S10 E10 | The Princes In The Tower

Friends, now it's time to delve into possibly one of the most infamous chapters in all of Plantagenet history, the deaths or murders of the princes in the tower. Now I can't possibly fit everything there is to say about the prince's untimely demise into this episode, but I will make an attempt in the accompanying bonus episode with producer Al this week. There, I'll give you my theory as to why I'm certainly not a Ricardian. But now it's time for you to make your mind up after this short break. Absolutely insane happens. One doctor says, yeah, I did a lumbar fusion. My kickback was $25,000. And the other doctor's going, well, I only got $12,000 because I did a neck. This is a story about a massive web of fraud and deception. Dozens of doctors all over Southern California. A fraud worth over $1 billion. Patients were committing suicide, losing their homes, losing their marriages. From Sony Music Entertainment and Western Sound, this is Dr. Billions. Available now on The Binge. Search for Dr. Billions wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribers to The Binge can listen to all episodes, all at once, ad-free. I'm Katherine Nicolai, and I help millions of people around the world sleep better, rest their nervous systems, and shut their brains off when they won't stop spinning. On my podcast, Nothing Much Happens, I tell cozy, calming stories where nothing dramatic ever happens. Just soft narration, sensory detail, and gentle repetition designed to lull you to sleep. There's no plot to follow, nothing to figure out. Just peace. Listen to Nothing Much Happens wherever you get your podcasts. It's 10 o'clock on a Friday morning, and in a chamber at the Tower of London, a meeting of the Royal Council is about to come into session. The grandees are hurrying down corridors and sliding into their chairs, ready to attend to the business of the day. Agendas are being circulated, and the secretaries are sharpening their quills to take notes on the morning's business. Once everyone is in, doors to the chamber are closed, and the leader of the government, the Protector of England, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, opens the meeting. Outside the chamber, it's fair to say that the mood in the City of London, and England beyond, is a little tense. It's just over a month since Richard kidnapped the new 12-year-old King Edward V, postponed his coronation, appointed himself Protector, and locked Edward in the Tower. Since then, he's been working hard on controlling the narrative around this coup. Richard has put it about that the Woodville family of the young King's mum were planning a conspiracy against him, against the whole country. He's shown off the weapons he said the Woodvilles were going to use. He's accused the Woodvilles of pilfering royal funds. Two days ago, he sent letters to his estates in the North, summoning troops to march down to London, supposedly to provide extra personal security for him and his cousin, the Duke of Buckingham. In the letters summoning the troops, Richard claims that the Woodvilles have intended, and daily do intend, to murder and utterly destroy us. Well, you know what they say. Takes one to know one. All of these heavy-handed, bully-boy tactics have started to alarm others on the Royal Council, including the old King, Edward IV's former best pal, Lord Hastings. Until now, Hastings has backed Richard's coup, but he's recently confided in two other Council members, the Archbishop of York and the Bishop of Ely, that this all seems to be getting a little bit out of hand. Hastings was all for setting up a protectorate and limiting the power of the Woodvilles, but it feels a bit like Richard is using a sledgehammer to open a pistachio. Still, he's in charge, and now the meeting is underway, Hastings tries to pay attention. But suddenly, Richard veers off the expected business, and says he has something very important to say. He has credible information that at this very meeting, an ambush has been prepared for him. In fact, the plotters are in this room, and they have secret weapons on them, with which they're planning to do him in. Who could it be? When the doors to the Council chamber come flying open, and the troops rush in, led by the Duke of Buckingham, it all becomes horribly clear. The Archbishop of York and the Bishop of Ely are grabbed and placed under arrest. Then, Lord Hastings, one of the best-liked and most famous nobles in England, is seized as well. He's arrested, but unlike the bishops, that's not the end of it. Without any semblance of a trial, they kill him. You couldn't even call it an execution. It's cold-blooded murder. Hastings supported Richard because he thought his power grab was bloodless. He's been proved horribly, sensationally wrong. And now his blood is going to set off a torrent. Richard, Duke of Gloucester, has set in play a dreadful cycle of slaughter. And with it, he's going to take down his entire royal line. I'm Dan Jones, and from Sony Music Entertainment, this is History, season 10 of A Dynasty to Die For. Episode 10: The Princes in the Tower. ♪ ♪ The preacher, Dr. Ralph Shaw, pushes his way through the excitable crowds gathered at St. Paul's Cross in central London. The whole city is gripped by confusion. You can feel it hanging in the summer air. It's June 22nd, 1483, the day that had been earmarked for young Edward V's postponed coronation. But no coronation has been forthcoming. Unsurprisingly, the whole crowd is buzzing with speculation, rumour. Who's in? Who's out? Who's dead? Who's alive? him. Nine days ago, Richard turned the council chamber into an abattoir, killing the great Lord Hastings and implying that he was part of a Woodville-inspired assassination plot. Can that really have happened? The people need answers. So they've come here, to the precincts of the city's cathedral, hoping Dr Ralph will provide them. Dr Ralph is at least a man who ought to be able to provide some informed answers. He's a well-connected guy, brother of the mayor who welcomed Richard into the city when he first arrived with Edward V at his side. So, as Dr Ralph makes his way into the covered stone pulpit in the cathedral churchyard, a hush falls over the assembled audience. But when the preacher clears his throat and starts to deliver his sermon. What he preaches is less fire and brimstone and more good old-fashioned cock and bull. The central contention of his argument is this. Nineteen years ago, in 1464, when Edward IV married Elizabeth Woodville, there was an error in the paperwork. A very serious error, in fact. So serious that the whole future of the House of York is going to be destroyed. The House of York is going to be destroyed. The House of York is going to have to adapt around it. The fact is, Dr Ralph says, that Edward had no legal right to marry Elizabeth Woodville because, at the time that they tied the knot, Edward. was secretly engaged to someone else. That someone was a woman called Lady Eleanor Butler. Who was Eleanor Butler? Well, emphasis on was, because Eleanor conveniently died years ago, in 1468. But in her day, she was a daughter of the great English war hero, John Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury. In 1449, she married a guy called Thomas Butler, but he died on her. So, at the time she allegedly met King Edward IV, Eleanor was a widow who was a few years older than him. Which, to be fair to old Edward, was exactly his type. Or one of his types, anyway. According to Dr Ralph, when Edward met Eleanor, he pulled the old trick of, say I do, have a quick screw. Go back and listen to bonus episode two of this season for a catch-up on how that works. After the deed was done, they both went about their merry business. Which, for Edward IV, included marrying Elizabeth Woodville and making her the queen. The trouble is, argues Dr Ralph, if all this is true, then it means Edward was bang out of order in marrying Elizabeth Woodville. Because, in the eyes of God and church law, he was theoretically married to Lady Eleanor. Put two and two together, and what do you get? The nice round figure of how bloody convenient. Because, if the Woodville marriage was illegal, then Edward V and all his siblings are illegitimate. Which is grounds to strike them out of the royal succession. And if they're struck out of the royal succession, then let's just have a look at who that leaves. Oh yes, none other than, Richard, Duke of Gloucester. Who, Dr Ralph points out, rather lamely, does look a lot like his old dad, Richard, Duke of York. Exactly how the crowd reacts is not recorded. But some of the chroniclers of the day lay out what they make of this. Seditious and disgraceful, is the verdict of one of them. But fortune favours the brazen. And, as Richard, Duke of Gloucester, starts to show his hand, it's pretty clear where all this is now destined to end up. Because, here's what Dr Ralph doesn't mention, as he shits this web of high-tensile gossamer bullshit out of his hole at St Paul's Cross. Since murdering Lord Hastings at the Tower of London, Richard has remained busy. The Archbishop of Canterbury has gone to Westminster Abbey, and managed, somehow, to talk a presumably shell-shocked Elizabeth Woodville into handing over her nine-year-old son, Prince Richard, who's been taken, for his own safety, to join his brother, Edward V, in the Tower of London. They've been joined there by their eight-year-old cousin, Edward Earl of Warwick. He's the only son of the late and unlamented George, Duke of Clarence. That means, that anyone who might stand ahead of Richard in the line of succession is now under lock and key. Meanwhile, anyone who might have the wherewithal to stand up to him is swiftly being divorced from their head. Three days after Dr Ralph gives his stump speech for Richard, Duke of Gloucester, at St Paul's Cross, in the North, there's a trial for treason. In the North, there's a trial for treason. The defendants are the old Queen's brother, Antony Woodville, and her son, Sir Richard Grey. They, and another of their close associates, Sir Thomas Vaughan, are all found guilty and beheaded at Pontefract Castle. On the same day, back in London, Richard's ally, the Duke of Buckingham, is doing some rabble-rousing of his own. He goes out and gives public speeches, repeating the accusation that Edward V and his little brother are bastards, so don't deserve to inherit the crown. He points out that their little cousin, Edward Earl of Warwick, is also out of the running, on account of his dad Clarence's own treachery a few years back. Buckingham comes to the bleakly hilarious conclusion that, Richard's Duke of Gloucester is, "the only survivor of royal stock legally entitled to the crown." He argues that Richard can bear its responsibilities thanks to his proficiency. And, somehow keeping a straight face, Buckingham says that Gloucester's "previous career and blameless morals would be a sure guarantee of his good government." Well, as the saying goes, "up to a point, Lord Copper." A bigger confection of misdirection, gaslighting and outright lying for political gain, you'd struggle to imagine, in the 15th century at any rate. But what Richard and his allies have understood, is that in politics, then as now, misdirection works, and speed kills. They have thousands of followers. Thousands of Northern troops marching on London. The most obvious political opponents are dead or neutralized. The crown is dangling in front of Richard's crooked nose. All he has to do is reach out and grasp it. The table is virtually groaning with delicious foods. The entertainment is fantastic. His first rate. The new king and queen sit on expensive cushions and pow-wow with their nobles, and everyone stuffs their faces. The coronation banquet menu includes 46 different dishes, ranging from beef and mutton to crane and peacock to oranges and quinces. It's July the 6th, 1483. A couple of hours ago, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, and his wife, Anne Neville, celebrated the mass at Westminster Abbey, somehow without God sending down a lightning bolt to split the high altar in two at the sight of such iniquity. Then they had crowns placed on their heads. Now they're King Richard III and Queen Anne, and they're having a grand old time enjoying the feeling. Richard isn't exactly the vision of radiant kingship that his brother once was, but he's unquestionably a tyrant. He's a tough cookie. He's smaller, darker, and likely has a stoop thanks to his spinal deformity known as scoliosis. He has nervous tics, he grinds his teeth, and he bites his lower lip compulsively when he's thinking. He's constantly fiddling with his dagger, sheathing it and unsheathing it. But this is now the man in charge. After the coronation banquet. Richard gathers his nobles around, and tells them, pompously, that they need to go back to their shires and make sure that law and order prevails. His stolen realm is to be a crime-free zone, an oasis of moral integrity. But just don't ask how he came to the crown in the first place, alright? Oh, and if anyone wants to have a look at what moral leadership looks like, they should check out a little scene Richard has staged in the streets. There, Richard has ordered a particularly delicious little pageant to be held, the star of which is one of his brother's favourite mistresses, Elizabeth or Jane Shaw. Shaw was not only one of the old King's favourite booty calls, she's also enjoyed rolls in the hay with Elizabeth Woodville's eldest son, Thomas Gray, as well as the late Lord Hastings. Richard has been putting it around that she's a beauty. She was the intermediary between Hastings and the Woodvilles in the supposed plot to assassinate him. He's also just sort of outright slut-shamed her for the LOLs, so now, in London, he's having Shaw put through a public penance. She's made to walk through the streets dressed only in her underwear, before being clapped in the stocks and thrown into prison at Ludgate. Richard figures this will paint him as a virtual hero. He's a virtuous new king, whose reign is going to get rid of the slap-and-tickle immorality that characterised his brothers. But the rank hypocrisy of a murderer, usurper and kidnapper lecturing the public on moral living is not lost on everyone. And thus, writes one chronicler, Richard "taught others to exercise just and good, which he would not do himself." Richard's story is a very interesting one. This is the theme that carries on through the first chapter of the book. Elizabeth Woodville and her five daughters hunker down in sanctuary at Westminster Abbey. Meanwhile Richard takes himself off on a tour of the realm. He heads out of London to Windsor, then up the Thames Valley to Reading and Oxford, into the west through the Midlands up north. It's a proper roadshow, although it has to be said that Richard concentrates his tour on the places where his power as a private noble has been strongest, and avoids places like Wales, where the Woodvilles, until so recently, ruled the roost. As Richard goes, he lavishes lands and titles on his own kingmaker, Henry Duke of Buckingham, the noble of royal blood who shamelessly went out to bat for Richard in the weeks leading up to his coronation. He also showers good things on other cronies, such as a guy called Lord Howard, who's promoted to become Duke of Norfolk. Richard is a smart guy, but whether he's a keen student of his own family history is hard to say, because in Buckingham in particular, he's creating a super-noble, slap-bang-in-the-Richard-Neville-Earl-of-Warwick mould. Perhaps he feels he has no choice. Or perhaps Richard really has drunk his own Kool-Aid. Because as he travels, work is beginning on business that's going to have to be prepared for Parliament when it opens in the autumn. At that point, Richard has to be prepared for Parliament, and at that point, Richard is going to need to do more to justify his kingship than just sending out gobshites like Dr Ralph Shaw to spin yarns in churchyards. In fact, he's putting together a version of history that will explain how he is the remedy to England's dreadful descent into vice and sin. This argument will be codified in a document known as Titulus Regius. It dates to 1484, but it speaks very much to Richard's pitch to the country in the summer of 1483. Richard characterises his brother Edward IV's whole reign as more or less a 'pornocracy', in which the king could hardly see past the end of his own pulsating pintle, and the moral fabric of the realm collapsed as a result. In Edward IV's time, Richard argues, the realm was a hotbed of 'adulation and flattery', and the people were 'led by sensuality and concupiscence'. Richard was the king of England, and he was the king of England. The royal advisers were 'insolent, vicious, and of inordinate avarice', and as a result, the realm fell into 'extreme misery and desolation'. Richard rehearses his Bertha theory about Edward's kids. He bangs on about 'the ungracious, pretenced marriage' with Elizabeth Woodville, and through a weird bit of mental gymnastics, he suggests that because Edward wasn't properly married to his queen, the whole fabric of public good was shredded, so that 'no man was sure of his life, land, nor livelihood, nor of his wife, daughter, nor servant, every good maiden and woman standing in dread to be ravished and defouled'. The idea is, the more he decries the state of things under Edward IV, the more convincing he and his little family will appear as the antidote. At every public celebration of his new reign that he enjoys during this summer tour, he shows off his big retinue of followers, his 27-year-old Queen Anne, and their nine-year-old boy Edward of Middleham, who's now given the title Prince of Wales. Richard treats his people to lavish displays of generosity. 'The most gorgeous and sumptuous feasts and banquets for the purpose of gaining the affections of the people,' says one chronicler. He hands out little badges in the shape of bores, which is a somewhat tortured pun on his origin: Eborachum, or Ebor, was the Roman name for York. And he sells as hard as he can the image of himself as what one sympathetic chronicler calls 'the rightful dynastic king', 'by true matrimony without discontinuance or any defiling of the law by air-mail linearly descending from Henry II'. But in all this, there's just one small problem. Or rather, two. However many feasts Richard holds or badges he gives out, back in London, there are two boys in the Tower of London who might well grow up to have a few choice words to say about weird Uncle Richard's grasp of morality, legality, and family loyalty. The princes in the Tower are alive, and as long as they remain that way, Richard is going to have a problem. You're listening to a quick ad. You know what this is quick? Selling your car on Carvana. Just put in your vehicle information and we'll give you an offer. Done. No hassle, no negotiation, no guy from an online listing lowballing you. Which means, by the time I'm done explaining this, you could have basically done it. Still haven't started? Hey, better late than never. Sell your car today on Carvana. Pickup fees may apply. It's a nice summer's day in London, and in the precincts of the Tower of London, some archery butts have been set up. Edward and Richard, the sons of the late King Edward IV, are practicing their shooting. It's been weeks since they were brought to the Tower, and in that time, the world has fallen apart around them. But they're still boys, and they can have some exercise and get a bit of fun in the Tower's gardens. According to the Great Chronicle of London, the two lads can be glimpsed for a few weeks, enjoying themselves in the Tower, playing and shooting in the garden. But after a while, the sightings stop. According to another writer called Dominic Mantini, the boys are withdrawn into the inner apartments of the Tower proper, and day by day, began to be seen more rarely behind the bars and windows, till at length they ceased to appear altogether. Why's that? Well, because as Richard III jollies around on his usurpation tour of England, the boys are not just a pair of flies in the ointment of what passes for his conscience. They present an active political threat. Richard's coronation took place on July the 6th. By the end of July, there's already a plot afoot to bust the princes out of the Tower. It's not exactly a subtle one. The idea is that buildings near the Tower will be set on fire, causing enough panic to distract the Tower's guards. Then the princes will be broken out of jail, and, eh, we'll see what happens next. The plot is foiled, and the conspirators who are fingered for it, including one official in the Tower, are tried and executed. But the fact that the plot is even conceived stirs Richard into action, to limit the possibility of any more trouble. From his tour, he sends orders that the Sanctuary at Westminster, where Elizabeth Woodville is holed up with her daughters, be surrounded by soldiers. It's likely that at this time he also gives orders for the two princes in the Tower of London to be dealt with Henry VI-style. Or rather, not Henry VI-style, because while that old duffer was whacked and then presented to the country with an explanatory note saying he'd basically died of death-ness, the princes in the Tower just. whew. Vanish. Various theories will be propounded over the years about what happens to them, where, how, and at whose hands. Years later, a servant of Richard's called Sir James Tyrrell will make some sort of confession, albeit under great duress, saying he organised for two goons to smother the princes in their beds at night. Foreign writers hear that the Duke of Buckingham has a hand in the murder. There's a cottage industry in setting up Margaret Beaufort for the deed. More of her before too long. The most detailed account we have comes from the pen of the Italian writer Mancini. He says that one by one the prince's servants are dismissed until the only one left is a doctor called Argentine. He tells Mancini that Prince Edward is under no illusion about what's going to happen to them now that Uncle Richard is in charge. The young king, like a victim prepared for sacrifice, sought remission of his sins by daily confession and penance, because he believed death was facing him, Argentine tells Mancini. And he's right. By the autumn of 1483, the princes have completely disappeared. The truth is, no one knows exactly what happened. But in the 17th century, a box of bones is found buried under the stairs in the White Tower at the Tower of London, which is presumed to be the remains of the princes. The bones are now in Westminster Abbey, in an urn designed by Sir Christopher Wren. Without modern tests being carried out, that's as much as we can say, and even modern tests can't tell us everything. But there are a few certainties. The first is that after the autumn of 1483, the only sightings of the supposed princes in the Tower are of imposters. More of those, however, come later this year. The second is that in the autumn of 1483, the person derives the most immediate benefit from the princes in the tower not being around, as the focus of continued plotting, is Uncle Richard. And the third is that from the autumn of 1483, the assumption driving English politics is that the princes will never be seen again. Mancini remembers the public horror that greets the disappearance of Edward V. I've seen many men burst into tears and lamentations when mention was made of him after his removal from men's sight, he writes. But tears and lamentations don't butter any parsnips. And once the princes have vanished, it looks like Richard has pulled off one of the most extraordinary coups in English history. From nowhere, he's swept the board of every other significant player, diverted the royal succession to himself, and brought the king of England to the throne. And reset Plantagenet politics on a new footing for a new age. Because who else is left to oppose him? It's hard to imagine anyone coming out of the woodwork with the blood right, military heft, and political chops to wobble the new Ricardian regime. As 1484 rolls around, the age of Richard III has dawned. The future's bright. The future's boar-shaped. Unless… that's for next time. And this is history. Well, there we have it. The most famous double infanticide in history. As Shakespeare's Richard III said, so wise, so young, they say, do never live long. Royal favourites. Did Richard do it? This is your chance to weigh in on one of the most dramatic episodes in Plantagenet. In our time is a world-class seminar every week. Why was Jeremy a lonely snail? What were lines doing in York in the third century? I'm Misha Glennie, and every week I'm joined by expert guests to explore the ideas that shape our world. It's one of the first times really that you consistently see someone painting teeth. I know that sounds bonkers. If I was going to define mathematics, I would say it's the study of structure. In our time, listen wherever you get your podcasts, or watch on YouTube. YouTube. Tea or coffee? Love a cup of tea.