate heirs of Henry VI, since the Beauforts were from the wrong side of the blanket.
Yes, Henry VII derived his claim solely through the female line. He was pretty much the last Lancastrian standing, though, and the Lancastrian party pushed him because they had no other viable candidate after the death of Edward of Westminster. The Yorkists, meanwhile, could claim male-line descent straight back to Henry II.
Richard is the most likely suspect, for most reasons written here. Either him, or he ordered someone else to do it. They were never seen again after they came into his custody, not by a single person. Did he ever say anything to the boys’ mother or sisters afterwards?
Henry was capable, sure, but Richard is the more obvious candidate, if you apply Occam’s Razor.