The Fate of the Princes:
A Personal View
If, at the terrible Day of Judgment, it turns out that
Buckingham had no idea what had happened to the boys,
then I for one will be aghast.
I have always believed, rightly or wrongly, that the fate of Edward V and his brother Richard is connected with the position in the Succession of the Duke of Buckingham.
Buckingham knew very well that on the junior (Lancaster) side of Edward III's family his claim to the throne was at least as good as Henry Tudor's. Like his contemporaries, Buckingham was well aware of the great attractiveness of the idea of the Union of York and Lancaster through marriage of the heir of Lancaster with Elizabeth of York. This was not a new idea conceived by Elizabeth Wydevill and Margaret Beaufort after Richard III's accession. (Fancy any modern researcher buying that one, given the complexity of some of the intriguing that went on at court !!). As a relatively simple idea it would also have been a rather old one-- which in all probability appeared shockingly soon after the death of Edward IV.
All that Buckingham had to do was:
Phase 1.....Destroy the Princes, then
Phase 2......Destroy Richard III, then
Phase 3..... Marry Elizabeth of York*
........ and he would be home and dry, protected and secured upon the throne by the very same forces (the popularity of the Union idea) which later did preserve Henry VII--- with the pretender Henry Tudor holed up on the wrong side of the Channel with no longer a hope and his every aspiration demolished.
And so, far from being the enigmatic Buckingham of certain historians' estimation, whose movements and motives appear to them to be shrouded in mystery, the real Buckingham, a down to earth individual if ever there was one, just simply got on with it.
At this time Buckingham was of course part of the Woodville/Beaufort/Tudor conspiracy which had nominated Henry Tudor as its head. However, if Buckingham did have other ideas, and was after the crown for himself, then of course none of the others would have known he was. It was comprehensively recognised, I think, that the York/Lancaster Union idea and marriage to Elizabeth of York was essential to the salvation of every male horse in the running (in the event, what else could possibly have preserved a no-hoper like Henry VII on the throne?), and it is a sobering truth that the Princes were standing squarely in the way of this. After all, what would have become of all their efforts, if Edward V, legitimised by the same Act which would have been needed to legitimise Elizabeth, remained alive and simply pulled rank on the lot of them? With such effort, and such expenditure, as was required to launch the rebellion of October 1483, can we remotely imagine that this faction would not have liquidated the Princes while they still had access to them? And of course the only means of access they had, was Buckingham who was still Constable of England.
I believe that Buckingham's Phase 1 was carried out in September or early October 1483, either with Richard's knowledge (where Richard thought he was doing it for him), or more probably while Richard was in a period of just allowing the matter to ride, to see if the public's attention toward the boys waned so that he could either dispatch them more quietly later, or, (no doubt with his Catholic conscience in mind), not at all if he could help it. The murders may have been carried out either in Buckingham's presence in London (we do not have records of his every move during this period), or by his agents.
Henry Tudor may also have ordered their liquidation at this point---not realising that he wasn't really in command-- and this order may be what Elizabeth Wydevill later found out about early in his reign, when they had an almighty rift which resulted in his shutting her away in a nunnery for the rest of her life.
Buckingham's actions here would certainly explain a suspicion I've always had, that Richard's outburst upon his discovery of the rebellion ran rather deeper and further than you'd expect for so brief a friendship, and also deeper and further than the more 'usual' reactions of other monarchs who have found themselves facing rebellions.
You can almost hear Buckingham exclaiming in his mind to Richard, "Right--Phase 1--I've murdered the Princes, in your reign and after you have just deposed them. What are you going to do about it ?!" And you can almost see Richard hearing that!
Now key in Richard's reaction! Yes... he realised the enormity of it-- and went ballistic. He wrote from Lincoln to his Lord Chancellor, calling Buckingham "the most untrue creature living", and saying, "there was never a false traitor better purveyed for".
As for Morton...well between you and me I don't really think that Morton ever was instrumental in determining Buckingham's actions. The man probably tried to get Buckingham to switch allegiance from Richard to Tudor without realising that Buckingham was already well on with his own designs.
Thankfully, Phase 2, the overthrow of Richard himself, which Buckingham swiftly and directly moved onto (and from his point of view, why not?) -- failed.
By the way, an interesting little spin-off of this theory is that one would expect Buckingham, not Tudor, to have been proclaimed King at Salisbury at the outset of his rebellion. Although I've never heard anything to that effect, it would be interesting to watch out for any evidence of this cropping up in the future.
You know, Richard's defenders are frequently accused of being self-deluded and simply incapable of facing facts. I think that at least in the matter of the theory above, this criticism would be wholly wrong. After all, Richard's situation in this theory is absolutely down to earth, and Buckingham could not have pursued a simpler and more direct course to his objective than the one shown above if such a course had appeared over his head written on a big board illuminated by a neon light. Is it a coincidence that this course also happens to be the one his actions actually mapped out during his last days? Course its not. Also, I cannot really see how Richard's critics in general and "traditionalist" historians in particular can fairly avoid accusations of anti-Ricardian bias for as long as there is an alternative theory of the death of the Princes which is realistic.
I do not believe that the bones in Westminster Abbey are those of the Princes. It would have been much easier for Buckingham to just escort the Princes from the Tower, on the obvious pretext that Richard, now on his Royal Progress, wanted them with him, and then murder them outside London**,than it would have been to needlessly and noisily remove tons of rubble to bury them under some Tower staircase under the very noses of hundreds of resident working Tower staff.
We must remember that this thing happened in the real world! And therefore (in the best Yorkshire traditions), we've got to get real to figure it out!
I have always had a commonsense suspicion that the place to look for the real remains of the Princes is inside a tomb in a church. If you want to dispose of two bodies, then why make a noise and commotion in an open space in the Tower compound, under the very noses of so many, when you can lock yourself up in a chapel, with locked doors behind you ,stone walls and the Authority of some great personage to protect you, and dispose of them in a concealed vault or tomb? Moreover, if anybody ever asks, you were doing renovation work and if anybody ever digs around in there again and finds bodies, then so what? Its a church! It has tombs and its full of bodies! It’s supposed to be! Also, of course, this solution, whereby the bodies are reverently and appropriately laid to rest, would greatly sooth the Catholic conscience of the murderer---no small factor for him to live with in those days.
Obvious. And much easier and more practical to do!
By 1500, Henry VII was so tired of rebellions being instigated against him, in which one or other of the Yorkist children would be impersonated, that I believe he concocted the Tyrell confession and then placed some bones under the staircase in order to validate that confession. A passage was included in the Tyrell story which deliberately introduced doubt into the matter of whether the bodies had been subsequently removed, so that Henry might not appear to be behaving in a manner deserving of criticism or incredulity if he only bothered to look for the bones at some later date when it might have become urgent enough to do so.
Then, he waited for the next rebellion, upon the immediate eve of which he would then produce the bones and so disarm the said rebellion.
But after 1500 it just so happened that no further rebellions occurred. And so, the bones simply remained, (where they were eventually discovered by workmen in 1674).
Well, this what I believe about all this. For better or for worse, nothing else really explains the various questions surrounding the Tyrell story, or the behaviour of the various characters in the matter.
But that in turn, of course, doesn't mean that I'm right! Don't you just love a good mystery?!
---Michael Alan Marshall