Charles ‘yes’ to DNA test on Princes in the Tower

FASCINATED by archaeology since he studied it at Trinity College, Cambridge, King Charles now has the opportunity to help solve a historical royal mystery.

Did the future Richard III murder the ‘Princes in the Tower’ to secure his succession?

Encouraged by the discovery of King Richard’s bones under a car park in Leicester a decade ago, Archaeologists believe modern technology could help reveal how the princes — Edward V and his younger brother, Richard, Duke of York — died.

According to Tracy Borman — joint chief curator of Historic Royal Palaces which manages some of our unoccupied royal palaces — the late Queen blocked any such investigation.

Her Majesty is said to have considered it more appropriate to leave the princes’ memory to rest in peace. ‘Our new King Charles takes a very different view,’ Borman claims.

Speaking at Sandon Literature Festival in Staffordshire, she says of the King: ‘He has said he would like an investigation to go ahead, so that we can determine, once and for all, how the young royals

died.’ Shakespeare claimed in his play Richard III that the allpowerful regent Duke of gloucester murdered the princes at the Tower of London. They were 12 and nine when they were taken into custody by their uncle Richard after the sudden death of their father, Edward IV, and vanished soon afterwards.

Speculation over how they died has continued ever since they vanished from the Tower in 1483.

The Church of England, with backing from the Queen and ministers, repeatedly refused to permit forensic testing to see if bones buried in Westminster Abbey were those of the princes.

This would see the bones submitted to carbon dating to match their deaths to Richard III’s reign with DNA tests to prove their identities.

A Buckingham Palace spokesman declines to comment.