Cold Case Reopened: The Princes in the Tower (4 page)

What of Buckingham's role in this? Buckingham had always disliked the Woodvilles. He was resentful of the fact he had been made a ward of the queen and was horrified with her choice of bride – her own sister. He felt that a marriage to a common Woodville was way beneath him. When he received the request for support from Richard to prevent the Woodvilles from taking over, he would have leapt at the chance to assist.

The Woodvilles kept power to themselves. Despite his marriage into the clan and his status, Buckingham wasn't part of the “inner circle” –
 
that consisted of Elizabeth Woodville, Rivers, Grey, Dorset and Sir Edward Woodville. Now with Richard's request for help, he could topple the Woodvilles from power, have a win over his hated wife and become the Protector's right hand man.
 

There are no indications that Buckingham thought Richard should take the crown from an early stage. Yet you can see how he would have been led to go one step further and push for Richard to take the crown, especially when the temptation of numerous rewards were placed in front of him.

1. In summary:
   

Elizabeth Woodville – desired to hold on to power at all costs. This meant preventing Richard from becoming Protector.

Richard III – knew he had been granted the Protectorship by his brother and was determined to take it. Once in a position of power it was an easy leap to staking a claim for the crown. Showed on numerous occasions that he would walk through anyone that would stand in his way.

Buckingham – driven by revenge, the opportunity to get one over on the hated Woodville clan and the promise of rewards.

We know little for certain about either of the two boys. There is little information available even about their appearance, let alone their characters. The few contemporary portraits that do exist aren't the greatest in quality, and the only reliable information that they show is that they both have fair hair.

We don't know how they would react to situations they found themselves in.
 

Dominic Mancini's book
The occupation of the throne of England by Richard III
states that Edward V seemed to be very depressed on his arrival at the Tower of London and that he seemed to fear that death was close to hand. Mancini was an Italian monk who arrived in England in 1482, and left the week after Richard's coronation. His book was only discovered in 1934 and this makes it a great source for historians. It is believed that Mancini had many sources at court, but he only names one, Doctor John Argentine, the physician to young Edward V.

It is assumed that Mancini's comments about Edward's mental health came from Argentine. It does seem concerning that Edward would feel this way. Would the arrest of his siblings and uncle really have caused this effect? Once they were out of sight, Gloucester could easily have spun a story as to what had occurred and why they were no longer present. Perhaps Rivers had been coaching his charge that Gloucester was not to be trusted and that even he may have wanted the throne for himself. Or maybe something else happened after Gloucester's interception of the king that we have no knowledge of. Otherwise, why would Edward not believe that he was heading to the Tower of London to reside there before his coronation?

1. The discovery of the “bodies”
   

In 1674, during the reign of Charles II, two skeletons were found buried in a chest deep under the stairs to the Norman chapel of St John the Evangelist in the White Tower. This was a private staircase that was meant for the almost exclusive use of the monarch to reach the chapel from the royal apartments. The White Tower was undergoing refurbishment work after the works started by Oliver Cromwell were left unfinished after the restoration of the monarchy. It should be made clear that the discovery was made during the course of these works. This was not an effort to locate the resting place of the Princes.

The contemporary reports of the day, made by eyewitnesses to the discovery, state that everyone immediately assumed the skeletons to be the bodies of the missing princes. These reports also tell us some interesting and important pieces of information.

1.
 
The larger of the two skeletons was on his back with the smaller one face down on top of it.

2.
 
There were fragments of clothing still on the bones. These appeared to be of a fine cloth, probably velvet.
 

3.
 
Some of those present took some of the smaller bones as souvenirs.

The bones then remained in the Tower for four years.

Under Charles II's orders these bones were placed in an urn, which was, in turn, interred in Westminster Abbey. They were publicly and officially declared to be the bones of the missing princes. This declaration was mainly based on the writings of Sir Thomas More, who based his conclusions on the
“confessions”
of Sir James Tyrell. (We shall move on to More's work and James Tyrell later on.) In short, More described the burial place of the princes as
“at the stair foot, meetly deep under ground, under a great heap of stones.”
This simple description matches where these bones were found.
 

The bones were examined in 1933 by William Wright, a professor of anatomy, and Lawrence Tanner, an historian. In the years since their report,
“Recent Investigations regarding the Fate of the Princes in the Tower”,
was published in Archaelogia in 1935, there has been considerable debate regarding the scientific findings of this report. There has been a stream of doctors, professors and historians queuing up to either support Wright and Tanners findings or to debunk them.
 

The principle findings were these:

1.
The two skeletons were incomplete. In addition to the human bones there were animal bones present as well.

2.
The larger of the two skeletons was 4 foot 10 inches and the shorter 4 foot 6 and a half inches. It is suggested that the children would have been slender in nature.

3.
The dental evidence suggests that the larger skeleton was between twelve and thirteen years of age and that the younger skeleton was between nine to eleven years of age.

4.
The sex of the skeletons could not be determined.

5.
The elder/larger of the skeletons showed evidence of bone disease in the lower jaw.

6.
There were traces of blood on the elder skull, suggesting death by suffocation.

7.
There was no way to age them to a particular time period.

If we consider each of those points in turn in relation to the Princes:

1.
The incomplete skeletons back up what the eyewitness reports have stated regarding the removal of small bones as mementoes by those present. Clearly animal bones had been dropped into the chest as a human bone was removed in order to hide the theft. This adds further credence to the eyewitness statement regarding the scraps of cloth and velvet that were said to surround the bones. The presence of velvet suggests these were high status individuals and that the age of the skeletons could not have been from the dim and distant past as velvet was a relatively recent fabric.
 

2.
The heights of the skeletons would be close to what we might expect for boys of the princes' age. However, my gut feeling is that the height for the elder boy is a little low. A point that also rings a few alarm bells in my mind is the fact that the skeletons would suggest boys who were slender in appearance. We have very few contemporary reports describing the appearance of the princes, so we don’t know a great deal about their build.
 

   
Contemporary portraits are few and far between, with the quality of those available being extremely poor. However, King Edward IV was both a very tall man (the tallest monarch to ever sit on the throne at 6 foot 3) and extremely well built. Would it not be likely that he would have passed these genes on to at least one of his two sons? In addition, both princes would have had a far higher protein intake than would be expected for a normal citizen. This should have promoted growth in both boys. However, the fact that neither boy had fully gone through puberty yet might explain this. There could have been both height spurts and muscular development (leading to skeletal development) to come.
 

3.
I was particularly concerned about the dental evidence that was discussed in this paper.

It is true that it is far easier to predict the age of a younger skeleton than it is of one that has reached adulthood, but I felt that the age estimations in this report were simply far too precise and were, possibly, guided by what they wanted the end result to be.
 

In April 2001 The British Journal of Dentistry published an article about forensic dentistry. It stated that using the molars as an age determining means in children gives us an age with a possible error of plus or minus 4 years. Based on the ages that Wright and Tanners reported this would actually put the elder skeleton to be anywhere from 8.5 years old to 16.5 years old and the younger one to be anywhere from 6 years old to 14 years old. I used a mean point in their estimations to work this out. If you factor in that these examinations were conducted in 1933 without modern methods, you might expect a higher error than plus or minus 4 years.
 

4.
It is a key fact that the sex of children could not be determined. We have no firm evidence that these skeletons are even male.

5.
It is known that King Edward V was receiving regular visits from a physician called Doctor John Argentine whilst in the Tower. It has been suggested that these visits were due to pain in Edward’s face and jaw. However, these suggestions are probably due to the findings of this report and there is in fact no certain reason why Edward was being seen by Doctor Argentine. These visits could simply have been the normal course of events to ensure the health of the young king. The fact that the Prince of Wales and
 
subsequently the king were unwell would surely have been documented somewhere. However, there is no trace of any such report in contemporary records.

6.
There have been subsequent reports written by notable academics regarding the presence of blood on the skull of the elder skeleton. Some have backed Tanner and Wright's report whilst others have suggested that it might not be blood. Without further examination it is not possible to determine if blood was present or not.
 

7.
We don’t know how old these skeletons are. Some academics have suggested that they might even date from Roman times, although this would seem to be highly unlikely, both when you consider the age of the White Tower and the possible presence of velvet on the remains.
 
However, without further testing we simply don’t know.
 

There is one final point that we need to consider and it is something I haven't seen a lot of debate on in other publications. This is the fact that the bones remained in the Tower of London for four years after they were discovered.

As a former police officer I would have grave concerns about evidence that was, in effect, abandoned for four years. Such a situation would have defence lawyers rubbing their hands in glee. There are a lot of possibilities about what could have happened to those bones over the period of four years. Looking at a complete worst-case scenario, a suspicious man might suggest that as the bones were clearly prized as mementoes, the whole skeletons could have been switched. Who is to say that it could not have happened? Someone may have spotted a money making opportunity and taken the chance. There are a hundred other things that could have happened to those bones in the four years they were abandoned. In short, the bones currently in Westminster Abbey are not certain to be the bones discovered under the staircase.
 

1. Are these the remains of the princes?
   

The facts of the case are simple. We don't know.
 

A lot of police work is based on gut feel. My gut feel tells me that the remains discovered under the stairs are probably those of the princes. However, there are sufficient doubts in the evidence that I have ranked the probability at being around a 65% chance. If you then add in the factor that the bones were effectively abandoned for four years, I would suggest the bones that were actually placed in the urn in Westminster Abbey are probably about a 60% chance of being those of the princes. The five percent reduction in probability comes from the possibility of the bones being replaced by a fortune seeker during the four years in the Tower. (These aren't actual calculations, simply my conclusions put into a numerical form.) A confirmation of the sex and how old the skeletons are would raise this percentage considerably.
 

If these were not the bones of the princes who else could these bodies have been? Over its long history the Tower of London has held many prisoners. However, it was only during the Tudor and Stuart period that it really got its reputation as a prison and a place of dread. Prior to this, the Tower was principally used as a royal palace and fortress, not a place of incarceration.

One could argue that the bodies could have been anyone. Yet if this were the case why would there have been the need to dispose of these bodies in this manner? If they were just
ordinary
prisoners in the tower then why not just bury them in a conventional manner? The nature of the burial makes it clear that these were bodies that someone did not want found and didn't want anyone to discuss.
 

It was extremely rare that children were imprisoned in the Tower and normally these were high status individuals that we know about. If these are not the bodies of the princes then which other children could they be?

In fact, there is only one other case of a child being imprisoned in the tower who disappeared from record during their “
stay”
– Henry Pole. This was during the reign of Henry VIII, some years later than our missing princes. Henry Pole was the grandson of Margaret Pole, the daughter of George Duke of Clarence. Clarence was the brother of Edward IV and Richard III who was famously executed for treason against Edward, allegedly by being drowned in a butt of malmsey wine. A bill of attainer had been passed against Clarence, effectively barring his succession to the throne. However, such bills had been passed against Edward IV and Henry VII before their own accessions to the throne. It was not outside the realms of possibility that this could occur again. The descendants of Clarence were certainly a threat to the Tudor throne. Henry VIII knew this, and when Cardinal Reginald Pole (Margaret Pole's son) spoke out against the king's marriage to Anne Boleyn he continued his process of cleansing his kingdom of the Poles.