Gone Medieval - The Princes in the Tower

Episode Date: January 28, 2023

Matt Lewis concludes his four special episodes on medieval mysteries with perhaps the most enduring historical enigma of them all.For more than 500 years, people have speculated about the disappearance of King Edward V - aged 12, and his nine-year-old brother Richard of Shrewsbury, Duke of York. They were lodged in the Tower of London by their paternal uncle the Duke of Gloucester, supposedly in preparation for Edward's coronation. But before the young king could be crowned, Gloucester ascended the throne as Richard III. The brothers vanished - and it’s generally assumed that they were murdered, probably by Richard. But Matt Lewis thinks differently.This episode was mixed and edited by Anisha Deva and produced by Rob Weinberg.If you’re enjoying this podcast and are looking for more fascinating Medieval content then subscribe to our Medieval Monday newsletter here.If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today! To download, go to Android or Apple store. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From long-loss Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Eleanor Jarniger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life, only on history hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries

with a brand-new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world, to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Welcome to this episode of Gone Medieval. I'm Matt Lewis. This is the final instalment in our look at medieval mysteries. And frankly, from my utterly biased point of view, we've saved the best for last. It's one of those episodes with no guest, just me, rattling on about one of my personal obsessions. I've written a book on this topic, several others that touch on it, and I could literally talk for hours about it. I've been

war not to though, so I'm going to try and run through some of the key highlights. This is perhaps the most enduring historical mystery of them all. Everyone has an opinion. No one has an answer. What I have is questions and lots of them about the fate of the princes in the tower. These two boys are the sons of King Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville. The elder was Edward V, who was born on the 2nd of November 1470 and was proclaimed king when his father died on the 9th of April 1483. at the age of 12. His younger brother was Richard of Shrewsbury, Duke of York, who was born on the 17th of August 1473, and so was nine years old when their father died. The first myth to dispel is largely a result of Victorian portraiture, which invariably shows the boys clinging to each other,

looking off in different directions, waiting to be murdered. That gives us the idea that they were a single unit who shared a single fate, and that isn't necessarily true. They were brought up very separately. Edward moved to Ludlow on the Welsh borders at the age of two, and Richard was brought up at court with his mother and sisters. It's the same system their sister, Elizabeth of York, would use for her two sons, Prince Arthur and the future Henry VIII. They weren't necessarily close and were more likely virtual strangers to each other, so they need not have shared a single fate. The traditional story has long told us that the boys were probably murdered on the orders of their wicked uncle Richard III, who stole Edward's throne and feared them coming back for it when

they were adults. Now, I will always say that no one knows right now what happened to the princes in the tower. Their deaths at the hands of Richard or of another from a long list of potential suspects is possible, but it isn't the only potential answer. My book is entitled The Survival of the Princes in the Tower, which probably tells you where I'm going. As I said before, I don't claim to have the answers or a solution you must accept. What I have, are questions to ask of the traditional account that are rarely considered and which, if approached with an open mind, offer a different perspective on the events of the late 15th century. For me, there are many reasons to doubt that Richard III had his nephews murdered.

There's a whole chapter of my book devoted to them, but a good brief reason for us here is this. If Richard killed his nephews, he did it to prevent them being a threat to his throne. If no one knew they were dead, then that goal couldn't be achieved. If he killed them and kept silent, he failed to achieve the point of the act. Henry the 7th would discover how problematic the belief that one or both of the boys might still be alive could be. If Richard killed them, he had to tell everyone that they were dead. He might blame someone else or natural causes. To some extent, it didn't matter whether people believed him.

All that mattered was that everyone knew that they were dead and could never be used to threaten Richard. Richard's silence on their fate is, to me, more indicative of their being alive than dead. Why wouldn't he produce them on demand, I hear people ask? Why would he? I reply. It's a weak king who wheels out two boys every time someone insists he do so. Besides, as we'll see later, there's a very, very good reason for him not to do it. What of the raft of contemporary accusations, you might quite rightly ask?

To this, my reply is, what raft of accusations? There's a critical point to this that we'll come to later on, but the source material is thin and ambiguous. Most direct accusations, such as those from Spanish ambassador Diego de Valera or from John Rouse, come after Richard's death, so must be handled with a high degree of caution. Mancini, I'm sure someone is shouting by now. The thing about Mancini is that he spoke no English. He displays a serious lack of knowledge in several matters. He left England before Richard III's coronation,

when it's generally accepted that the boys were still alive, and doesn't say that Richard killed them anyway. He remarks in one passage that Edward V's doctor, who was by then living in exile in France, told him that Edward feared for his future. Significantly, he doesn't say Edward, the doctor, or anyone else, was worried about little Richard. Mancini says he saw men cry because they feared for the boys,

but he'd left London when they were alive and still being seen. That doesn't prove that they were dead by any stretch. Besides, Mancini tells us in his own introduction not to believe what he writes, and he writes it as a French spy, but that's perhaps another story for another day. There are some interesting accounts from within Richard's lifetime that we should think about. The Great Chronicle of London states that after Easter there was much whispering among the people that the king had put the children of King Edward to death. Mention of Easter puts these rumours in the spring of 1484.

We don't know precisely when this entry was made, but it can only speak to whispering. there's no certainty. Robert Rickart, who was the recorder of Bristol, wrote an entry in his records for the year ending the 15th of September 1483, that, in this year, the two sons of King Edward were put to silence in the Tower of London. Again, pretty vague.

He doesn't accuse Richard III or anyone else. He doesn't even really mention murders. And my big question here is how someone in Bristol would know something that no one else in the country knew with any certainty. The answer is that he's reporting rumours, travelling out of London on merchant's routes to the ports. It's gossip. It isn't proof. There's one account from within Richard's lifetime that's explicit and clear. In January 1484, it states that the princes, already big and courageous, have been slaughtered with impunity and their murderer with the support of the people has received the

crown. Sounds pretty damning, right? Except that this was said by Guillaume de Rochefort, the French Parliament. The French had good reason to be worried about Richard III. When his brother Edward had invaded France in 1475, he'd been bought off. Richard refused the same offer. They'd kept an eye on him ever since. In 1482, Richard had led a military expedition into Scotland. Trouble north of the border was often a prelude to trouble with France. And as Edward lay dying in April 1483, French ships were attacking English ones in the Channel and raiding the south coast. France was reigniting the 100 years war, only it all went wrong. They weren't going to be fighting Edward V, who they saw as weak.

They might actually have preferred a 12-year-old boy in Edward V, but what they were suddenly faced with was Richard III, a competent general, happy, nay keen, to fight the French. On top of that, their own king, Louis XIV, died six weeks after Edward VIII and left France in a minority crisis of its own, under his 13-year-old son, Charles VIII. It was against this backdrop that Rochfort gave his speech, which was surely more aimed at warning the French nobility off deposing the king

than relaying factual information about the fate of two boys in England. How would Rochfort know? He simply reported rumours as fact to deliver a political message. It didn't work, by the way. France slipped into a period of civil war over the Regency, known as the Mad War between 1485 and 1488, which might well explain their part in backing Henry Tudor's invasion of England in August 1485. Perhaps the most significant account we have is from the Crollan Chronicle.

It was written anonymously in 1486, so after Richard's death. But the author was someone close to the centre of Edward IV and Richard III's governments. In covering the October 1483 rebellions against Richard, Crollan notes that a rumour was spread, that the sons of King Edward before named had died of violent death. but it was uncertain how. He doesn't confirm or deny this rumour, but it's clear that part of the rebellion

was a propaganda campaign to destabilise Richard. I think if anyone writing about this time knew what happened to the princes in the tower, it's the author of this continuation of the Cron and Chronicle, yet all he reports is a rumour. For the record, it's my opinion that Margaret Beaufort's involvement in the story of the princes in the tower most likely rests in this passage too.

accusing her of killing the princes is a thoroughly modern phenomenon, seemingly driven by Philippa Gregory's fiction on the period. No contemporary or near-contemporary even mentions her. However, she was a driving force in opposition to Richard III, and I think she could have helped propagate rumours of the prince's deaths to whip up support. I'll come back to this in a little while too. I've heard many claims that Richard was forced to have his nephews killed

by an attempt on the tower to free them, The attempt seems to be a settled fact for many, but there is simply no evidence of it. It seems to be based entirely on a letter that Richard wrote from Minster Lovell on the 29th of July 1483 to his Chancellor. Richard instructs the Chancellor to proceed to trial in the case of certain persons who had taken upon them the fact of an enterprise. That's all it says. There's no mention of what their crime was. If it had been an assault on the Tower, it might be reasonable to expect Richard to head back to London and get a grip on the matter. But he doesn't. He just tells the Chancellor to get on with dealing with the matter. The incident may have been an attack on the tower, but that's no more

than supposition based on no evidence at all. I shouldn't go any further without talking about the urn in Westminster Abbey that purports to contain the remains of the princes in the tower. It makes it look like an open and shut case. As you might expect, I'm going to make it way more complicated than that. The remains in the urn were discovered in 1674 in the reign of Charles II. Like the Rochefort speech to the French Parliament, context is critical here. Charles was at loggerheads with Parliament. He wanted taxation for war. They wanted peace and no taxes. The remains were dug up under the foundations of some stairs at the Tower of London during building work and thrown onto a rubbish heap. At some point later on, the story reached the king. It must have rung a bell

Thomas Moore had said the princes were buried under stairs at the tower. Mind you, he also said that they were moved afterwards, but then you were never supposed to believe what Thomas Moore wrote. That's another story for yet another day. Charles ordered men to sift the rubbish heap and recover the bones. They spent a few years in storage, then were placed into the urn designed by Christopher Wren. Like Rochfort's speech,

I think Charles was speaking to current political issues, using the past as a moral warning. Edward V represented Charles I, the innocent king murdered by those who wanted his power. In his place came a tyrant, for Richard III read Oliver Cromwell. Then the nation had to be saved, in 1485 by Henry Tudor, in 1660 by Charles II. It was a warning about respecting the power of the king, about Parliament knowing its place and understanding its limits. The contents of the urn were examined in 1933, but without radio carbon.

They couldn't say what time period they belonged to. Without DNA, they couldn't establish the background of the remains. Medical technology at the time couldn't confidently age or sex the skeletons. If I had to guess, I'd suggest they were Anglo-Saxon, perhaps even Roman, and had been on the site before the Tower of London was built. Maybe one day we'll be able to answer more questions about what's inside the urn. There's been dozens of sets of human remains found in the Tower of London, many of which have been claimed to be those of the princes found when the moat is drained or building works take place. So Walter Raleigh claimed to have found them walled up in a room

while he was a prisoner at the tower. One set of remains proclaimed to be those of Edward V turned out to be an ape from the tower menagerie that had escaped and got stuck in a tower. So why am I so convinced the princes might have survived beyond 1485? Well, there are a number of reasons and some very interesting evidence. In March 1484, Elizabeth Woodville allowed her

daughters, the sisters of the princes in the tower, to leave sanctuary at Westminster Abbey and join Richard III's court. There's some debate about whether Elizabeth herself left sanctuary at this time, but I'd suggest she probably did. So my first question is, what would make a parent hand her daughter over to a man she believed had murdered their brothers in cold blood? We need to remain aware that Richard had executed Elizabeth's brother, Anthony Woodville, and her younger son from her first marriage, Sir Richard Gray. Elizabeth knew Richard could have her children killed because he had, though I'd argue that Grey was a politically active grown man, which is a very different case. Also, the princes were Richard's blood, his brother's sons, which Thomas and Richard Gray weren't.

Even against that backdrop, perhaps especially against that backdrop, how could Elizabeth hand Richard his nieces if she was certain, or even slightly concerned, that he'd murdered their brothers? Richard made an oath in London to protect. his nieces, not to imprison them and to find them good marriages. Some will say that this oath is evidence that he'd already murdered their brothers. I'd argue the opposite. I'm a parent. If I thought someone had murdered my sons, there's no oath on earth they could make that would cause me to give them my daughters. If Elizabeth believed Richard had killed his nephews because they might one day be a threat to him, how could he possibly spare his nieces, particularly the oldest and other Elizabeth?

She was pledged to marry Henry Tudor if he took Richard's throne. She was at the heart of an active plot. Surely she would have to die, and then her sisters for the same reason. Elizabeth Woodville had an indefinite right of sanctuary at Westminster, and the Tudor plot for hope. Why not sit tight? This is where I think we might see the hand of Lady Margaret Beaufort, the mother of Henry Tudor.

We know it was her physician, Dr. Lewis Cairleon, who visited Elizabeth Woodville in sanctuary, and brokered the deal that saw Yorkist support fall behind Tudor's plans. How did Margaret Beaufort convince Elizabeth to support her cause? I'd suggest that she may have harnessed or begun those rumours that Crollan spoke of, telling Elizabeth that Richard had killed her sons to secure her support and whip up Yorkists against Richard, divide and conquer in action. If this was the case, then Elizabeth's emergence in March 1484 is hugely significant.

It came after the rebellions in October 1483 and within days of the closure of Parliament, where Richard's title had been enshrined in law. He was now as secure as he was ever going to be. Is this the moment that he was able to assure Elizabeth, and perhaps offer her proof that he hadn't harmed his nephews, that he had never meant them any harm? That's the only thing that would cause me to surrender the safety of my daughters. An old Tyrell family legend of the kind that's impossible to prove,

tells of Sir James Tyrell, who would later be accused by Thomas Moore of their murders, hosting Elizabeth Woodville when she met her sons regularly at his manner of Gipping Hall for the rest of Richard's reign. Maybe Tyrol became involved in the story of their deaths because he was actually central to the story of their survival, and all the best lies are wrapped around a kernel of truth. There's an aspect of this story that I call the Great Silence. It makes sense that people might be wary of accusing Richard III of murdering children while he was still alive. But after 1485, it would not only be safe, it would also serve to bolster Tudor security for everyone to be clear that the princes were dead.

Richard became king because Edward IV's children had been declared illegitimate. Henry V. 7th had to reverse that in order to marry their sister, Elizabeth of York, as he promised to do. In the process, he handed both the boys a claim to the throne, one that would be preferred by plenty of their father's men. If they weren't already, after August 1485, Henry 7th needed the boys to be dead. Despite this need, no one close to the events ever accused Richard of murdering his nephews. Elizabeth Woodville lived until 1492 and never publicly said her sons with Edward IV were dead,

let alone suggesting that they were murdered by their uncle. Her daughter, Elizabeth of York, was queen until 1503 and had children to protect from threats, but never made a recorded accusation that her uncle had killed her brothers. Edward Vorth's other daughters, Cecily, Anne, Catherine and Bridget, all lived into the 16th century and not one of them made a public accusation that their uncle had killed their brothers. Elizabeth Woodville's elder son from her first marriage, Thomas Gray, Marquess of Dorset, lived until 1501. We have no record of him accusing Richard of murdering his half-brothers.

Perhaps most surprisingly of all, Henry 7th, King of England from 1485 until 1509, never accused his predecessor of murdering the princes in the tower. It might also be striking that we have no recorded masses said for the souls of the princes, no payments for prayers to speed them through purgatory. Is that perhaps because saying prayers for the dead for those who were still alive was a dangerous sin? All of this does beg one question. If Richard didn't kill the princes in the tower, then what did he do with them? There's sometimes talk of them escaping or their killers sparing them,

but I don't think they were ever in any danger from their uncle. And there's good evidence to back that up. Richard had a template to deal with two young children who some thought had a better claim to the throne than the king. It was only 80 years earlier and it was part of his family story because it was the story of his great uncles, Edmund and Roger Mortimer. When Henry IV took the throne from Richard the 2nd in 1399, most people didn't consider Henry the heir to the throne. Richard the 2nd was descended from Edward III's oldest son, the black prince.

Henry IV's father, John of Gaunt, was Edward III's third son. The second son, Lionel Duke of Clarence, had a daughter, Philippa, who married Edmund Mortimer, 3rd Earl of March. Now, there's lots of debate about the entail of the crown after Edward III, but the bottom line here is that if a document existed that passed over Philippa's line, it wasn't public knowledge. In the minds of most in England in 1398, the heir to the throne was Philip's son, Roger Mortimer, 4th Earl of March. When he died in 1398, that claim passed to his son, Edmund. When Henry IV took the throne, Edmund was eight years old, and his brother

Roger a few years younger. Incidentally, their older sister Anne was the mother of Richard Duke of York, Richard the Third's father. His mortimer blood was the root of Lancasterian suspicion that drove him into opposition. But there's yet another story for yet another day. So what did Henry IV do with these two young claimants to his throne? He took them into fairly loose custody. A couple of years later, they were abducted. The plan was to get Edmund to Wales and having crowned king in Henry's place, but they were recaptured before they got far. After that, they were placed into tighter custody. Their location kept secret. Eventually they were transferred into the household of Prince Henry, the future Henry V.

When he became king in 1413, one of the first things he did was release Edmund and Roger. Roger died a few years later. Edmund, as 5th Earl of March, was immensely wealthy. In 1415, he was the subject of another scheme, known as the Southampton plot, which aimed to assassinate Henry V and his brothers and make Edmund king. This time, Edmund himself exposed the plot to Henry. Edmund lived until 1425 when he died, like so many of his forebears, young and in Ireland, where he was serving as Lord Lieutenant. Something about the way he had been brought up had instilled in him loyalty to the Lancasterian regime,

despite his own arguably better claim to the throne. I know that some will point to the differences here. Edmund had never been proclaimed king as Edward V had. But it's also true that Edmund wasn't Henry's nephew as Edward V was Richards. The bottom line is that Richard had an option. Here was a ready-made template that had worked. The only part of the plan that had caused a problem was when everyone knew where they were

so that they could be abducted. If I was Richard, that's the part of the plan that I would remedy and move straight to the part where their locations aren't well known. And that's my answer to why Richard didn't display the boys on demand. Perhaps the boys would grow to be a problem, but then they could be dealt with as politically active grown men, responsible for their actions. There was simply no need to kill two young children, his own nephews, at least not without

trying a proven method of avoiding doing so. I'll tell you at the end, precisely what I think happened to each of the princes in the tower from 1483 onwards. Now, though, I'm going to turn our attention to the two most famous pretenders who troubled Henry the 7th during his reign. The second one is perhaps better known, at least in the context of the princes in the tower. But I'm going to start with the first, which might answer the question. of why the second came, when it did, and in the manner it did.

Was that cryptic and mysterious, or just confusing? Anyway, the first thing to mention here is that to be a pretender in this context is not the same as being an imposter. The word pretender is derived from the French verb, pretendre, declaim. It simply means a claimant. Someone who isn't who they say they are is an imposter. So when we talk about these two cases of pretenders, it doesn't infer that they were impostors.

The Lambert Simil affair was, history has always told us, simple, flawed and foolish. A 10-year-old boy from Oxford named Lambert Simul was taken to Ireland and trained to impersonate the 12-year-old Edward Earl of Warwick, who was the nephew of Edward IV and Richard III, but who was also Henry the 7th prisoner in the Tower of London. With support from Margaret, the Dowager Duchess of Burgundy, who was Richard III's sister, and therefore an aunt to the princes in the tower. and from Ireland they invaded. At the Battle of Stokefield, on the 16th of June 1487, they were defeated by Henry the 7th.

Lambert was captured, but Henry took pity on the boy and spared him, putting him to work in the royal kitchens. Sounds simple, sounds to me, too simple, too good, and too neat to be true. I think we've had the wall pulled over our eyes, and here's why I think that. There are two strands to the way I look at this kind of moment in history. There's written evidence, but there is also human evidence of people's behaviour. Both are interesting in relation to the Lambert's similar affair.

Let's start with the human evidence. Hi there, I'm Don Wildman, the host of the brand new podcast, American History Hit. Join me twice a week as I explore the past to help us understand the United States today. You'll hear how codebreakers uncovered secret Japanese plans for the Battle of Midway. Visit Chief Poetan as he prepares for war with the British. Walt Disney accused his former colleagues of being communists and uncover the hidden history that lies beneath Central Park. From pre-colonial America to independence, slavery to civil rights, the gold rush to the space race. I'll be speaking to leading experts to delve into America's past.

New episodes dropping every Monday and Thursday. So join me on American History Hit, a podcast by History Hit. Elizabeth Woodville, mother of the princes in the tower, has long been suspected of involvement in the Lambert Simul affair. Its emergence coincided with her being stripped of all her property and retiring to Bermansy Abbey. There's some suggestion that this was her plan. We also know that she'd just taken out a long lease on a new home. Her son, Thomas Gray, was also arrested and put in the tower at the same time. Tudor Chronicles seemed to believe that she was involved, but what they don't tell us is what on earth Elizabeth would gain from backing this uprising. With a daughter on the throne and a grandson in line to succeed,

what would place Elizabeth Woodville in a better position in 1487? I'd suggest that only having one of her sons on the throne would improve her lot. Having her deceased husband's nephew in the death of whose father she was implicated as king would surely make her worse off. Of even more significance is the involvement in the plot of a man named John de la Pohl, Earl of Lincoln. John supported the uprising and was killed at the Battle of Stokefield. apparently in defiance of Henry the 7th's orders that he should be taken alive to be questioned. John was another nephew of Edward VIII and Richard III.

He was the oldest son of their sister Elizabeth and was the senior Yorkist male heir. He'd been considered heir presumptive to Richard III after the death of his only legitimate son. Warwick was barred from the line of succession by his father's attainder and despite what many may claim was never explicitly named as Richard's heir. If Yorkists were looking for a figurehead to coalesce behind in 1487, John was the obvious candidate. His claim was in the female line, but so was the entire Yorkist claim to the throne. He was in his early 20s, so no issues with the child ruler. He'd been trained for government, and perhaps most significantly, there was no doubt about who he was.

One of the central ways in which Henry the 7th government undermined the Lambert's similar affair was by parading the 12-year-old Warwick in London to prove he couldn't be in Ireland at the of a rebellion. I suspect this was some quick thinking. I think the government used the fact that frustrates anyone interested in the Wars of the Roses today that everyone shares about three different names to make a mockery of the uprising. There was a plot in Ireland in favour of an Edward, so they displayed an Edward in London. The plot was a joke. But what if the Edward in Ireland was in fact claiming to be Edward V, not Edward Earl of Warwick? That makes sense of Elizabeth Woodville's suspected involvement of Thomas Gray's arrest and of John de LaPole's

backing of the scheme. Only two people could have had a better Yorkist claim to the throne in 1487 than John, and they were the princes in the tower, if they were still alive. So the obvious answer to the question of why John de LaPole set aside his own perfectly good claim is that he was following the only Edward with a better one, Edward V. This would help make sense of the timing of the uprising in 487 too. In Parliament, Lambert Simnel was described as a boy of 10, yet he was apparently leading an army and was captured on a battlefield. Warwick was 12, still a bit young to lead an army into battle, I think. In June 1487, Edward V would have been 16 and a half. The same age as the Black Prince at Cressy, the same age as Henry V had been at the Battle of Shrewsbury, and just

a little younger than his father when he'd started his extraordinary military career. So who do you think people would be likely to follow into battle, a 10-year-old boy, even if he's pretending to be 12, or the 16 and a half-year-old son of the most successful warrior in living memory. Only one of those seems likely to me. That's why the rising took place in the summer of 1487. If we look at the documentary evidence, it can help the acceptance of this possibility. We have records of a coronation in Dublin for this Edward. There's no record from the time of a regnal number that he used. Any use of those comes later, and Henry 7th had all the records of the Irish Parliament of 1487 burned so that we couldn't know what was said there about this boy. The coronation

is another critical feature of this episode that is also pertinent to the next one. No other pretender undergoes a coronation. It's a uniquely religious ceremony that none would undertake to perform lightly. But a coronation was the missing part of Edward V's kingship. He was proclaimed king in 1480s. but never crowned. It might therefore be significant that this is the only case of a pretender undergoing a coronation prior to their arrival in England. Bernard Andre's account of the Lambert-simile affair is interesting. Bernard was a blind friar poet at the Tudor court. He was tutored to Prince Arthur and possibly to the future Henry VIII too. Bernard wrote a history of Henry the 7th that was full of praise for his master, so is firmly in the Tudor camp here. Yet he seems

not to have got the memo about the Lambert Simulal affair. Andre wrote of those backing the boy. To cloak their fiction in a lie, they publicly proclaimed with wicked intent that a certain boy born the son of a miller or cobbler was the son of Edward IV. That's a son of Edward IV, not of George Duke of Clarence. He later repeats that it was an uprising in favour

of a son of Edward IV, before explaining that a herald was sent to Ireland to investigate, who had claimed that he would be able to recognise this boy if he was who he claimed to be. The Herald returned and told Henry the boy had answered all of his questions and he couldn't say that he didn't look like he claimed to be.

Of course, he blamed this uncareful tutoring of the boy to impersonate royalty, but that sounds pretty thin to me. For good measure, that Herald is believed to have been a man named Roger Machado, who had been a herald under Edward VIII, Richard the 3rd and Henry the 7th, before Henry promoted him to Ambassador.

A promotion for what, he might ask? silence, I might suggest. One of the thing that we know about Machado is that he had a house in Southampton on Simnel Street. A coincidence? Or the source of the odd name the boy was given? I'll let you decide.

Another Tudor historian, Polydor Virgil, talks about the Lambert Simul affair being an effort to restore the boy Edward to the throne of England. If he was talking about Warwick, he couldn't be restored to the throne, as he'd never been king. The only Edward who might be restored to the throne in 1487,

was Edward V, if he's still alive. In 1526, amongst the letters and papers foreign and domestic of Henry VIII is a paper on the state of Irish politics. This states, in reference to the Lambert Simul affair, that the earls of Kildare and Desmond come of one stock and have always held with the House of York, as was seen in the days of the king's father, when an organ-maker's son, Lambert Simnel,

named one of King Edward's sons, came into Ireland. So my question here is whether the uprising of 1487 was cunningly crafted by the Tudor government to look like a joke that was no threat at all. Did they pretend it was a revolt in favour of Edward Earl of Warwick, who was a prisoner in the tower, to cover up the fact that it actually championed Edward V? Was this an open secret in court circles so that Henry VIII was presented with information that is at odds with the official story? This leaves a couple of further questions. Who was the boy caught at Stokefield and put to work in the kitchens. I suspect he was a random lad offered a cushy life if he played a part. This idea is backed up by the book of Houth, an Irish account

written some time later. It explains that in the aftermath of the rebellion, the Irish lords were summoned to England to be told off. At a feast, a boy served them all wine. When there was no reaction, Henry sent someone in to spring his joke. The boy was the same one they had all watched being crowned in Ireland, now serving them wine at Henry's course. court. The joke backfired when all of the Irish lords who had been at the coronation told Henry the devil himself could take them if they'd ever seen that boy before. Lambert wasn't the boy they'd followed. Lambert is last recorded working as a falconer in the reign of Henry V but isn't recorded anywhere else so we don't know what happened to him

or when he died. The other big question, if I'm right, is what happened to the young man who was leading the army, Edward V. He might have been killed at Stoke, he might have been killed at Stoke, he might have been captured, he may have fled. There's a chronicle by Adriandabrude that claims that the army's leader was whisked from the battlefield by John De LaPole's younger brother and taken to the continent. One of the big questions people ask me is why a pretender came, claiming to be the younger of the princes in the tower,

but never the elder. My answer is that we should question some of the history that we have taken for granted. The events of 1487 make far more sense in the context of an uprising in favour of Edward V than they ever have as a rising in favour of Edward Earl of Warwick. Whatever it was or wasn't, the Lambert Simul affair failed. There was support from Burgundy and Ireland, but hardly any in England.

York closed its gates on the army that would be slaughtered at Stokefield. For a few years, Henry V. 7th might have felt himself secure, though if he knew 1487 had been about the elder of the princes in the tower, he might well have been keeping an eye over his shoulder waiting for the younger to emerge. He wouldn't have to wait as long as he might have hoped. In the autumn of 1491, a young man stepped off a ship of cork dressed in fine silks. He immediately caused a buzz, and everyone commented on how much he looked like a member of the House of York, which was still beloved in Ireland.

This lad would go on to have an astonishing career over the next eight years. History remembers him as Perkin Warbeck, an imposter. He called himself Richard of England. The younger of the princes in the tower would have turned 18 in August 1491. That's the same age his father was when he became King Edward IV. The details of Richard of England's entire career would take up more time than we have, but are well documented elsewhere, not least in my book. However, there are some key elements that I do want to raise. The first is to think about the support that Richard of England garnered in the early 1490s. He was backed by Charles VIII of France.

Now, okay, it's the medieval period, and it's England and France. They love causing trouble for each other. In 1492, Henry the 7th was worried enough to launch a hastily planned winter invasion of France. He agreed to peace as long as Charles ceased harboring Richard of England. Something spooked Henry into immediate and risky action. He also received the support of John King of Denmark. He didn't bring much to the party, but adds to the point I'm about to try and make. Perhaps Richard's greatest supporter was Maximilian, the Holy Roman Emperor. He called his friend, Prince Richard, and refused to cease supporting him even after he was captured.

Archduke Philip of Burgundy, Maximilian's son, was also involved. James IV of Scotland would provide Richard with a wife and invade England at his side. Okay, like France, it's the medieval period and it's England and Scotland. The point I'm driving at here, though, is that this is something very different and utterly unique. Crown heads of Europe backed this lad as a rightful claimant to the throne of England. Did they all just want to cause trouble for the King of England? Sure they did. What I don't believe they'd do is set up a random round.

and boy from the streets of Tornai, which is what Henry the 7th would have us believe, Richard as Perkin Warbeck, was, as a royal prince. Kings jealously guarded their unique position. They had to be chosen by God to wear a crown. No king would entertain the suggestion that any randomer off the streets could ruck up to a palace and claim to be a rightful king. It would tarnish the carefully curated gleam of their own majesty, and it would open the door to their enemies to do the same to them. The massive risk was simply not worth the potential reward. Margaret of Burgundy was another key backer of Richard. She's the sister of Edward IV and Richard the third, so aunt to the princes in the tower that we met earlier during the Lambert's similar

affair. Of course she backed this, I frequently hear. She just wanted to cause trouble for Henry the 7th. True, but not quite the whole story. Margaret wanted revenge, but she wanted it in order to restore the legitimate house of York. If Margaret championed, in the cause of a boy from Tornai, she wouldn't achieve that aim. She had other nephews, not least the younger brothers of John de LaPole, who strikingly only moved into open opposition to Henry VIII after Richard of England's execution. Part of Richard of England's story that he told was that he'd witnessed the murder of his brother, but been spared by the killers and transported to the continent in the care of two men. It's possible that this explanation was an expedient

to deal with queries about his brother's whereabouts and potential claim to the throne. The older prince had to be dead for the younger to be the rightful claimant. It's possible Richard didn't know what had happened to his brother, particularly if Edward had been at Stokefield. No one would back him, though, if he left the question of Edward's claim dangling. If Henry had him, Richard would have to rely on the king's unwillingness to say as much publicly after he'd passed the Lambert-Simnal affair off as a rising in favour of Warwick.

Richard may well have wanted to avoid drawing attention to a failed attempt by his brother, too, that had garnered very little support in England. This episode, the Perkin Warbeck affair, did, however, get strong support in England. In 1494, a man named Robert Clifford had been loudly proclaiming in the streets of Calais to anyone that would listen that Richard of England was the real Richard Duke of York. Clifford would have known, too. He'd been at Edward IV's court, had jousted at the Little Prince's wedding, and had seen him grow up. By Christmas that year, for reasons that are unclear, Robert Clifford had returned to England and gone to Henry the 7th. It's possible that Clifford was a spy all along, though he seems to have reaped no rewards for his actions.

He may have lost faith in the pretender for some reason, or felt the cause wouldn't succeed. Whatever his reasons, Clifford sought to obtain forgiveness by handing over the names of all those in England involved in supporting Richard of England. At the top of the list was Sir William Stanley, brother to the king's stepfather, the man who had led the charge at Bosworth that had made Henry King. Sir William was Henry's Lord Chamberlain, the man who controlled. controlled access to the king's person, so his involvement must have been a serious concern. The rebels were rounded up and the English arm of Richard of England's plans collapsed. Tudor chroniclers record that at his trial, Sir William, didn't deny that he'd been in contact with Robert Clifford on the subject of the pretender. He also wouldn't deny that he had once stated

he would never fight nor bear armour against the young man if he knew of a truth that he was the in Jupiter's son of King Edward. I think this is a signetive. moment. Sir William was executed on the 16th of February 1495. A decade after the Battle of Bosworth, a man at the core of Yorkist and early Tudor government was literally willing to put his neck on the block for his conviction that at least one of the princes in the tower might well still be alive. If a man like Sir William Stanley was willing to die for that belief in 1495, how can we be so sure now that it's impossible? Richard invaded England several times, failing at each attempt. He spent time in France, Burgundy, Ireland and Scotland,

before being captured in the south-west of England during his ill-fated, third-time wasn't-a-charm, invasion in 1497. It was at this point that he confessed to being an imposter. Perkin Warbeck, a boy from Tornai, forced to impersonate a Yorkist prince. I say he confessed, my suspicion is he was forced to sign a prepared confession that represented the Tudor government's official version of this episode, much as it had presented its own version of the Lambert's Symmel affair. There are a lot of things in this confession that don't add up. There's some reference to real people in Tornay, but also mistakes that someone simply wouldn't make about their own family, as though Henry had gathered

some intel, but got some details wrong too. At this point, the confession also says that Richard was forced to learn English at the age of 18. We know he spoke it with such a command that he fooled, crowned heads and English people, so this to me seems ridiculously unlikely. Handwriting analysis has also been conducted on letters that he wrote to suggest that he used a strong English style, almost impossible to learn in a brief period of time. There's another reason I think we should be wary of Richard of England's confession. It was extracted under torture. Throughout his time claiming to be the younger of the princes in the tower, Richard had insisted

he had three physical marks that would prove to anyone who knew the prince that he was genuine. Interestingly, after his capture, Henry never sought to prove either that his Perkin didn't have the three marks that Richard possessed, or that Richard hadn't had the three marks that Perkin could show. And Henry had the prince's sisters who could verify this. One of them was his wife, with a vested interest in proving any fraud to protect her children. A sketch of Richard was done during his time in Burgundy. It bears a striking resemblance to Edward VIII, but it might also hint at one of these marks. The portrait seems to show a droop on the left eyelid. This is a known plantagenet trait. Henry III and Edward I are documented as having this. Aside from torture to

extract a confession, this may explain some of the treatment that he suffered. You may recall that the younger prince was the one raised at court with his mother and sisters. That meant he was well known and would be recognisable to many still at Henry's court. There was, therefore, an imperative to destroy his obvious resemblance to Edward VIII. The chronicler, Bernard André, says that after Richard's capture, he was led in, trembling, and after the royal servants themselves had mockingly beaten him black and blue, and hissed at his laughable appearance, he was wondrously rebuked. He was beaten up by Henry's men.

I suspect this was to get him to sign a confession, but also the beginning of an effort to destroy the looks that might be able to. cause murmurings in London, where a younger Richard had been well known. Henry the 7th returned to London, but left Richard in the West Country for some time. Was this so that the work to destroy his looks could continue, while Henry laid some groundwork for the arrival of this dangerous prisoner. After Richard was brought to London, one ambassador records that Clarenceau King of Arms didn't consider this man handsome because of a fault in his left eye that left it lacking luster. Another, the Spanish ambassador, D'Apewebler, describes him as D'Uthiré,

Diggurada, disfigured. Initially, Richard was kept under loose house arrest at court, an odd fate for a man who had claimed Henry's throne for half a dozen years with international backing, unless, of course, he was the Queen's brother and she secured some mercy for him. It's incredibly odd to me that there's no record of Elizabeth and Richard meeting. Surely both the royal couple had a vested interest in rubbishing the claims of an imposter. What better way to do this than have the Prince's sister, any of them, in fact, categorically state that the man in Henry's custody was absolutely not their brother. Yet that never happened. He would eventually end up in the tower after a failed escape attempt

that might well have been a set-up. Richard was hanged on the 23rd of November 1499, five days before Edward Earl of Warwick was beheaded. The two had been embroiled in a plot to escape the tower, another set-up, almost certainly. Traditional history tells us that this was because the Spanish monarchs wanted Warwick dead before they would send their daughter to Catherine of Aragon to marry Prince Arthur Tudor. Was that the real story, though? What I find interesting in this context is that when Spanish ambassadors and the court in Spain wrote about sensitive topics, they encoded their letters.

This includes ciphers for named individuals. Throughout the 1490s, the code used to describe the person Henry called Perkin Warbeck was D-C-C-C-V-I-I. This code relates to Richard Duke of York. The Spanish didn't call this pretender Perkin Warbeck. They called him Richard Duke of York, which begs the question, who were they really worried about in 1499? Was Perkin a problem mopped up while dealing with Warwick?

Or was Warwick the cover to do away with the real threat? Was Perkin a boy from nowhere? Was he an illegitimate son of Edward IV, who had a strong resemblance to his dad? Or was he the younger of the princes in the tower? The bottom line is that we don't know, but there is room to consider each of those. options. We've taken a bit of a whirlwind tour through part of the story of the princes in the

tower. I'll return to my assertion at the beginning that for me, this remains a mystery. I happen to believe the boys were never in any danger from Richard III. Although I know many will disagree, I hope I've at least offered some evidence to demonstrate that it's more complex than we often allow, and that there's plenty of evidence that contradicts the official story of the Tudor regime. So what do I think happened? The long answer is a whole other podcast. The short answer, would be that I think Edward V was moved into the household of the Council of the North in 1883. After Bosworth, that's part of the reason there's a mad dash to York. I think Edward may have escaped to Ireland, the nearest safe place for a Yorkist, and challenged Henry the 7th

for the throne in 1487 in what is remembered as the Lambert-Similar affair. The traditional story would then have been government spin to make a joke of and minimise a serious threat. When people ask why Perkin Warbeck claimed to be the younger prince and no one ever claimed to be the elder, my answer is that someone probably did. What might have happened to Edward after Stokefield remains a part of the mystery I haven't found a satisfactory answer for yet. The younger prince was, I think, sent to Burgundy

to be protected and brought up by his aunt Margaret, to whom Richard III was very close. We have a record of Sir James Tyrell travelling to Flanders then in Burgundy in 1484, with the equivalent of a year of the exchequer's income for an undisclosed reason. Perhaps it was to provide for Richard Duke of York. He may even have attended Louvain University to study medicine under the name of John Clement, but therein lies yet another entire podcast episode.

Let me know if you want to hear it sometime. He then emerged in Ireland, aged 18, to press his claim to the throne. Henry V. 7 employed a similar tactic to the one that worked during the Lambert's similar affair and passed him off as an imposter, extracting a confession, possibly under torture, and having him beaten to obscure his Yorkist looks. There's at least as much evidence for these two scenarios as any other, and probably more than there is for the notion that they were murdered in 1483. We can see Richard III's plan, based on the successful mortimer template,

which also explains why he wouldn't wheel the boys out on demand. Is it so hard to believe that an uncle might have tried that method rather than resort immediately to murdering two young children, the sons of a brother he'd loved dearly? One thing we do know is that, aside from the princes in the tower, Richard had 17 nieces and nephews alive and well when he became king. When he died at Bosworth, all 17 were still alive and being well treated. That's despite the fact that one, Elizabeth of York, was at the centre of a plot to dethrone him.

If he killed the princes because they might one day be a threat, how could he allow a princess to live who was a clear and present danger? The last question to consider is whether we will ever solve this mystery. Well, the earning Westminster Abbey might seem an obvious place to start. However, even if there is viable DNA within it, it could only ever answer some of our questions. If the remains are those of the princes in the tower, it wouldn't necessarily tell us who murdered them, even if it could tell us when they might have died. If they aren't those of the princes, perhaps because they're a millennium too old,

it wouldn't mean that Richard III or someone else didn't murder them in 1483, only that they weren't buried at the scene, which seems like a crazy idea anyway. If you caught Philippa Langley on here recently, you'll know she's promising a big announcement, in the summer of 2023 on this very subject. Will it solve the mystery once and for all? I don't know, and I wonder whether any evidence would ever convince all sides of the debate completely enough to call the matter closed. My assertion remains the notion behind my book.

There's plenty to cause us to give serious consideration to the survival of the princes in the tower. I hope you've enjoyed this mystery month, and it's offered some food for thought, or a new angle on an old story. Have you got a favourite medieval mystery that we haven't covered? If so, drop me a note on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook. You can join Dr Kat Jarman on Tuesday for another brand new episode. Don't forget to also subscribe or follow us wherever you get your podcasts from and to tell all your friends and family that you've gone medieval.

If you have a moment, please drop us a review or rate us anywhere that you listen to podcasts, including Spotify. It really does help new listeners to find us. If you're enjoying this podcast and looking for a bit more medieval goodness in your life, you can subscribe to our Medieval Monday's newsletter. just follow the links in the show notes below. Anyway, I bet you let you go. I've been Matt Lewis,

and we've just gone medieval with history hits.