More clues show King Richard III did have princes inTower killed
Study suggests 500-year-old tale had more to it than justTudor propaganda
RICHARD III really did murder the Princes in the Tower, according to the latest historical research.
A new study looking at credible sources indicates the ‘hunchbacked’ king was behind the notorious unsolved royal killings more than 500 years ago.
His involvement in one of the most notorious and emotive mysteries in English history is a step closer to being confirmed.
The study backs the first detailed account of the deaths of the princes by Sir Thomas More.
In the History of King Richard III, he named Miles Forest and John Dighton as the murderers.
More claimed they were recruited by Sir James Tyrell, a servant of Richard III at his orders.
He said the princes were smothered in their beds and then buried deep in the grounds “under a heap of stones.”
Professor Tim Thornton, of the University of Huddersfield, said: “This has been the greatest murder mystery in British history, because we couldn’t really rely on More as an account of what happened – until now.
“But I have shown the sons of the chief alleged murderer were at court in Henry VIII’s England,
and that they were living and working alongside Sir Thomas More.
“He wasn’t writing about imaginary people. We now have substantial grounds for believing that the detail of More’s account of a murder is credible.”
Richard has long been held responsible of the murder of his nephews King Edward V and his brother, Richard, Duke of York, in a dispute about succession to the throne.
The pair were held in the Tower of London, but vanished from public view in 1483 with Richard taking the blame following his death two years later.
More’s horrific account survives in English and Latin versions and influenced Shakespeare’s play about the doomed Yorkist king.
It also influenced subsequent monarchs who were keen to paint their predecessor as a monster.
The fresh evidence in a paper published in the journal History, entitled “More on a Murder”, points to Richard’s guilt.
It substantiates the allegations against the men identified as the boys’ murderers, and links them to him.
Richard was eventually defeated and killed at the Battle of Bosworth, near Nuneaton, in 1485 by Henry Tudor, who was
then crowned Henry VII.
Prof Thornton said: “Sir Thomas More’s account of the murder of the ‘princes in the Tower’ has been treated with varying degrees of scepticism over the past century and a half.
“More’s History of King Richard III is notable, nonetheless, for the way it provides precise circumstantial detail and responsibility for the focal point of the succession crisis of 1483.
“More’s account of those deaths is all the more striking because central to it were several individuals who were still alive at the time of its writing, survivors of the episode and their immediate families.”
Defenders of the controversial king have said there is no concrete proof connecting the king to the disappearance of the princes.
They were aged just 12 and nine years old when Richard took the throne in June 1483.
More claimed Forest and Dighton were recruited by Sir James Tyrell, a servant of Richard III at his orders.
Many people have questioned the story as being written at least 40 years after the event – between 1513 and 1518.
They say it was “Tudor propaganda” to blacken the name of a dead king.
Some even suggested that the
names of the alleged murderers were made up by More.
But Prof Thornton says More’s conclusions were “reliable.”
He believes More came to the right conclusion due to some inside knowledge.
Two of the famed politician and philosopher’s fellow courtiers were the sons of Forest, one of the men More named as the slayers.
The mystery surrounding the princes has resonated for centuries, fuelled in the 1670s when the bones of two boys were found in the Tower of London.
It was revived again in the 1930s when the remains, which had been reburied in Westminster Abbey, were scientifically reexamined.
Richard’s bones were discovered in Leicester in 2012.
Shakespeare described him as “hunchbacked” – and it was suggested this was also a politically motivated invention of his enemies. But a very pronounced curve in the spine was visible when the body was first uncovered. As well as this, evidence of scoliosis can be seen in many of the individual vertebrae.
The appearance of these bones should be symmetrical, but many had abnormalities in their shape – leading to his right shoulder being higher than the left.