Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Princes in the Tower (Encore)

Starting point is 00:00:00 The following is an encore presentation of Everything Everywhere Daily. In 1483, the King of England, Edward V, and his brother were taken into custody by his uncle, Richard the Duke of Gloucester, and placed into the Tower of London. Both the king and his brother were never seen again. They just disappeared. It's probably the greatest unsolved mystery in British history. Learn more about the princes in the tower on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong?

Starting point is 00:00:45 throughline is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the Thulein podcast from NPR. The year 1483 was a very consequential one for England. The country was still embroiled in the War of the Roses, a civil war between two houses, the House of York and the House of Lancaster. The king at the start of the year was Edward V.

Starting point is 00:01:21 He had ascended to the throne in 1461, replacing the Lancaster King Henry the 6th, ruling for almost 10 years. He was then removed himself by Henry the 6th for 191 days, before capturing the throne once again and ruling for another 12 years. Save for the 191-day interregnum, Edward VIII reigned for 22 years. Despite a rather lengthy reign, he was only 40 years old when he died. Upon his death on April 9, 1483, the throne was passed to his son, the Prince of Wales, Edward, who became Edward V. And this is where our story starts. Edward V was only 12 years old when he ascended to the throne. As is the case whenever a child ascends to the monarchy, they're not given full powers usually. They have a regent who rules in the name of the monarch until the monarch comes of age and can rule in their own right. The regent for Edward V was his uncle, Richard, the Duke of Gloucester. Most of you probably know him better by his regal name, which was made famous by William Shakespeare,

Starting point is 00:02:20 Richard III. There's very little good which history has to say about Richard the Third. Much of this is due to how he came to power. When Edward IV died, young Richard V was at Ludlow Castle near the Welsh border. Richard was in York to the north. Their plan was to meet up and enter London together. On April 29th, now 20 days after the death of the king, they met in the village of Stony Stratford northwest of London.

Starting point is 00:02:47 Edward was traveling with a group that included his uncle and half-brother. When they met up with Richard, he immediately arrested Edward's entire retinue and sent them to Pontefract Castle in Yorkshire. More on them later. Richard then personally took Edward into London and took him to the Tower of London, which was the traditional location where monarch stayed before they were coronated. Edward entered the tower on May 19th. Edward was then joined by his nine-year-old brother Richard, who was also the Duke of York.

Starting point is 00:03:16 Usually, a coronation ceremony would take place when a monarch reached an age where they could rule in their own name. However, on occasion, younger monarchs would be crowned, which would eliminate the need for a regent. They would just rule with guidance from close advisors. Given the circumstances of the still-in-complete War of the Roses, there was pressure to commence with a coronation for Edward as quickly as possible. Richard, however, as the regent, kept delaying the coronation. The original date was going to be June 25th, but Richard had it postponed indefinitely. On June 22nd, Richard's plan became clear. A theologian named Ralph Shaw, who was the brother to the mayor of London,

Starting point is 00:03:54 claimed that Edward was not the legitimate king, because his birth was illegitimate. According to Shaw, Edward IV was contracted to marry Lady Eleanor Butler. Instead, he went and married Elizabeth Woodville, the mother of of Edward V and Richard the Duke of York. This prior contract meant that the marriage between Edward V and Elizabeth Woodville was invalid, and hence Edward V was not legitimate and couldn't become king. The real king should be the next person in line, the oldest brother of Richard the 4th, which was, surprise, Richard.

Starting point is 00:04:26 This argument was incredibly flimsy. An engagement or a contract to get married is not the same thing as a marriage. No one at the time considered this to be the case, and it was something which, Richard concocted after the fact. On June 25th, the group of lords and nobles approached Richard asking him to take the throne, which of course he did the next day. On June 26th, he was proclaimed Richard III, King of England. The next year in 1484, he pushed through a law in Parliament called the titulus Regulus, which confirmed the illegitimacy of Edward V, and confirmed him as king. Edward's uncle and half-brother that was arrested and sent to Pontefract Castle in Yorkshire,

Starting point is 00:05:04 they were beheaded. But what happened to Edward and his brother Richard? The answer is, no one knows. Once they entered the Tower of London, no one ever saw them leave. There was never an official investigation, nor was there any organized search for them. The last evidence we have came from an Italian friar named Dominic Mancini. He was in London during this period and wrote that all the boys were taken to the inner apartments of the tower and were seen less and less over the course of the summer until they weren't seen at all. Given the behavior of Richard, it doesn't take Sherlock Holmes in the case of the missing princes to figure out what probably happened and who was responsible.

Starting point is 00:05:44 Throughout history, almost everyone has pointed the finger at Richard for having given the order to have the young princess killed to remove any claimants to the throne. Most famously, Sir Thomas More, during the reign of Henry VIII, wrote a history of Richard the third, which put the blame for the murders squarely at his feet. He identified Sir James Terrell, a loyal follower of Richard, as the murderer. Rumor has it that he confessed to the murder in 1502 before he was executed for treason. Supposedly, the boys were both suffocated with pillows and then buried at the foot of some stairs in the tower. In 1647, almost 200 years after the disappearance of the princes, a wooden box was found underneath the stairs at the Tower of London while renovation work was being done.

Starting point is 00:06:28 The box contained the bones of two boys of appropriate age, and they were declared to be the bodies of the boys and replaced in a reliquary that now sits in Westminster Abbey. Over 500 years since the prince has disappeared, there has been no real hard evidence that's been found. There haven't even been DNA tests done on the bones which were found in 1674. The closest thing to evidence which has come forward recently is corroboration that Sir Thomas More may have personally known some of the players who were around during the ascension of Richard III. If that's the case, then his account of what happened might have been based on actual testimony from witnesses, or at least second-hand hearsay. As for Richard, he was killed in combat just three years later at the Battle of Bosworth, ending the War of the Roses. Henry the 7th, who became king at the death of Richard III, married Elizabeth, the sister of Edward V and Richard the Duke of York.

Starting point is 00:07:20 It was this marriage that gave his reign the legitimacy which came from Edward the 4th. The first act of Parliament under Henry the 7th was the repeal of the Titulus Regius Act, which once again made all of the children of Edward V. Fourth and Elizabeth Woodville legitimate. He ordered every copy of the law to be destroyed, and the only surviving copy which has ever been found was found a century later in a monastery. Henry never investigated the case too deeply, because if it had turned out that the princess had survived and were found alive, it would have threatened his crown just as much as it had, Richards.

Starting point is 00:07:55 The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Peter Bennett and Cameron Kiever. I wanted to give a big thanks to everyone who supports the show on Patreon. Your support helps me put out a new show every day. And if you're interested in Everything Everywhere Daily merchandise, Patreon is currently the only place where it's available. And if you'd like to talk to other listeners of the show and get notified to future episodes and projects, please join my Facebook group or Discord server.

Starting point is 00:08:22 to everything are in the show notes.

Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Princes in the Tower (Encore)

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