Richard reigned only 2 years- he didn’t have much time, but he did manage to kill off the Duke of Buckingham (who had a claim to the throne, although he never went for it), and execute several men without trial whom he felt threatened his authority-including several members of the dowager queen’s family. Henry had 24 years of reigning, and there were several threats to his throne in that time.
What I don’t get is why people accept the “the boys were illegitimate” without question. The claim was made after he had the boys under his ‘protection’ in the tower. And the story doesn’t really hold up. Of course, everyone involved was conveniently dead, so the claim was easy to make. The woman whom Edward was supposedly married to was no minor peasant girl, but Eleanor Butler, of the Talbot family- the Earls of Shrewsbury, one of the most powerful families in the kingdom. And Eleanor lived into Edward’s reign for several years- why didn’t she or a member of her family say anything? She would have been the bloody Queen of England- and lord knows that the Woodvilles were unpopular enough that she could have made the claim stick. And she died several years into the reign (of natural causes), but before both boys were born, so he technically could have had a private wedding to seal his marriage to Elizabeth, if he was worried about such things, which he doesn’t appear to have been. So what is more likely, that a single cleric was encouraged/bribed/whatever to make such a claim, or that a well born woman (and her family) stood by and watched as another woman take the most important position in the land?
And if they were illegitimate, which is doubtful- I don’t know why anyone thinks that they were no threat to Richard. Maybe not at that point, but given 4 or 5 years, unrest in the kingdom, and an army behind them- you bet they could have been a threat. Perkin Warbeck, an imposter to be sure, made a creditable attempt to claim the throne in Richard Duke of York’s name in the 1490s and caused Henry lots of trouble. Illegitimacy was no bar if you won the battle- after all Henry Vll’s claim was itself dubious, coming through an illegitimate line himself- his right was by conquest, and sealed through his marriage to the boys’ sister- but he always claimed to rule in his own right.
It is possible that Henry didn’t make any claims as to the whereabouts of the princes because he didn’t know their fate. Henry certainly had motive to kill them if they were alive, and possibly he would have, but there is no evidence that anyone saw them alive after the summer of 1483. As to Richard not announcing their deaths during his reign- there were rumours that he had had them murdered circulating in London as early as July 1483- he must have been aware of them, and possibly wanted to wait for things to die down and make his claim secure- he only had 2 years, after all. It is also interesting that no contemporary of Henry Vll (not even his enemies) claimed that he was responsible for the murders.
I’m no fan of Henry, but he was as much a man of his time as Richard. Both were ruthlessly ambitious. I don’t think that either of them would have hesitated to do what they had to do to secure their thrones. But if you want to pin the blame on Henry you must prove opportunity (they both had a motive). Where is the evidence that the boys were alive in 1485?
