The Princes in the Tower: disappearance, bones and five centuries of argument

Place card

Place: the royal apartments and Bloody Tower within the Tower of London; the area south of the White Tower where children’s bones were found in 1674; the urn in Henry VII’s Lady Chapel at Westminster Abbey.

Address: Tower of London, London EC3N 4AB; Westminster Abbey, London SW1P 3PA.

Nearest stations: Tower Hill for the Tower; Westminster or St James’s Park for the Abbey.

Period: Edward IV died on 9 April 1483; Edward V’s brief reign and the brothers’ disappearance followed that summer; bones were found on 17 July 1674, interred in the Abbey in 1678 and examined in 1933.

Themes: child kingship, protectorate, usurpation, dynastic propaganda, disappearance, juvenile remains, forensic anthropology, DNA, imposture and the limits of historical knowledge.

Access: the Tower of London and Westminster Abbey are separate paid sites with changing hours and closures. The Bloody Tower is normally included with Tower admission but has stairs and access constraints. The urn is in the Henry VII Lady Chapel; access depends on the Abbey route and services. Check official sites and recording permissions.

The setting

Inside the White Tower, a plaque offers what appears to be a nearly perfect solution. It recalls that workmen in 1674 found the bones of two children near an old staircase. Their estimated ages fitted. The location resembled Thomas More’s account. Charles II ordered the remains to be buried as Edward V and his younger brother Richard.

The investigation began with the destruction of evidence. A workman’s tool damaged one skull. The bones were thrown out with rubble, then collected again when somebody connected the discovery with the famous princes. The precise location remains disputed: probably not beneath the present stairs inside the White Tower, but to its south near a route between royal lodgings and the chapel. A wooden container was described uncertainly. Nearly two centuries separated disappearance and discovery.

The supposed remains are no longer at the Tower. They are enclosed in an urn designed by Christopher Wren at Westminster Abbey. Its Latin inscription declares that the brothers were smothered on the command of their perfidious uncle and discovered by unquestionable proof. This was not the finding of a coroner in 1483. It was the voice of restored monarchy in 1678, turning bones into a narrative of criminal usurpation and rightful royal burial.

The urn was opened in 1933. Anatomist Lawrence Tanner and dental surgeon William Wright examined incomplete, mixed remains. They regarded them as compatible with two children approximately the expected ages. Their methods of age estimation were less precise than today’s, sex could not be determined securely, and proposed signs of injury did not establish a cause of death. Compatibility is not identification.

The story therefore should not begin with “Did Richard III kill his nephews?” Four earlier questions matter. When were the brothers last seen? Who controlled their bodies and access to their rooms? What exactly was found in 1674? Which answers could modern science provide—and which could it never give?

The story

Edward V was not a child suddenly invented as heir. Born in 1470 in Westminster sanctuary while his father temporarily lost the throne, he later received a household at Ludlow and an education designed for a future ruler. He was twelve when Edward IV died on 9 April 1483. He represented dynastic continuity, but could not personally command the network of nobles, soldiers and officials on which royal government depended.

The late King’s brother Richard, Duke of Gloucester, was in northern England and had a reputation as Edward IV’s loyal military supporter. The testamentary tradition named him Protector during his nephew’s minority. The new King’s maternal Woodville relatives held prominent court positions. The conflict was not simply a good uncle confronting a greedy family. Both groupings sought control of the King because physical access meant access to the seal, appointments and legitimate authority.

Edward travelled from Ludlow towards London with Anthony Woodville, Earl Rivers, and Richard Grey, Elizabeth Woodville’s son from her first marriage. Gloucester intercepted the party near Stony Stratford. After dining together, Rivers and Grey were arrested and the young King’s attendants replaced. Edward objected but continued to London under the Protector’s control. Rivers, Grey and Thomas Vaughan were later executed at Pontefract without a conventional full trial.

In early May Edward took up residence at the Tower of London. To a modern audience this sounds like immediate imprisonment. In 1483 the Tower was still a royal palace and the traditional starting point for a coronation procession. Coins, textiles and ceremonial preparations were under way for 22 June. Placing the heir in the Tower does not by itself prove a pre-existing murder plan.

Elizabeth Woodville meanwhile entered sanctuary at Westminster Abbey with her children and household. Her younger son Richard, Duke of York, stood next in the male succession after Edward. While he remained with his mother, Gloucester did not possess both brothers. Councillors demanded that the boy join the King, promising companionship and safety. After sustained pressure and negotiation, Richard left sanctuary on 16 June and entered the Tower.

A later entry in the Great Chronicle of London associates that date with the “children of King Edward” being seen shooting arrows and playing in the Tower garden on several occasions. It is among the last anchors for publicly observed, living boys. It does not prove that 16 June was their final day alive. It establishes the limit of that particular report.

Edward’s coronation was postponed. The preacher Ralph Shaa publicly advanced the claim that Edward IV’s marriage to Elizabeth Woodville was invalid because of an earlier obligation to Eleanor Butler. Their children were treated as illegitimate and Gloucester as lawful heir. Richard accepted the crown on 26 June and was crowned Richard III on 6 July.

The parliamentary instrument later known as Titulus Regius formalised this account of succession. After Henry VII’s victory it was repealed, and copies were ordered to be surrendered. The political history of 1483 therefore reaches us through texts that later regimes preserved, destroyed and reframed. Even the brothers’ legal status cannot be separated from the identity of the victor.

Dominic Mancini, an Italian visitor, left England in the summer of 1483 and soon prepared a report. He wrote that the boys appeared less frequently at windows and then vanished from view, while Edward prepared for death with prayer and penitence. Mancini did not witness a killing. Some information came through the physician John Argentine and court conversation. His account matters because of its proximity: fear and rumour did not begin only with Tudor writing thirty years later.

By the autumn, Richard’s opponents acted in the interests of Edward IV’s children or their sister Elizabeth of York. The Duke of Buckingham’s rebellion shifted in purpose and collapsed; Buckingham was executed. Reports of the princes’ deaths made them both victims and political standards. If alive, Richard held the rightful King. If dead, his enemies possessed an accusation of tyranny.

At this point the documented line breaks. No surviving order commands the brothers’ deaths. No indisputable body was produced in 1483, and no clear record moves them elsewhere. There is also no reliable sighting after their disappearance. Both parts must be held together: lack of direct proof of a killer is not positive proof of survival.

Richard III remains the principal suspect. He controlled the fortress, benefited politically from eliminating alternative heirs and bore responsibility for his nephews’ safety. After they vanished he did not display them alive to destroy the damaging rumour. This is a powerful circumstantial case, but it is not a surviving chain from instruction to named agents.

Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, possessed access, royal blood and independent ambition, and soon rebelled against Richard. He has been proposed as killer or intermediary. Yet his motive and access are reconstructed rather than secured by a direct record. Henry Tudor benefited from the absence of Yorkist heirs, but was outside England in the summer of 1483 and did not control the Tower. A later Tudor murder requires the boys to have survived Richard’s reign undetected; evidence for that sequence is absent.

Thomas More wrote the most influential scenario around 1513–18. In his account Richard used Sir James Tyrell, while Miles Forest and John Dighton smothered the boys in bedding, buried them near a stair and later moved the bodies. More had been a child in 1483 and wrote under the Tudors. His precise conversations cannot be read as transcripts. His work may nevertheless preserve a court tradition circulating among people who had lived through the period. The source should neither be accepted whole nor dismissed by attaching the single label “propaganda.”

Shakespeare converted the tradition into theatre. In Richard III, the order to kill children completes the moral portrait of a usurper whose body is made to signify inner wickedness. Two frightened boys in a shared room, hired murderers and a monstrous uncle became cultural memory even where individual details remain historically uncertain.

Claimants soon appeared as lost Yorkist heirs. The most dangerous was Perkin Warbeck, who identified himself as the younger brother Richard. Margaret of York, Maximilian I and James IV of Scotland accepted or employed him. Support by European rulers demonstrates political credibility, not biological identity. After defeat Warbeck signed a confession that he was an impostor; a confession produced under Henry VII’s power is not an independent genetic test.

Survival narratives reveal a recurring logical trap. A claimant might possess court knowledge, resemble a family and attract support because doubt benefited the King’s enemies. None of that makes him the missing prince. Warbeck’s success does prove that the absence of publicly recognised bodies left a dynastic wound available for exploitation.

On 17 July 1674, labourers were remodelling the royal lodging area south of the White Tower. John Knight, Chief Surgeon to Charles II, later recalled two child skeletons roughly ten feet below ground near old stairs. The remains had been disturbed, a skull damaged and traces of a possible chest not preserved as an archaeological unit. The material was initially cast aside, then the rubbish was searched so fragments could be recovered.

The correspondence with More—two children, a stair and depth—appeared compelling. Yet the famous narrative may itself have directed the identification. The Tower had received, buried and moved many people across centuries. Without dating or controlled excavation, a location does not supply a name.

Charles II had no laboratory to consult. The bones were displayed for several years, then the King restored to these supposed relatives the dignity of royal burial. Sir Christopher Wren prepared the urn design, the King’s master mason Joshua Marshall executed it, and the remains entered the Henry VII Chapel in 1678. The decision was more than piety. After the execution of Charles I, republican rule and the Stuart Restoration, the death of a child king illustrated the sacred nature of hereditary monarchy and the crime of usurpation.

The inscription accomplished what the documentary record could not: it identified the bodies, stated the manner of death and named the guilty authority. Knight himself described the identification as based on presumption. Westminster Abbey now uses the careful phrase “supposed bones.” The contrast shows the changing discipline of history. A memorial may mourn; an investigator must retain the question mark.

In 1933 the Dean of Westminster authorised opening the urn. Tanner and Wright assembled skull and skeletal material, assessed dental and bone development and looked for disease or violence. Their conclusion was that the remains could fit two children around Edward and Richard’s ages. But the assemblage was incomplete, included animal fragments, lacked a secure find context and was examined with methods that have since changed substantially. Their published study is a valuable document in the history of forensic science, not a modern identity certificate.

The repeated statement that the examination “proved two boys aged ten and twelve” is too strong. A modern study could begin with radiocarbon dating: did the children live in the fifteenth century? DNA might test whether they were siblings and compare mitochondrial DNA with a verified female-line genealogy descending from the family of Cecily Neville. The identification of Richard III at Leicester demonstrated the need to combine genetics, genealogy, archaeology, injuries and historical context.

Even a perfect genetic match would not name a killer. DNA does not record who authorised death. Radiocarbon rarely identifies a particular month. Absence of skeletal injury would not exclude smothering, disease or poison. A negative identity result would also leave the central disappearance unsolved: the urn might contain other children while the princes’ resting place remained unknown. Exhumation within a working church additionally requires ethical, religious and legal decisions, while destructive sampling must have a justified purpose.

People to remember

Edward V was the recognised heir and King from 9 April 1483, although never crowned. Calling him only a “prince” suits the mystery’s title but hides the disappearance of a child monarch.

Richard of Shrewsbury, Duke of York was not an accessory to his brother’s story. He had his own title, marriage to Anne Mowbray and place in the succession. He was about nine.

Elizabeth Woodville tried to keep her younger son in sanctuary while relatives were arrested. Richard’s surrender was a decision under political coercion, not an ordinary family choice.

Richard III was responsible for his nephews’ safety and acquired the crown after their exclusion. That makes him the primary suspect, but historical responsibility and a proved criminal order are not identical claims.

Charles II transformed disputed bones into royal ancestors. His act protected the material from further loss while fixing a politically useful identification.

The unknown children found in 1674 deserve respect whatever their identity. If they are not the Yorkist brothers, they remain human beings whose names were displaced by a famous mystery.

Fact, interpretation and legend

Documented fact: the brothers were in the Tower during the summer of 1483 and ceased to appear publicly. No reliable later sighting is known.

Strong probability: they died or were killed while Richard III controlled the Tower. The circumstances make his government answerable for their fate, but no direct order survives.

Open dispute: Richard III, Buckingham, another agent or a later regime; murder, natural death or one child’s survival. The alternatives do not carry equal weight, but none is finally demonstrated.

Archaeological fact: disturbed remains of two children were found in 1674. The precise site and original assemblage were not recorded by modern methods.

Not proved: that the Westminster Abbey urn contains Edward V and Richard. The 1933 work showed compatibility, not identity.

Legendary specificity: suffocation in bedding by Forest and Dighton at Richard’s command, followed by secret reburial. More’s scenario is influential but was composed decades later.

The place today

Begin in the Bloody Tower, but explain that the familiar name and room associated with the boys belong to later interpretation. Fifteenth-century royal apartments changed and partly disappeared. Do not place a recreated bedroom where a documented cell is claimed.

Move to the White Tower. Film the bones plaque and the space south of the building. Say: “Tradition connects the discovery with a stair; curators regard the exact point as disputed.” It is a useful image of an inscription manufacturing confidence.

The Abbey urn stands among royal burials. Do not promise an unrestricted close shot: the chapel may have operational limits and filming is controlled. Describe it as a memorial holding attributed remains, not a confirmed grave.

Research bibliography

S0064. Historic Royal Palaces, Chapel Royal of St Peter ad Vincula — current access context for Tower chapels and the constraints of working worship spaces.

S0066. Historic Royal Palaces, The Princes in the Tower: murdered or survived? — 1483 chronology, Mancini, More, suspects, Warbeck and the bones.

S0067. Historic Royal Palaces, Charles II and the Discovery… in 1674 — find location, treatment of remains, urn and Restoration politics.

S0068. Tanner and Wright, Recent Investigations regarding the Fate of the Princes in the Tower — published report of the 1933 examination.

S0069. Westminster Abbey, A History of Royal Burials and Funerals — official cautious designation of the “supposed” remains.

S0070. The Royal Family, Edward V — protectorate, postponed coronation, illegitimacy and disappearance.

S0071. The National Archives, The Wars of the Roses — archival political chronology of 1483.

S0072. University of Leicester, Female-line family tree — mitochondrial inheritance and comparator genealogy.

S0073. Historic Royal Palaces, The Tower of London as a prison — royal apartments, the 1674 discovery and the 1933 age assessment.