To think Richard III blatantly killed the Princes in Tower?

Oh I'm very jealous! I read his book on Cromwell which was great.

I like your turn of phrase! 😂

Interesting!

I was lucky enough to have lectures from him as an undergrad. He is great.

Yes I like the guests very much, real academics! Melvyn is OK, he usually asks pertinent questions and he can be quite funny sometimes.

I love any episode with Professor Diarmid McCulloch!

Yeah I listen to those and like them. Melvin Bragg is a bit flippant but he’s entertaining. They have some really old ones still available online so you can delve into the back catalogue.

Yes I agree they are a bit rambly. Do you ever listen to in our time on radio 4? That's very good

Totally agree.

Regarding The Rest Is History podcast, I like it, but I only listen to it for subjects I know well. The hosts are charismatic and super knowledgable but they discuss most topics in a rambling and non-linear way that doesn’t always work for me.

In many ways I prefer Not Just The Tudors with Susannah Lipscombe. It’s more light touch, but super accessible. They introduce everything from scratch. You can come away after 40 minutes feeling you have learned a lot about a period of history you might have previously known nothing about.

They have done the Wars of the Roses in forensic detail (as with the JFK assassination). And general more facts means less scope for the less credible theories.

I read a joke recently...

A conspiracy theorist dies, and goes to heaven. At the gates is God, beaming. God tells the theorist that as he has lived a good life, God can answer any question he likes before he enters heaven.

Without a seconds hesitation the conspiracy theorist says: "I always wanted to know who killed JFK ?"

God replies: "It was Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone."

The theorist looks at God and finally says: "Wow. It goes even higher than I thought."

People my age who had a precocious childhood may remember a BBC series in the 70s called "Second Verdict".(I wasn't even a teenager 😀) They covered the Princes in the Tower, And Lizzie Borden as I remember. I wonder what folk think of that ?

Thank you for recommending the rest is history podcasts.

Totally 🍿

This is the best of mumsnet😀😀😀😀

That is an excellent point. If he had known for sure they were dead, he would certainly have said so.

But he didn't. He had TR quietly suppressed. Because he wasn't in a position to produce the princes.

If he'd been able to prove the boys were dead, then he could have revoked TR, re-legitimising his wife as the rightful surviving heir of EIV, supporting the whole York/Lancaster union AND dumping shade on RIII as an evil usurper & murderer.

All he needed for that route was the boys' bodies, & he didn't have them.

He was also fairly clear about ruling by right of conquest, not through EoY's claim. Again, being able to produce her dead brothers would have tidied up all the loose ends & put a stop to future pretenders

The only reason he would not have declared the boys dead would be because he couldn't be sure if they were dead.

Doesn’t the ‘cancelling’ of TR imply that HVII knew they were safely dead? And wouldn’t come back (otherwise than) to haunt him ?

Henry VII couldn't prove they were dead, because they were AWOL by 1485.

That could be a) murdered by RIII b) murdered by someone else c) dead of natural causes with embarrassing timing or d) smuggled abroad. Wild card e) present & correct in the Tower, promptly done in by HVII.

a) & c) are the likeliest.

HVII needed to marry EoY, to shut up the remaining Yorkists. Her being declared illegitimate was awkward, so least said easiest mended - hence all copies of Titulus Regius, which bastardised all of EIV's children by his queen, being quietly burned.

To make a hooha about TR being probably bollocks, legally, to legitimise Elizabeth, would also have legitimised her missing brothers. Which would have made Edward V the lawful monarch all over again...if anyone could find him. Obviously not in HVII's interests.

It seems that HVII didn't know/couldn't prove where the boys were. So he decided it would be easiest not to comment on their fate at all.

Yes, they were almost certainly dead by then. Also, if they hadn't been, he'd have made sure of it, as he did with the rest of their relatives, & was seen as sensible kinging at the time.

Yes well, 500 years before that the Anglo-Saxons had rocked up with their language, which is still hugely dominant, upsetting the Celts. Then there were the Beckers, coming over and stealing all the jobs when iron was the new big thing.

We will all be everything. We’s all have stands of the DNA of William the Conqueror’s army mixed in with blood of the Angles and the Saxons and the Celts.

Well Henry Tudor acted as thought they were dead. So that was that.

Then - (as now in Trump land) - most people knew to act along with whatever the fact of the day was. When Henry Tudor rocked up and said "It's my turn at the dressing up box" the lack of people who said "Er, what about Edward ?*" set the seal.

*If you heard that question within earshot of a Tudor spy, then your only answer should have been "Who ?"

And yet 70% of the land in Britain is still owned by 1% of the population, largely descended from William the Conqueror’s army - that's all the top knobs that pitched in to oppress the Anglo-Saxons and other assorted peoples.

Bloody immigrants.

There are various sources quoted upthread that mentioned rumours of the Princes' death before 1485. Lambert Simnel and Perkin Warbeck both played on the uncertainty of their whereabouts (although Lambert Simnel was meant to be Warwick but it's all quite confusing!) but there was never any announcement of their deaths at all. We can take from what we know as an absence of questions about them post 1485 that there may have been a general assumption they were dead at that point - otherwise, where were they? Where were they being kept prisoner for example? (It was common knowledge that the young Earl of Warwick was being kept in the Tower over the years that followed.) Would you have expected to see them at their sister's coronation etc.? But we are working off fairly few sources overall and those questions may have been asked.

Mentioning Lambert Simnel prompted me to look up those details and I see that Henry VII showed Warwick off in public to prove he wasn't dead (which appeared to be a rumour, although how that would mean he could also be Lambert Simnel doesn't quite work, or had escaped from the tower) but obviously did nothing of the sort when Perkin Warbeck claimed to be Prince Richard.

AFAIK, the boys were never declared dead.

Mancini returned to Italy not long after RIII’s coronation (on 6 July 1483) and reported in his account that there was “a suspicion he (EV) had been done away with” - but we don’t know exactly when the boys were last seen at the tower.

There just aren’t a lot of sources with very clear dates on them, AFAIK.

Could the historians on here tell me when if became known that the princes were dead - was it announced, assumed, declared?

If it was never officially declared, is there a record of anyone speculating on their whereabouts during their known lifetime?

Sadly, despite having a surname that supposedly has Norman origins, my family has failed to cling on to any sort of power, wealth or land. I think we've gone to the Saxon.

DH and I are also sadly resigned to the fact that the 'we're all descended from Edward III' thing, which sounds good, is very unlikely when you come from a provably long line of poor people. We've got nothing so much as a Lord of the Manor between us going back to the 18th century so far.

After 1000 years I think the Normans can safely call themselves English.