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The Princes in the Tower refers to the mystery of the fate of the deposed English King Edward V and his younger brother Prince Richard, Duke of York, heirs to the throne of King Edward IV.

The brothers were the only surviving sons of the king by his queen, Elizabeth Woodville, and were aged 12 and 9 years old, respectively, at the time of their father's death in April 1483. They were lodged in the Tower of London by their paternal uncle and England's regent, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, in preparation for Edward V's forthcoming coronation. Gloucester ascended the throne instead as Richard III. It is unclear what happened to the two princes after the last recorded sighting of them in the tower. It is generally assumed that they were murdered; a common hypothesis is that the murder was commissioned by Richard III in an attempt to secure his hold on the throne. As a result, several other theories about their fates have been proposed, including the suggestion that they were murdered by their kinsman Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham, their future brother-in-law King Henry VII, or his mother Lady Margaret Beaufort, among others, although theorised culprits besides Stafford and Richard III are generally not given much credence. It has also been suggested that one or both princes may have escaped assassination. In 1487, Lambert Simnel initially claimed to be Prince Richard and was crowned in Dublin as "King Edward VI", but later claimed by others to be the Princes' cousin, Edward Plantagenet, 17th Earl of Warwick. Again, several years later, from 1491 until his capture in 1497, Perkin Warbeck claimed to be the younger prince, Richard, Duke of York, having supposedly escaped to Flanders. In 1674, workmen at the Tower of London excavated, from under a staircase, a wooden box containing two small human skeletons. The bones were widely accepted at the time as those of the princes, but this has not been proven and is far from certain. King Charles II had the bones buried in Westminster Abbey, where they remain.

At the time, his son, the new King Edward V, was at Ludlow Castle in Shropshire - the traditional seat of the Prince of Wales - and the dead king's brother, Richard III (then Duke of Gloucester), was at Middleham Castle in Yorkshire.

It also appears to have been the belief of the Princes' mother Elizabeth Woodville, who would go on to support Henry Tudor in his campaign against Richard III.

Markham (1906) suggested that the princes were executed under Henry's orders between 16 June and 16 July 1486, claiming that it was only after this date that orders went out to circulate the story that Richard had killed the princes; this claim has been disproven.

Baldwin argues that it is "impossible" that no one knew what happened to the Princes after they entered the Tower; he believes Richard III and Henry VII, leading courtiers and their mother would all have known the boys' whereabouts and welfare.

Other findings of the five-year investigation by The Missing Princes Project research initiative, suggesting the Princes' survival following the reign of Richard III (i.e. after 22 August 1485), was published in 2023 in Philippa Langley's book The Princes in the Tower: Solving History's Greatest Cold Case.

Pollard – Richard III and the Princes in the Tower (1991)

In 2005 Channel 4 and RDF Media produced a drama entitled Princes in the Tower about the interrogation of Perkin Warbeck, in which Warbeck almost convinces Henry VII that he really is Richard, Duke of York. In 2023, Robert Rinder and Philippa Langley presented a Channel 4 programme, The Princes in the Tower: The New Evidence.

"More on a Murder: The Deaths of the 'Princes in the Tower', and Historiographical Implications for the Regimes of Henry VII and Henry VIII".

Quick Facts

• In 1487, Lambert Simnel initially claimed to be Prince Richard and was crowned in Dublin as "King Edward VI", but later claimed by others to be the Princes' cousin, Edward Plantagenet, 17th Earl of Warwick.
• They were lodged in the Tower of London by their paternal uncle and England's regent, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, in preparation for Edward V's forthcoming coronation.
• It is unclear what happened to the two princes after the last recorded sighting of them in the tower.
• Pollard – Richard III and the Princes in the Tower (1991)
• The bones were widely accepted at the time as those of the princes, but this has not been proven and is far from certain.

Source material: Wikipedia - "Princes in the Tower". Adapted and summarized for DiscoverScroll. Original contributors are credited through the linked Wikipedia article. Read original on Wikipedia. CC BY-SA 4.0. Changes were made from the original.