What Happened to the Princes in the Tower?

Everyone kind of assumes that Edward V and Richard, Duke of York, were murdered. Not least because that's what the Tudors told us happened.

But their own mother believed them dead, without ever stating that murder was the cause. During the reign of the Tudors, it would have even been encouraged for her to say so, but she never did.

There is some evidence that Edward V was sickly before he even entered the Tower of London. He apparently had some kind of jaw disease. Could that have carried him off?

It's also worth noting again where they were living. The boys were confined to a single tower, which didn't do wonders for exercise and fresh air. Said tower was high above the city of London, which wasn't known for its healthy environs.

The moat around the Tower of London was where the sewerage and other rubbish went. In the nineteenth century, the whole moat was drained and filled in, because it was deemed to be the source of cholera and other viral nasties.

There's no reason at all to suppose that being cooped up in the Tower was any more healthy in the fifteenth century. Their deaths from natural causes would have been embarrassing for Richard III. A public relations nightmare in fact. Is that why he kept quiet?

When James Tyrrell was tortured into confessing to the murder of the Princes in the Tower, he seemed to have trouble locating where precisely they were living at the time.

We know that they were in the north-eastern (round) turret of the White Tower. He claimed that he buried their bodies under the stairwell of the Bloody Tower.

This left a bit of a plot hole in the story, which generations of historians have scurried to fill.  Alison Weir, for example, has the princes willingly walking over to the Bloody Tower from the White Tower, on a promise of meeting up with their mother, if they're good and quiet.

Tyrrell's tale nevertheless received a great boost in 1674. As part of a huge renovation project on behalf of the Stuarts, workman set about 'pullinge down the Tower against the White Tower'. This was almost certainly the twelfth century fore-building, which had been allowed to be constructed against the south wall. Most agreed that it was not only ugly, but hindered the defense of the White Tower.

As the 17th century demolition crew moved in, they made a grisly discovery. Under the flagstones of the corridor leading into the chapel were the skeletal remains of two children.

Charles II promptly declared them the Princes in the Tower and had an ornate urn sculpted to receive their bones. It still sits in Westminster Abbey, labelled Edward V and Richard, Duke of York.

Scientists got to have a peep at the skeletons in 1933. They determined that some of the bones actually belonged to chickens and the like, but there were definitely two children of roughly the right ages in there. The gender could not be discerned.

(It could now, but Queen Elizabeth II refuses permission for modern forensic experts to open the urn.)

All cut and dry, Princes found and all that. Except for two small details. Why aren't they where James Tyrrell said that he left them? (The semi official explanation is that they were moved from the Bloody Tower to the White Tower after Tyrrell left.) And, if they are the Princes, then who is buried in the crypt in Windsor with their parents?

In 1789, workmen were investigating the fact that the floor appeared to be sinking in one area of St George's Chapel, in Windsor.

After carefully removing some flagstones, they found themselves peering inside the crypt of Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville. The former was in a lead coffin and it was still intact. The latter had been laid there in a wooden coffin. It had disintegrated.

They were about to respectfully back out of there and seal it up again, when their torchlight glanced over something strange. It was an unmarked smaller crypt, leading off the official large one.

Shining their light inside, two lead coffins were revealed, small enough to have held children.  This was no great mystery then. The couple had lost Prince George aged two and Princess Mary aged fourteen. It was known that the Plantagenet children had been buried in Windsor. They'd apparently just been found lying alongside their parents.

Which was all well and good, until 1810, when restoration work began on the area of St George's Chapel now called the Albert Memorial Chapel. Here two more lead coffins were discovered, which were clearly labelled for George and Mary of York.

It was decided to pop them back in with their parents, which afforded a second opportunity to inspect those other sealed lead coffins. They were without any labels at all. But what other children could possibly have been buried with such honor? 

Positioned right next to Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville within the same crypt, these surely have to hold the remains of Edward V and Richard, Duke of York. But if so, then they must have been added around the same time. Elizabeth Woodville probably knew that they were there.

With all respect due, neither of the mystery coffins were opened. It's unlikely that Queen Elizabeth II will allow their inspection now.

In October 1497, the proclaimed Richard IV was captured by Henry VII at Beaulieu Abbey, in Hampshire. He was taken to the Tower of London and interrogated.  He refused to shift from his story that he was Richard, Duke of York, one of the Princes in the Tower, grown and back to reclaim his throne.

The man had many powerful supporters, and a story which was difficult to dislodge, so Henry couldn't simply execute him and get it over with. The supposed York king became one of the biggest threats to his monarchy.

For two years, he remained at the Tower, still calling himself Richard IV. Then, in 1499, he attempted to escape alongside Edward of Warwick - cousin to the Princes in the Tower. The two were easily recaptured.

That was Henry Tudor's excuse to torture Richard. In excruciating agony, the man admitted that his name was Perkin Warbeck and that he was the son of a Dutch fisherman. That was good enough for Henry, who promptly had him hanged at Tyburn.