To think Richard III blatantly killed the Princes in Tower?

[HenryTudor1485]

He’s undergone a bit of a reappraisal recently but I’m not having it. He was a wrong un.

He clearly had his nephews killed. He had motive, means and opportunity. The dates when they “disappeared” all add up.

He done the crime. He never did the time (unless you consider being defeated in battle and being hacked to death “time”).

If you had two small bodies to bury, are you going to get a team of builders in to lift up flag stones, or are you going to quietly sneak them out and bury them elsewhere? Which is less obvious?

Do we know what the state of the White Tower staircase was at that moment in 1483? Were there flagstones? My understanding is that the bones were found when King Charles was having some works done, more than a century later. We know that there was a lot of remodelling and redecorating in the Tower over the years.

No we don't, I probably got a bit carried away with flagstones.

My point holds true, though. Burying bodies inside the castle building itself would be pretty high risk, likely people would know which bit of building had been disturbed.

Much safer to take them somewhere else where they'll never be found, unless you want them to be in future.

Maybe. I agree that it’s unlikely something would be specifically pulled up, but if there happened to be works in the Tower at that time, they might have been used - and if they weren’t, then another solution would be used.

I think it's general consensus Princes are unidentified two boys that were discovered during renovation of Windsor Chapel. Staircase children might not be boys and are of wrong age.
Idea that they are low-key buried in Windsor Chapel and forgotten all about might make more sense considering Russian Tsars all have problems with pretenders pretending they were dead Tsars just because there wasn't public burial of Tsars people were pretending to be.

I think what would make more sense that anything else is that the bodies were disposed of in a random place never to be found again. Taking them to Windsor and burying them there feels like a pointless risk to take.

From the below, some historians consider the bones were found outside the white tower, rather than specifically inside by the stairs, though that’s where the plaque is.

www.hrp.org.uk/blog/charles-ii-and-the-discovery-of-the-princes-in-the-tower-in-1674/

I’ve looked at the John Ashdowne Hill books on Amazon- which would posters recommend as a general view re the EW, the times, princes, also intrigued by Eleanor butler but not got an unlimited budget! TIA

It's not a risk, if they were announced dead (from disease or simply let to die) then hastily buried 'officially', but then forgotten.

Link, please? Googling brings up a number of skeletons and bones found in Windsor, but nothing specifically adolescent.

But they weren’t announced dead?

Thomas More was schooled in the house of Bishop Morton who knew the key players in the 1480s. Given More's infamous integrity and refusal to bow to Tudor pressure, I generally put a reasonable amount of faith in his account and it matches so much of the later evidence, the bodies, the involvement of Deighton, Forrest and Tyrell etc. Far too much has been made by the RIII supporters of the Tudor /Shakespeare portrayal..this has been hugely undermined by the skeleton showing he was indeed deformed in the back.

sorry, it's George's chapel

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princes_in_the_Tower

"In 1789, workmen carrying out repairs in St. George's Chapel, Windsor, rediscovered and accidentally broke into the vault of Edward IV and Queen Elizabeth Woodville, discovering in the process what appeared to be a small adjoining vault. This vault was found to contain the coffins of two unidentified children. However, no inspection or examination was carried out and the tomb was resealed. The tomb was inscribed with the names of two of Edward IV's children: 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.[34][35][36] However, two lead coffins clearly labelled as George Plantagenet and Mary Plantagenet were subsequently discovered elsewhere in the chapel (during the excavation for the royal tomb house for King George III under the Wolsey tomb-house in 1810–13), and were moved into the adjoining vault of Edward IV's, but at the time no effort was made to identify the two lead coffins already in Edward IV's vault.[37]"

But they weren’t announced dead and buried officially. That IS the sort of thing which makes the records.

as far as we know.... many information is missing from that time.

that was just a theory, after all.

That wouldn’t be though.

@GoldenRosebee nothing in that wiki entry suggests it’s “general consensus” that the skeletons in St George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle are the boys. Those remains have been subject to even less examination than the ones in Westminster Abbey.

The wiki entry also states this - so I am interested in where the poster stating one of the skeletons was female is getting that from?

The bones were removed and examined in 1933 by the archivist of Westminster Abbey, Lawrence Tanner; a leading anatomist, Professor William Wright; and the president of the Dental Association, George Northcroft. By measuring certain bones and teeth, they concluded the bones belonged to two children around the correct ages for the princes.[3] The bones were found to have been interred carelessly along with chicken and other animal bones. There were also three very rusty nails. One skeleton was larger than the other, but many of the bones were missing, including part of the smaller jawbone and all of the teeth from the larger one. Many of the bones had been broken by the original workmen.[31][32] The examination has been criticised, on the grounds that it was conducted on the presumption that the bones were those of the princes and concentrated only on whether the bones showed evidence of suffocation; no attempt was even made to determine whether the bones were male or female.[3]

Which doesn't match Thomas More's account, and his claim on where the bodies (temporarily) were is the only reason to think those bodies are the princes. (And even that doesn't match becaise he says they were subsequently moved.)

Even in medieval Britain, there was still abhorrence and disgust at murdering children. John’s reputation was even more sullied after the disappearance of his nephew Arthur. He was widely believed to have ordered him blinded and castrated-thereafter he disappeared in the care of William de Braose. His wife accused John of murdering his nephew and her punishment was death by starvation along with her son. There was widespread disapproval and disgust. Same with Richard. Imo, he ordered it and then it followed him like a curse and distorted his judgement. By the time he died, he was not popular.

I disagree that More’s staircase claim is the only reason to think those are the bodies. The boys disappeared from the Tower: any pair of unidentified adolescent skeletons found in the Tower would have some likelihood of being them.

😂

They've found a lot of bodies there over the years. To date they've typically been older than the late middle ages. I'd bet these two are the same.

Maybe we'll find out one day!

Killing them certainly wasn't a good option. Unfortunately, not killing then also wasn't a good option.

This!