The Odder

Episode 42: Mystery in the Monarchy: What happened to the Two Princes in the Tower?

January 18, 2024 Madison Paige Episode 42
Episode 42: Mystery in the Monarchy: What happened to the Two Princes in the Tower?
The Odder
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The Odder
Episode 42: Mystery in the Monarchy: What happened to the Two Princes in the Tower?
Jan 18, 2024 Episode 42
Madison Paige

Today we are talking about a mystery that has confounded historians for centuries. Two little princes locked away in a tower after their uncle snatched the throne away. Last seen playing in the courtyard of the tower, the two young boys were never heard from again. Speculation as to what happened to them has surrounded the reign of the monarchs ever since. Was it murder? Did they escape? And what about all the bodies that have been found since then? Today on The Odder, we are talking about Edward the 5th and Richard of Shrewsbury, what happened to them and if it was murder, who did it? I hope you paid attention during history class cause we are going to be doing some grave digging today, grab your lockpick and your shovel and let's go!

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Music Credit
"Agnus Dei X" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/



Main Theme:
"Dream Catcher" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/


Show Notes Transcript

Today we are talking about a mystery that has confounded historians for centuries. Two little princes locked away in a tower after their uncle snatched the throne away. Last seen playing in the courtyard of the tower, the two young boys were never heard from again. Speculation as to what happened to them has surrounded the reign of the monarchs ever since. Was it murder? Did they escape? And what about all the bodies that have been found since then? Today on The Odder, we are talking about Edward the 5th and Richard of Shrewsbury, what happened to them and if it was murder, who did it? I hope you paid attention during history class cause we are going to be doing some grave digging today, grab your lockpick and your shovel and let's go!

Want to request your own personalized episode? Email me at theodderpod@gmail.com!

Follow us on facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/theodderpod
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theodderpodcast
Twitter: https://twitter.com/theodderpod
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@theodderpodcast

Please rate and review!

Music Credit
"Agnus Dei X" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/



Main Theme:
"Dream Catcher" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/


  1.  Hello and welcome to The Odder Podcast. I’m your host Madison Paige and today we are talking about a mystery that has confounded historians for centuries. Two little princes locked away in a tower after their uncle snatched the throne away. Last seen playing in the courtyard of the tower, the two young boys were never heard from again. Speculation as to what happened to them has surrounded the reign of the monarchs ever since. Was it murder? Did they escape? And what about all the bodies that have been found since then? Today on The Odder, we are talking about Edward the 5th and Richard of Shrewsbury, what happened to them and if it was murder, who did it? I hope you paid attention during history class cause we are going to be doing some grave digging today, grab your lockpick and your shovel and let's go!
  2. Good Morning, Midnight, and Moon, My Odders, how is everyone doing today? I hope we all enjoyed the last episode on Ann O’Delia Diss Debar and his conwoman ways. Hopefully nobody has received any watercolors from beyond the grave. if you really enjoyed it or if you didn’ t, please leave a rating and review, they really do help! For the returning listeners, welcome back, for the new listeners, welcome welcome to The Odder podcast where we are a trail mix of all things unknown, unsolved, and just plain odd. If you have an idea for an episode you think would be fun, good news! I do listener requests so if you want your own personalized episode, you can send me an email at theodderpod@gmail.com. I’d love to hear from you and know what you want to hear from me! We do have a slight little announcement today, my sweets, as it is about mid january which means we are halfway to February and you know what happens in February? That's right! The Odder turns another year older! That’s right the odder is turning the big zero two on Valentine's day and just like last year, you will be getting a special birthday bonus episode! So there will be of course more word on that later but something to look forward to coming up. 
  3. Now back on track for today's episode, we are doing a subject which I am actually very excited to talk about because I am a massive history nerd, we are talking about the mystery of the two princes in the tower. Two young boys, heirs to the throne, mysteriously disappeared and who have never officially been recovered. What happened to them and who might have ordered it. And why have there been so many bodies found since then? Settle in and get cozy, might I suggest with a good hearty ale as we take a long trek back to England in the year 1483.
  4. Edward the Fourth is King but he won’t be for much longer. He will fall fatally ill on Easter, which according to his physicians will be caused by his use of emetics while dining as he loved to eat himself to sickness, throw it up, and then eat some more. However, he will hang on till April which will allow him to make some edits to his will including naming his brother, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, as protector of the realm. He would die on April 9th.
  5. Now, naturally, the next in line to the throne of Edward the Fourth is his son Edward the Fifth who is at Ludlow Castle when he is told of his fathers death. He is only twelve years old. And suddenly he is king. Or at least, he is expected to be. 
  6. However, things rarely work out as they are expected to when it comes to the cutthroat world of politics. 
  7. Going forward we will refer to Edward the fifth as only Edward. Now, Edward and the Duke of Glucesters both separately set out for London and met at Stony Stratford on the 29th of April. This is where Edwards' life begins to take a decidedly worse turn. The Duke arrests Edwards retinue including his uncle and half brother and has all of them sent to Pontefract Castle in Yorkshire where on the 25th of June they are executed. The Duke then took control of Edward. 
  8. Hearing news of this, Edwards mother, Elizabeth Woodville, took her other son, Richard, Duke of York who was nine years old and he daughters to Westminster Abbey for sanctuary from The Duke of Gloucester. 
  9. If this is a little hard to follow, let me simplify. The Duke of Gloucester has been made protector by the dead king and is now drunk with power. He has met up with the king's heir and his group of supporters. He has falsified charges and separated the heir from his supporters and made this terrified twelve year old solely dependent on him. The wife of the dead king, who knows she does not have the power to do anything against this duke, has taken her children and run to an abbey for safety. 
  10. Are you all with me? Good. 
  11. The Duke of Gloucester takes Edward and they arrive in London together and plans continue for little Edwards official coronation. However, the date is postponed from May 4th to June 25th. On May 19th, Edward is taken by his uncle and placed in the Tower of London. Now, this was the traditional residence for monarchs prior to coronation so nothing would have appeared strange about this. On the 16th of June, the nine year old duke of york Richard, is removed from his mother at Westminster Abbey and placed with his brother in the Tower to keep him company. 
  12. It is at this time that the Duke of Gloucester announces that the date of coronation will be indefinitely postponed. 
  13. On Sunday June 22nd, at Saint Paul’s Cross, a sermon is preached by Dr. Ralph Shaa, brother of the Lord Mayor of London claiming the Duke of Gloucester to be the only legitimate heir to the throne. On June 25th, a group of lords, knights, and gentlemen put forth the Duke of Glouceter to take the throne. This led to parliament declaring both princes still in the tower to be illegitimate in an act confirmed in 1484 known as Titulus Regius. This act stated that the marriage between Edward the Fourth and Elizabeth Woodville was invalid because Edward had originally sworn to marry Lady Eleanor Butler. 
  14. This hadn't bothered anybody before but whatever I guess. 
  15. The Duke of Gloucester would be crowned King Richard the Third of England on July the 6th. 
  16. The only reliable record we have of the princes in the tower following the crowning of King Richard is from an Italian Friar named Dominic Mancini who visited London in the spring and summer of 1483. He recorded that after King Richard took the throne, the princes were moved to the inner apartments of the tower and were seen less and less until they disappeared all together. 
  17. Mancini also recorded that during this time, Edward was visited regularly by a doctor who spoke of Edward quote “"like a victim prepared for sacrifice, sought remission of his sins by daily confession and penance, because he believed that death was facing him."
  18. There were no recorded sightings of them following the summer of 1483 after an attempt to rescue them in late July failed. To this day, it is still unknown for certain what happened to the two little boys in the tower. 
  19. Now, the most commonly held belief among historians is that the princes were murdered in the tower in order to prevent them from making a claim on the throne. 
  20.  However, aside from their disappearance, there is no direct evidence of their murder.
  21.  We are not even sure of a date on which the murders could have been but most suggest it was towards the end of the summer in 1483. Historian Maurice Keen justifies this by stating that the rebellion against King Richard in 1483 initially was aimed at freeing the two boys but that when the Duke of Buckingham became involved, he switched the focus to supporting the ascension of Henry Tudor instead. Suggesting that the Duke may have had some insider knowledge that the boys were already beyond saving. 
  22. Writer Alison Weir proposed that the murders happened on September 3rd, 1483 however has not been able to provide any support as to why this date.
  23. Geographer Clements Markham believes the princes were alive as late as July 1484 and used regulations that were issued in King Richard’s household as proof. These regulations stated “the children should be together at one breakfast”. Markham argues that the children referred to in this rule must have been the two princes. However, historian James Garidner has pointed out that it may actually be referring to other children in the household of King Richard such as the Duke of Clarence’s son Edward (not the little prince) and Edward the fourths two youngest daughters, Catherine and Bridget, who were all living under King Richard's care at the village of Sheriff Hutton. 
  24.  At the time of their disappearance, it did not escape local knowledge and rumors of what happened to the princes had begun to spread even during the time of King Richard. In January 1484, the Lord Chancellor of France urged the estates general to “take warning” from the fate of the two English princes as the french Charles the eighth was only 13 when he succeeded to the throne. It was apparently commonly accepted and even featured in the reports of not only the Lord Chancellor but also french politicians, a contemporary german chronicler, and the Recorder of Rotterdam that Richard had killed the princes before he seized the throne.  
  25. Philippe de Commines, a French politician, would also include in his memoirs that he believed the Duke of Buckingham was the person who completed the task. It should be noted however, that this memoir was written seventeen years after the events. 
  26. Chronicles of London, written by Robert Fabyan, named King Richard the Killer. It was written 30 years after the prince's disappearance.
  27. The History of King Richard III circa 1513 was written by Thomas More, a Tudor loyalist who actually grew up in the household of the sworn foe of King Richard. In this work, it named the princes Killer as Sir James Tyrrell. Tyrrell was a devoted servant of King Richard and is said to have confessed to murdering the boys on Richard's orders before he was executed for treason in 1502. Apparently he commissioned two men to smother the boys in their beds before burying them at the foot of the stairs under a great pile of stones. Their bodies were later reburied in a secret place. These two men that commited the crimes for Tyrrell were named as Miles Forrest and John Dighton. 
  28. A passage from More’s book reads as quote “‘The innocent children lying in their beds, Miles Forest and John Dighton, about midnight, came into the chamber and suddenly lapped them up among the clothes, so be wrapped them and entangled them, keeping down by force the feather-bed and pillows hard unto their mouths, that within a while smothered and stifled, they gave up to God their innocent souls.”
  29. The bolster to Thomas More’s claims is that the sons of Miles Forrest were at Court in Henry Tudor’s reign and could have given More info on the murders if he had contacted them. 
  30.  Anglica Historia circa 1513 written by Polydore Vergil, hell of a name, also fingered Tyrrell as the murder but stated that he did it reluctantly and sorrowfully and only on the orders of his master Richard the third. It also stated that Richard then spread the rumors of the prince's death in order to discourage rebellion.
  31.  Old Willy Shakesphere even had his hand in the rumors surrounding the two princes. Drawing mainly from Thomas More and the Holinshed Chronicles which also portrayed Richard the 3rd as the judge and jury and Tyrell as the execution, he wrote the play Richard the Third. In it, the two characters have a very clear discussion of the killing of the two young boys
  32. And you, my captive audience, get to hear me dust off my high school theater skills to read that section to you.
  33. KING RICHARD III “Darest thou resolve to kill a friend of mine?”
  34. TYRREL “Ay, my lord; But I had rather kill two enemies.”
  35. KING RICHARD III “Why, there thou hast it: two deep enemies, Foes to my rest and my sweet sleep's disturbers. Are they that I would have thee deal upon: Tyrrel, I mean those bastards in the Tower.”
  36.  Well, not as rusty as I thought I would be. 
  37. However, for all these rumors and speculations, it is important to remember that most of these accounts were written long after the disappearance and by impartial parties. It can be hard to separate fact from propaganda especially at a time when there was no separation between political persuasion and the printing press. 
  38. Only Dominic Mancini, the Italian Friar, is considered to have written a contemporary account worth its weight. 
  39. However, I have listed several names and characters that could be responsible if the boys were murdered. So let’s work through the theories
  40. Theory number one: The Boys were murdered as part of a political play
  41. Suspect number one: Richard the Third, the boys uncle
  42. Richard is the most commonly named murderer. He is the most likely suspect, he benefits the most from the murders and he is the one who put them in the tower to begin with. Most historians feel that he is the likeliest culprit. Here is why.
  43. Why kill them if he had them declared illegitimate? Well even with them out of the life of succession, his hold on the throne was a weak one and people weren't impressed by the way he seized the crown. This led to backlash and an attempt made to rescue the boys and restore Edward to his rightful place on the throne. This made Richard nervous and he may have realized that as long as two male descendants of King Edward the fourth remained, he would be constantly at risk of being overthrown by them. 
  44.  Even when rumors of their deaths began to circulate, King Richard never made any attempt to show them alive in public. While he openly denied having anything to do with any disappearance by them, he was not known as an honest man and was not viewed favorably for it. He also never opened any investigation into their disappearance, seeming to suggest he knew where they were or at least where they were buried. 
  45.  The boys were kept under guard in the tower of London which was controlled by Richard and patrolled by his men. Access to them was strictly limited and nobody should have been able to reach them without his knowledge. While Richard was away on travel at the time of their supposed disappearance, it is not a stretch to imagine he could not use one of his lackeys to do the deed for him. 
  46. This is where the involvement of a man like James Tyrrell comes in. Tyrrell was a servant of Richard who experienced a successful career and rapid promotion after 1483 which might have been repayment for the successful completion of the murder of the two little princes. 
  47. Tyrrell is also noted to have confessed, under torture, before his execution in 1502. However, the only record of this supposed confession is Thomas More who would use it for his own profit and advantage. 
  48. Elizabeth Woodville, the mother of the two princes, was noted to have believed Richard the third to have killed her sons and would go on to support Henry Tudor in his campaign against him. However, she later made peace with him after making Richard swear a solemn and public oath to protect and provide for her surviving children, allowing them to come out of sanctuary. 
  49.  While Richard the third was never officially accused, Henry Tudor brought a Bill of Attainder against him which is basically an act declaring a person guilty of a crime without a trial. In it, he accused Richard the third of "the unnatural, mischievous and great perjuries, treasons, homicides and murders, in shedding of infant's blood, with many other wrongs, odious offenses and abominations against God and man". Some historians feel that the reference to “shedding of infants blood” may be a direct finger point to the murder of the princes. 
  50.  Suspect number two: Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham
  51.  Commonly considered as Richards right hand man, his involvement in the murder of the princes would depend on them having been killed before November 1483 as this was when Stafford was executed. However, he did have several potential motives. 
  52. First of all, Henry was a descendant of Edward the third through a distant relation and may have hoped to ascend the throne in due time and may have wanted to remove the princes as obstacles in the way. 
  53. Some historians point to his execution in November of the same year the princes went missing as a sign of his guilt. His execution was ordered by Richard after he rebelled against him in October 1483. Some have suggested this rebellion was caused either by Richard murdering the princes without Staffords knowledge and shocking him or Richard responding to finding out Stafford had killed them without his permission. This was later supported by historian Michael Bennet who suggested that Staford and Tyrrell murdered the princes without Richards knowledge while he was away on travel. Richard had left Staffod in charge of the tower in his absence and when he returned there was a massive fight between the two.
  54. It is also noted that Stafford is unlikely to have acted alone as if he had murdered them with Richards permission, the King could simply have laid full blame on him and stopped the rumors of his own involvement. Richard would also have had to have some knowledge of Staffords access to the princes even in his time away.
  55. This means that although it is possible he had a hand in the murders, it is very unlikely that he did so without Richard’s involvement. 
  56. A portuguese document seems to suggest Staffords guilts by stating "...and after the passing away of king Edward in the year of 83, another one of his brothers, the Duke of Gloucester, had in his power the Prince of Wales and the Duke of York, the young sons of the said king and his brother, and turned them to the Duke of Buckingham, under whose custody the said Princes were starved to death."
  57. A document found in the archives of the College of Arms in London in 1980, noted that the murder “be the vise of the Duke of Buckingham”. However, this document was dated several decades after the disappearances. 
  58. Suspect number three: Henry the Seventh or Henry Tudor
  59. Some historians suggest that the only other option for a murderer if it was not done at the request of Richard the third would be Henry Tudor. Henry Tudor would snatch the throne and ascend in 1485.If he was the true killer of the princes he would have had to do so only after his ascension as he was out of the country between the time of their disappearance and august 1485. 
  60. Some evidence of his guilt is as follows.
  61. In 1486, Henry married Elizabeth of York, who was the prince's eldest sister. He did this in order to reinforce his claim to the throne as most people still considered her a legitimate heir of Edward the Fourth. However, fears that this could be questioned as she had “Technically” been ruled a bastard after the marriage between her parents was ruled null and void when Richard had been made King led Henry to royally repeal the Titulus Regius. This did restore Elizabeth of York back to her royal spot however, it would have also put her two brothers back in their position for the throne was arguably much higher than Henry’s. 
  62. Some scholars theorize that Henry Tudor could have ordered the boys murdered between June 16th and July 16th in 1486 in order to prevent them from trying to take his throne. He then started to circulate the rumors that the boys were the victims of Richard.
  63. Furthermore, some feel that Elizabeth Woodville, their mother, knew this was false and so in order to silence her, Henry stripped her of her land and possessions and confined her to Bermondsey Abbey in 1487 where she would die in six years.
  64. However, this is speculative as many feel her retirement to the abbey was her own decision. 
  65. It should be noted that Henry was never accused of murdering the princes even by his enemies in a time when there was no fact checking and you could hurl insults as freely as you liked. Many historians point out that if Henry had murdered the boys, there was nothing stopping him from producing the bodies and pointing the finger squarely at Richard. Henry as the murderer would also imply that prices were hidden away from all sight for a total of two years after their last known spotting by Richard all while he was openly regarded as their murderer. If they had survived Richard long enough to be murdered by Henry, why had he not paraded them about to prove his innocence. 
  66. Remaining Suspects
  67. There have been a handful of others accused  over the years. John Howard, a close friend of Richard the Third who had custody of the tower at the time the princes disappeared and would later gain the Duke of York's estate and title.
  68.  Margaret Beaurfort, Henry Tudor's mother and a key figure in the war of the roses who was known to be ruthlessly driven to put Henry on the throne and to have a network of spies within the court. 
  69.  Jane Shore, mistress to Edward the Fourth and who would later be required to do public penance for her conspiratorial ways with Richard the Third. 
  70. Basically anyone who had a dog in this race to the throne had the proverbial means and motive to want the princes dead. They were two little boys, harmless and without their own strong support who were standing in the way of a lot of powerful pieces so whoever could remove them, stood to gain not only the favor of that piece but also an instrumental hand in the running of England. 
  71. Theory number two: one or more of the boys survived and escaped the tower
  72. Two individuals would come forward during the reign of Henry to claim to be Richard, Duke of York, who had somehow escaped death in the tower and hidden out until adulthood.
  73. The most well known of these two men was Lambert Simnel. Born in 1477, records sometimes call Lambert, John and are not even sure if his last name is truly correct. Growing up in poverty, Lambert was taken in by an Oxford Trained priest named Richard Simon, possibly, his name also changes in the records. This priest apparently decided that he did not just was a dedicated godly pupil but power and noticing how handsome the young protege was, he began to tutor the young boy in courtly manners and education.
  74. The priest initially presented Lambert as the escaped Richard, Duke of York after noticing the resemblance he bore to them. However, this ruse did not last long as when he heard rumors that the Earl of Warwick had died during his imprisonment at the tower, he began to claim that was Lambert’s true identity. 
  75. Lambert would be used merely as a puppet in a rebellion against Henry Tudor which would fail on the battlefield. It should be noted that the Earl of Warwich wasn't even dead and Henry had him paraded around to dispute Lambert claims beforehand but it did little to hush the populace.
  76. Lambert was surprisingly pardoned by Henry Tudor who recognized that he was just a child who had no real involvement in any of the rebellion. He actually put him to work in the royal kitchens and he would later become a falconer before living the rest of his life out quietly.
  77. A second claim came in the form of a man named Perkin Warbeck. Born in 1474, Warbeck first attempted to claim the English throne in 1490 by claiming to be Richard, Duke of York. He claimed that his brother Edward was murdered in 1483 but that the killers spared his life because of his age and innocence. He was made to swear, however, not to reveal his true identity for a certain number of years. He was removed from the tower and hid by Sir Edward Brampton and other York Loyalists until Bramptom returned to England and he was released. He now wanted to claim his rightful throne. 
  78. His claim came four years after Lamberts and he actually gained notable support. Margaret of York, sister of Edward the Fourth, publicly recognized Warbeck as Richard, Duke of York. However, even though Margaret was the boy's aunt, she had left England for marriage before either boy was born and so had never actually seen either of them. It is debated whether she knew he was a fraud or truly believed he was Richard but either way, she educated him on the ways of court in a Yorkish Empire. Several other key political players and even royal heads of state recognized Warbeck as Richard but this has been attributed more towards want for control of the English throne than actual belief in his claims. 
  79. Henry Tudor was not thrilled to be dealing with another man claiming to be Richard. And he thwarted Warbecks several attempts to gain support on English soil before capturing and imprisoning him in his court. He reportedly treated Warbeck surprisingly well once he admitted to being an imposter and even accommodated him in the court and allowed him to attend banquets. However, when Warbeck attempted to escape, Henry imprisoned him in the Tower where several other escape attempts followed before Warbeck was executed. 
  80. While most historians believe that Warbeck was an imposter some do give credibility to his claim or at least feel that the survival of Richard is a credible possibility. Some even argue that Richard had both boys removed from the country instead of killed and that it is plausible they both survived. 
  81. In 2021, The Missing Princes Project supported this claim by providing evidence that Edward may have lived out the remainder of his days as a man named John Evans in a rural Devon Village called Coldridge. John Evans arrived in the village in 1484 and was immediately handed an official position and title as Lord of the Manor. Yorkists symbols and stained glass windows depicting Edward the fifth in a chapel that was built by Evans in 1511 has been pointed to as proof of a man who was more than he claimed to be. 
  82.  If John Evans was the lost prince Edward, he never made a claim to the throne.
  83. However, claims that the boys may have escaped their terrible fate to survive as simple farmers to make claims to the throne later have been damaged by the amount of bodies that have been found.
  84. Workman remodeling the Tower of London on July 17th, 1674 unearthed a wooden box about 10 feet under the staircase that led to the St. Johns Chapel of the White Tower. When they cracked open the lid, it appeared to contain two small human skeletons. 
  85. Remember the story that Thomas More told of the two princes killed and buried at the bottom of a staircase? 
  86. The bones were also reported to be found with bits of rag and velvet around them. Velvet was a very expensive material and its presence clinging to the remains may very well point to these remains being a pair of royals. 
  87. Their location combined with the presence of the velvet led many to decide these must be the remains of the two fabled princes. They became somewhat of a tourist attraction and were on display for the next four years. The bones were then placed in an URN and on the order of King Charles the second were entombed in the wall of the Henry the seventh Lady Chapel. 
  88. Sir Christopher Wren, an English architect, designed a monument that marks the resting spot for this set of princes. It is inscribed “Here lie interred the remains of Edward V, King of England, and Richard, Duke of York, whose long desired and much sought after bones, after over a hundred and ninety years, were found interred deep beneath the rubble of the stairs that led up to the Chapel of the White Tower, on the 17 of July in the Year of Our Lord 1674."
  89. Now, these bones were removed and examined in 1933 by Lawrence Tanner, the archivist of Westminster Abbey, Professor William Wright, a prominent anatomist, and George Northcroft who was the president of the Dental Association. Their examination of the remains found that they did belong to two children who would have been around the correct ages for the princes at the time of their disappearance. 
  90. They also noted several other things. The bones had been packed into the box carelessly and were mixed in with other animal bones like chickens as well as building refuse such as rusty nails. One skeleton was larger than the other but many bones were missing such as part of the smaller jawbone and teeth. They determined that the original workman had broken many of the bones. 
  91. This examination has had its own critiques though as the examiners went in with the expectation that the bones were those of the prince and were looking more to confirm their theories rather than state the facts. The examination did not even confirm whether the remains were male or female.
  92. The remains have never been examined again although attempts have been made they have often run up against blocks.
  93. However, this is not the only set of remains attributed to the pair of princes. The bones of two children had previously been found in a different part of the tower in a room that had been walled up. These remains could lend some credibility to that portuguese document that stated Henry Stafford had starved the princes to death if he had done so by sealing them up in a room and leaving them to die. 
  94. In 1789, while repairing parts of St. George’s Chapel in Windsor, workmen accidentally broke into the vault of Edward the Fourth and Elizabeth Woodville. While stumbling upon their find, they also uncovered what appeared to be a small vault attached to the main chamber. In the vault, workers found two coffins of unidentified children. 
  95. At the time, no further investigation was made and the tomb was resealed. 
  96. Now these were the two princes' parents. Was it possible that they had been secretly interred in the tomb of their father after meeting their deaths?
  97. The tomb was inscribed with two names along with Edward the fourth and Elizabeth. Along with the parents, the tomb was supposed to contain George, 1st Duke of Bedford who had died at the age of 2, and Mary of York who had died at the age of 14; both had predeceased the king. However, two coffins that were clearly labeled with both George and Mary’s names were discovered shortly after elsewhere in the chapel and were then moved into that adjoining vault with the other two still unidentified coffins.
  98. However, once again, no effort was made to explain why a tomb meant to contain four people suddenly contained six. 
  99. In the late 1990s, work being done near the tomb prompted a request to be made to examine the vaults with a fiber optic camera or to examine the two unidentified coffins themselves. However, Royal consent would have been necessary and they weren't not able to receive it. 
  100. In 2012, the remains of Richard the third were discovered and the mystery of the two princes were thrust back into the spotlight. People once again prompted the need to investigate the vault and its extra coffins. However, Queen Elizabeth the second prevented any such testing and investigation. Many have hope that King Charles will potentially support a renewed investigation. 
  101. Most historians and enthusiasts believe that Prince Edward and Prince Richard never left the tower. Two little boys, ages 12 and 9, are at the center of a political game of chess without a friend or supporter strong enough to protect them. It is heartbreaking to think of them separated from their family, alone, and unknowing and having to rely on a man who saw them as just a hindrance on his way to power. If Richard did murder them, it did nothing to help his reign. In fact most historians believe it badly wounded it. Ripping the throne from the hands of a man was one thing but murdering children was a good way to turn the public against you, even supporters would not want their names tied to that crime. We may never truly know what happened to the princes. Even if they can prove that any of the remains belonged to them, they would not be able to tell us who killed them or probably even how they died. We can hope that none of the remains are theirs and that they escaped and lived on farms like John Evans but then who are all these dead children in the tower and the vaults? It seems the mystery of the two princes is a mystery that will keep us enthralled for years to come. 

Well, that’s all for this episode. So what do you think? What do you think happened to the princes? Which theory do you like best? Who do you think is the most likely to have committed the murder? Let us know what you think on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram and leave a review. The Odder Pod is also on TikTok. Come follow us there! Have a suggestion for a show? Send me an email at theodderpod@gmail.com with your request and whether you’d like me to mention your name, your alias, or nothing at all. Remember this is The Odder Side so give me something cool, creepy, or confusing to deep dive for you. If you liked the show, leave us a review! They really help! Darest thou resolve to kill a friend of mine?  The Odder Podcast posts every other Thursday. Thanks for listening and I’ll see you next time on The Odder side.