Original subtitles

Summer 1483,

the Tower of London.

Two young boys are about to become victims of one of the greatest

unsolved crimes of British history.

King Edward IV is dead.

His 12-year-old son is about to be crowned, but instead,

the story goes, he and his younger brother are murdered in their beds.

This mystery will endure.

What really happened to the Princes in the Tower?

In this series, I'm reinvestigating some of the most dramatic

and brutal chapters in British history.

It wasn't just one generation, it was three generations

losing their lives - bam, bam, bam.

These stories form part of our national mythology.

They harbour mysteries that have intrigued us for centuries.

It's chilling to think that this could actually be

evidence in a murder investigation.

But with the passage of time, we have new ways to unlock

their secrets, using scientific advances and a modern perspective.

It's a horrible psychosexual form of torture. Absolutely.

I'm going to uncover forgotten witnesses.

I'm going to re-examine old evidence and follow new clues

to get closer to the truth.

It is one of the great British mysteries.

It was one of those moments, I'm afraid, for a historian,

that makes the hair stand up on the back of your neck.

CROW CAWS

The story of the Princes in the Tower

is as familiar as a fairy-tale.

Two innocent boys murdered by their evil Uncle Richard,

so he could seize the throne for himself.

500 years ago, it was in this very building

that the two young princes, Edward and Richard, were last seen alive.

After that, they disappeared from the historical record.

I'd like to know if they were murdered,

and if so, who was responsible?

As a historian, royal history is my home turf.

I'm well aware that when it comes to the

Princes in the Tower,

Richard III has hogged the limelight.

Richard III...

Shakespeare portrayed him as the biggest baddie of British history.

Beyond reasonable doubt, the individual exhumed in September

2012 is indeed Richard III, the last Plantagenet King of England.

But the discovery of his remains under a Leicester car park in 2012

fuelled a passionate campaign to reclaim his reputation.

He was buried in Leicester Cathedral with stately ceremony.

Here in a cathedral, history meets the present...

I find that there's something rather awkward being glossed over

here in this celebration of Richard III.

Yes, he was King for two years,

but together, a lot of people would

tell you that he murdered his own

nephews, and they were just children.

So, although facts about them are hard to come by,

it's the story of the Princes that I want to explore

and reclaim.

Edward and Richard were just 12 and 9

when they were supposedly killed.

To piece together their story, I think

I need to try to get beyond my preconceptions and,

like a lot of people, when you say the words

"the Princes in the Tower", what comes into my mind is this image.

It's by the Victorian painter John Everett Millais

and it shows the little boys in the last moments of their lives,

just before they're going to be killed.

It's a painting that tugs at the heartstrings.

But really, it's a painting about Victorian values

and about the innocence of childhood.

Millais shows them as archetypes in a fairy-tale and it really has

very little relationship to the historical truth.

To discover who these royal boys really were,

I need to understand the world in which they lived.

They were born into one of the most violent periods of British history -

the Wars of the Roses, a decades-long fight over the English

throne between two factions of the royal family - Lancaster and York.

It had already taken a bloody toll

when Lancastrian King Henry VI

was killed by Edward IV,

making him the first Yorkist King.

Edward was ruthless.

He murdered his own brother, George, for betraying him, but Richard

he made Duke of Gloucester, giving him power in the North of England.

The Princes' father, Edward IV, was a notorious philanderer.

And on top of that, nobody liked his wife.

As King, he was supposed to have married a virginal foreign

princess to forge a new international alliance for England.

Instead, he'd married Elizabeth Woodville,

the widow of a Lancastrian.

The English nobility are jealous that the Woodvilles got riches

and titles.

For her part, Elizabeth Woodville did keep the bargain -

she gave the King what she was supposed to do, ten children,

including two all-important surviving male heirs.

So this is the backdrop against which the Princes are born,

the Wars of the Roses, an unpopular, powerful mother.

The stage is set for scenes of high drama.

From the moment of his birth, the eldest Prince, Edward, was destined

to inherit the throne and secure the dynasty of the House of York.

In the cut-throat climate of the Wars of the Roses,

he offered hope for stability and healing.

He was extremely valuable, but equally vulnerable.

This is where young Edward grew up, in his very own castle.

Most sons of the nobility were sent away from their families

at the age of seven to learn the skills required for life at court.

Edward was moved here to Ludlow in Shropshire at just three.

His whole household was dedicated to protecting him

and preparing him one day to rule the kingdom.

Though few records survive,

I've tracked down a document which demonstrates his worth.

Here are the records of things that

were paid out for his wardrobe.

Here, a payment is made for the making of a long

gown of crimson velvet.

There's a payment here for a doublet of black velvet,

furred with a tawny fox. Ooh! Here, he's had...

I think that's a jacket made out of cloth of gold.

This is expensive stuff.

This shows that Edward, at least, is no ordinary child.

In the eyes of the Church in medieval England,

you were a child until the age of 14.

At that point, a girl should be ready to marry

and bear children, a boy to fight and die in battle.

For Edward, it meant being ready to be King.

Edward IV entrusted the task of schooling his son

and successor to the Queen's brother, Anthony Woodville.

Young master...

I love that feeling of walking where he must have walked. He was here.

I wonder what it was like for young Edward, growing up here,

away from his parents and his younger brother Richard,

destined for a future he couldn't escape.

Only one historian has ever attempted

a biography of Edward's short life.

Nice to see you. Very pleased to meet you.

Got your own book there. Yes. Fantastic!

Given that Edward was three

when he came to live here with Anthony Woodville,

is it fair to say that Woodville was probably more of a father figure

to him than his actual father?

Yes, I think he probably was.

He was not just a distant overseer,

he was always in the household with the Prince.

And you've been able to recreate his time here. What was it like?

Well, we know Edward IV wrote a set of ordinances for the household,

which regulated the Prince's timetable.

"So he shall arise every morning at a convenient hour..."

Which was six o'clock. That's not very convenient, in my view!

It says here that little Edward is going to have his breakfast

immediately after his mass.

He's going to spend the day "in virtuous learning",

so this sounds like a very formal... Yes.

..structured, rigorous way of life. Sounds like a little King, really.

Yes, and then Edward ordained that "no person, man or woman,

"may be a customary swearer,

"brawler, backbyter or use words of rybauldrye in the presence

"of our sayd sonne." I like it that they explicitly

say, "No swearing in the Prince's presence."

And then, after lunch, he has disportes. Disportes.

Now, that doesn't really mean leisure, does it?

No, it means athletic activity -

riding and hawking and fighting.

And this is training to be a warrior. Yes.

He had a special set of armour, which was made for him.

His father was first in battle at 13, is that right? Mm.

This is clearly not a normal upbringing, even at the time.

It's just hard to imagine a little boy having all of this

expectation placed upon him.

He had a dozen years or more when he mattered

and was politically significant.

He knew what he was going to be.

He was a Prince, expecting to become

a King, and his future was set out.

Michael, what's your view?

Do you think that Richard III is guilty or not? Yes!

Of course he's guilty!

One of the fascinating things about this chapter of history is

just how fragmentary the sources are.

There's very little in the way of hard evidence, but there is this.

It's an account by Dominic Mancini,

an Italian scholar who was visiting England.

And this is pretty close to an eyewitness description

of the events of 1483, the summer that the Princes disappeared.

Now, the original of Mancini's work

is in a library in France.

It's pretty amazing.

It's also amazing to think that this document was only

discovered in the 1930s. Imagine the thrill of coming across that.

This is the original Latin. It's been written out by a scribe,

and Mancini has put some little notes of his own in the margin.

Mancini probably met the 12-year-old Edward.

He clearly saw him as a King in the making.

"He had such dignity in his whole person,

"and in his face such charm that however much they might gaze,

"he never worried the eyes of beholders."

Because Mancini was a foreigner

and because he wasn't that close to the main players, I think that he

has a bit of distance upon events and perhaps therefore some

integrity, and I think it is a

source that's worth taking seriously.

Mancini recounts the extraordinary events of the summer of 1483,

when Edward's life is suddenly thrown into turmoil.

Everything had been about preparing him for this moment,

but it came sooner, I think, than anyone was expecting.

Give it to me.

On the 9th of April 1483,

King Edward IV dies suddenly after a short illness.

God save the King.

Long live the King.

All eyes turn to his eldest son,

who's now King Edward V.

CHURCH BELLS

A few years later, Edward would have been seen as an adult

and this story would have been very different,

but he's just 12 when he succeeds to the throne.

Now, in medieval England, the

government is a personal monarchy.

Everything revolves around the King.

I think of him as being like the sun in a solar system

and all the other nobles are like the planets,

circling around him, vying for favours.

But there's a big flaw in this system of government,

and that's when the King dies and we have this moment of succession.

A power vacuum opened up.

It's like it's the moment of the greatest danger.

And when Edward IV dies, there's a really big problem

because little Edward, his son, is only 12

and he can be on the throne, but he can't really make decisions.

Someone's got to advise him.

And into this power vacuum step

all the members of the council,

the late King's advisers.

They're looking around at each other and sizing each other up

because they know whoever controls the little King actually

controls the country.

To understand what happens next,

I'm going to rely on Mancini.

Mancini tells us that in the event of his early death,

"Edward IV appointed as protector of his children

"and realm his brother, Richard, Duke of Gloucester."

If Edward appointed his brother Richard to be

the protector of his children, he must really have trusted this man.

But not everyone believes Edward is best protected by Richard alone.

While Richard is in York, on the 20th of April,

the royal council meet in London.

Those most opposed to Richard having power over Edward are the

Queen's family, the Woodvilles.

They were afraid that "if Richard took unto himself the crown,

"or even governed alone, they would suffer death,

"or at least be ejected from their high estate."

So, were the Queen and her family, the Woodvilles, trying to

protect her son from Richard,

or was it the other way around?

Was Richard trying to protect little Edward, his nephew,

from a Woodville coup?

This real tug-of-war is now going to begin

and it's going to seal young Edward's fate.

The Woodvilles win the argument.

The royal council decide that Richard should not be

the young King's sole protector.

They agree to crown Edward within a fortnight, on the 4th of May,

a symbolic step that would further diminish Richard's power.

So, on the 9th of April 1483,

Edward IV dies.

By the 6th of July, Richard III is on the throne.

So, what I want to know is,

what happened in those few vital weeks?

On the 24th of April, two weeks after his father's death,

Edward sets off for London

to prepare for his coronation,

under the protection of Anthony Woodville.

So, Edward was in limbo.

He was travelling from one role,

being heir in waiting,

to another, being King. He was stepping into the future.

Next, though, would come the fork in the road of his life.

A few days later, after learning of the royal council's decision,

Richard leaves York with an army of 6,000 men to intercept young Edward.

He catches up with him in Buckinghamshire, at Stony Stratford.

The house I'm looking for used to be a coaching inn, but not that one.

Edward spent a night here, in what is now someone's home.

I can see a plaque. I think it might be this one.

SHE KNOCKS ON DOOR

Hello. Are you Kelly? Yes! You are! Hello! Hi! Thank you for having me!

Did you know when you came to live here about it having been where...

We did know. ..Edward V had stayed? Yes, we did.

We knew some of the history. We didn't realise quite how

passionate everyone is about this house.

So, this is such a significant place in Edward's life,

cos he was brought here by his tutor, his guardian,

his uncle, and, well, really, his stand-in father,

Anthony Woodville, on his way to go to London to be crowned King.

But Anthony Woodville went off up the road,

in order to spend the evening with Richard,

and as a result of that evening together,

Richard decided he was going to move against Anthony Woodville.

The following morning, he had him arrested.

So, Edward sat here in this coaching inn, unaware of what was happening.

Of course,

it's true that his fate had always been in the hands of other

people, but now this would be made really clear to him

because that night, he says goodbye to one uncle,

Uncle Anthony Woodville,

the next morning, his world has completely changed.

He's now placed in the custody of his other uncle, Uncle Richard.

There are two ways of reading this event.

Supporters of Uncle Richard would say,

"Well, he's doing the right thing here.

"These Woodvilles are a bad lot.

"He's taking his nephew into custody for his own protection."

But the other reading of this is that Richard has

decided that the Woodvilles are a threat to himself,

an existential threat, and that he needs to act.

In this period, during the Wars of the Roses, there's no...

..there's no sort of peaceful co-existence. It's dog eat dog.

Either you are on the make,

winning power, using violence,

or...you're toast.

Your enemies are going to eat you.

For Edward, it's bad enough being parted from his uncle,

Anthony Woodville, but it's going to get worse...

..because Anthony Woodville is now put in prison and is executed.

Edward will, in fact, never see him again.

The next day, the 30th of April,

Richard and his army escort Edward to London.

Fearing for the safety of her family,

the Queen, Elizabeth Woodville,

takes sanctuary at Westminster Abbey with her youngest son.

When they arrive in the capital,

Richard takes Edward directly to the Tower of London.

His coronation, planned for the 4th of May, is postponed.

So, the Tower of London, in the 15th century, wasn't just a prison

and a place of execution, like we think of it today.

It was also a fantastic royal palace, the place where

a King was traditionally got ready for his coronation,

which was now definitely going to happen on the 22nd of June.

And there's one piece of evidence, if it's genuine, which would suggest

that preparations for Edward's coronation were still on track...

This is all very high-security.

..and the British Museum has some rare gold coins,

which were long believed to have been made for Edward V.

Hello, Barrie! Thank you for having me.

Welcome to the Department of Coins and Medals.

The Department of Coins and Medals.

Minted in the weeks while he awaited his coronation,

for some people, they're proof that Richard had no

intention of murdering his nephew and stealing the throne.

Ooh!

So, here, we've got all the British medieval coins. English here.

English, specifically. English. Edward IV and V.

This is our little case.

The trays... Edward IV, Edward IV...

And here we've got the Edward V tray.

Can I take it right out? Yes. Take... Just take...

Pull it carefully in both hands.

Look at that!

Look at them sparkle!

What a beautiful thing!

Are these actually Edward V coins? Not one of them is Edward V.

Not one of them is Edward V?! SHE LAUGHS

What's actually going on here, then?

These are coins that were for a long time thought to be Edward V. Yeah.

They were coins that name a king called Edward, but they also

have a mint mark that relates to Richard Duke of Gloucester.

If you look at it, there's a boar's head... There's something there.

..followed by the letter E for Edward.

OK, I'm going to have to take your word, that's the head of the boar.

I promise.

The assumption was that these coins belonged to the period

when Edward V was regarded as King, and Gloucester was Lord Protector.

And did the British Museum think this for a really long time?

Probably for over a century and a half.

The analysis that made it clear they aren't only happened in the 1990s.

Yeah. Yeah. So it's my fault these haven't been changed.

But it's quite useful to have this group... I know, it's...

..in this way and so one can have this sort of conversation.

And there has been controversy.

People don't like the fact that these aren't Edward V coins.

So, why do you think that these are not Edward V coins?

A very good expert in coins did a complete

study of Richard III's coinage,

including the Edward V material, as it was then thought to be,

and he was able to demonstrate

quite clearly that the coins that name Edward,

but that have the boar's head mark of Richard, Duke of Gloucester,

were issued at the same time as, or even after,

some of the coins that name Richard.

So, during those 11 weeks when Edward had inherited but wasn't

yet crowned, they just kept turning old Edward IV coins until... Yeah.

..the situation was resolved and Richard was in charge. Yes.

So, isn't it interesting that people could have looked at these

coins and thought, "Yes,

"these support the argument that they did intend to crown Edward V"?

For hundreds of years,

people thought that the coins told that story.

Yes, it's a question of how you interpret the information,

how you look at the evidence and how you reinterpret it.

Mm. And they were not necessarily fooled...

No, no, there's a good reason for thinking what they thought.

It's an entirely logical deduction and inference from the coinage.

Yeah. It just happens to be a wrong one.

So, this doesn't tell a clear story, but that's just...

..indicative of this whole slippery, shape-shifty period of history.

I like the way that nothing is what it seems.

Barrie, what do you think?

Was Richard III guilty of murdering the Princes? Oh, absolutely.

"Absolutely," Barrie says. No question about that.

The coins may not help decipher Richard's intent to crown Edward,

but I've tracked down a remarkable letter.

By the middle of June, tension between Richard

and Edward V's mother, Elizabeth Woodville -

still in sanctuary at Westminster - is escalating.

Here it is. Uncle Richard, the Duke of Gloucester,

writes to ask the York citizens to assist him against the Queen.

And he says to them,

"We heartily pray you to come unto us in London with all

"the money that you've got to aid and assist us against the Queen.

"Her blood, adherents and affinity

"daily do intend to murder and utterly destroy us

"and the old royal blood of this realm."

What's actually going on here?

Is Richard doing his job, asking for help to protect little Edward,

as Lord Protector?

Or is he asking for help to protect

himself and his own ambition?

Within days, Richard convinced the royal council that Edward

should not be crowned without his younger brother present,

and, as Mancini tells us, he makes a decisive move.

"When the Queen saw herself besieged,

"she surrendered their son,

"trusting that the boy should be restored after the coronation."

The heir and the spare are now secure in the Tower,

but the following day, the coronation is postponed again.

And, goodness me, the plot is going to thicken!

The next unexpected event is going to happen in here.

Aha!

"Here stood Paul's Cross".

This was the spot of a famous preaching place.

It's where people gave public sermons

and sort of gave out official information

and crowds of thousands of people would gather to listen.

On the 22nd of June, a preacher

called Dr Shaw dropped a bombshell.

He says that way back when Edward IV had got married to

Elizabeth Woodville, he was already

"legally contracted to another wife,"

and the marriage to Elizabeth Woodville was null and void,

which meant "that their entire offspring,"

Mancini says, "was unworthy of the kingship."

So, young Edward, the King to be...

..he was illegitimate. He was what they would have called a bastard.

Imagine what young Edward must have thought

when he heard about this rumour.

He'd gone from about to be King to being a bastard in a single stroke.

Rumour had it that Richard was behind Reverend Shaw's

shattering pronouncement, but we just don't know the truth.

Here's a pass. Thank you.

What's certain is that once the Princes had

lost their right to the throne, Richard was next in line.

Some people think this was all part of Richard's evil masterplan,

others that he had to be persuaded into it reluctantly,

but either way, on the 6th of July, it wasn't Edward but his uncle

who went to Westminster Abbey to be crowned King Richard III.

As Richard took the throne, the two Princes were still in the Tower.

In 1483, remember, there was that marvellous royal palace

within the walls of the Tower, with rich rooms.

And that's where Edward and Richard were housed.

It also had beautiful gardens, where the boys were seen playing together.

And then, what happened next took place in this building,

which the Victorians renamed the Bloody Tower.

Mancini says that all the attendants

who had waited upon the King

were debarred access to him.

"He and his brother were 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."

And despite centuries of investigation and speculation,

nobody really knows what happened to them.

There's only one thing we can be completely sure about, which is

that by the end of the summer,

the beginning of the autumn of 1483, the Princes were gone.

Richard III's reign was short-lived.

Just two years after taking the throne,

he was killed by Henry VII

at the Battle of Bosworth.

The Wars of the Roses ended

and the Tudor dynasty began.

Elizabeth Woodville endured.

She engineered a marriage between one of her daughters

and the new Tudor King,

creating another Woodville Queen.

I get the feeling that at the dawn of this new era,

the sorry business of the Princes was part of a painful chapter

that everyone was eager to forget.

Mancini couldn't explain what had happened to them,

but years later, an account emerged that appeared to solve the mystery.

Ooh! Look at this!

This is a copy, sent to me by the

British Library, of an early printed

version they've got of Thomas More's book about Richard III.

It was this piece of writing that inspired Shakespeare to

write his play about Richard III.

Now, More wasn't an eyewitness to the events of 1483,

when the Princes disappear.

More's producing his work in the 1510s

and he draws upon a key piece of evidence from 1502.

A man called James Tyrrell was in prison,

and there he confessed that he had been told by Richard III to

kill the Princes and he had delegated the job to two

assassins, whose names were Forrest and Dighton.

Using the detail from Tyrrell's confession, More puts

together his famous description of exactly what happened to the boys.

"Sir James Tyrrell devised that they should be murdered in their beds,

"to the execution whereof he appointed Miles Forrest."

"A fellow fleshed in murder before time.

"To him, he joined one John Dighton.

"This Miles Forrest and John Dighton about midnight,

"the sely children lying in their beds,

"came into the chamber and suddenly lapped them up

"among the clothes, so bewrapped them and entangled them,

"keeping down by force the feather bed and pillows

"hard unto their mouths...

"..that within a while, smored and stifled, their breath failing..."

"..They gave up to God their innocent souls

"into the joys of Heaven,

"leaving to the tormentors their bodies dead in the bed."

However many times I read that, it's still quite shocking.

Now, some people would say that More only wrote this as a piece of

propaganda for the Tudors, to please Henry VIII,

whose family had got rid of Richard III.

Other people argue that it's not about Richard III at all and it's

purely a sort of technical exercise in essay writing,

a sort of argument against tyranny.

But the degree of circumstantial detail

he gives about the murder convinces some people that this could be

a genuine source of information.

Thomas More tells us the murderers buried the boys'

bodies at the foot of a staircase in the Tower.

In 1674, 200 years later,

builders excavating near the same stairs discovered a wooden box,

containing two small skeletons.

The then King, Charles II, believed these were the Princes

and had them interred, with proper

ceremony, here in Westminster Abbey.

This is where coronations actually happen.

Politicians, Prime Ministers...

..Edward I...

Now we're getting to the really special bits.

I think it's in here.

So, here they are.

Possibly!

It's really tempting to believe it's them

because it says so here on the stone.

"Edward V, King of England, and Richard, Duke of York,

"confined in the Tower of London and suffocated."

And it seems really fitting that

this is about as deep into the abbey as you can get.

I've come through doors and arches and corridors and layers and I've

gone past all the great kings and the great queens and the statesmen,

and the Princes are concealed here at the back.

Like the truth about their story,

the remains of the Princes,

if indeed these are the remains of the Princes,

are hidden.

In 300 years,

royal permission has only once been granted for the urn to be opened.

In the 1930s, before radiocarbon dating

or DNA profiling,

two scientists examined the bones.

This is their report.

It's fascinating.

Could these be the bones of the little boys?

It's chilling to think that this could actually be

evidence in a murder investigation.

I'm not sure what to make of it,

but one of the scientists who examined Richard III's remains,

after they were found under the car park, might be able to help.

Hello! Hello. How are you?

Thanks for helping us out with this piece of work.

I've got some serious reservations about this report,

so do you want me to take you through...

Yes. ..some of the issues? Yes, yes, yes. OK.

The first several pages are all about Richard III killing

the Princes in the Tower.

They don't actually come to examining the remains

until page 15. So, this is the lower jaw of the younger child,

"whom I shall now presume to call Richard."

And then they go and call the other one Edward.

So, within a few paragraphs, they've decided they're going to

start calling these Edward and Richard,

so it feels very much like they've got an idea of what

they want the answer to be and then they're kind of making it fit.

Do you think it's fair to say that these are the bones of two

youngish people? That's completely fair.

They are convinced there's evidence of suffocation.

They're saying there's bloodstain on the bones of one of the skulls.

Yes. The interesting thing about the stain is they do

talk about how in the urn are three sets of iron nails. Oh!

They could have caused the stains. Really quite easily. Disappointing.

But he says here, "I have no doubt it was a bloodstain!"

And they draw on Shakespeare, not a well-known forensic specialist,

as the reason why they believe this is true.

"See how the blood is settled in his face," and a little later,

"but see his face is black and full of blood."

It must be true. I read it in a poem!

That's right. So, if these bones came into your laboratory today,

what would you do with them? Where would you start?

Let's radiocarbon date them,

because for all we know, these are Roman, Anglo-Saxon...

They could be completely the wrong period.

And then one of the things you can do is you can use DNA analysis.

We have Richard III's whole genome now. Of course, you do!

Richard III is their uncle,

so we could look for what looks like a 25%... Match. ..sharing. Oh!

I mean, would you actually like to do that?

Personally, I feel reservations.

I don't like the idea of messing with people who are at rest.

There's huge ethical considerations because I think to actually go and

disturb a set of remains, you have to have a decent research question.

We'd have to be absolutely clear with ourselves why

we wanted to know. Mm. Yeah, why do you want to know?

And curiosity's not enough. It's not.

And if you were able to prove that they were

the remains of the Princes in the Tower, where would that leave us?

It would show that they hadn't left the Tower -

that would imply that what Thomas More says about Richard III

was true, but it wouldn't prove it, would it?

It doesn't tell you who killed them. Do you find it all a bit slippery?

It is, and frustratingly slippery.

And this is not the only story about what might have

happened to the Princes.

Yes. I've got something to show you in my office. OK.

KNOCKS ON DOOR

Right, let me show you something. It's a box of...

Bones. A box of bones!

What else would you have in your office?! Of course!

Well, normally, they're kept in the bone lab,

but they're about to go back to Sudeley Castle. Oh, yes?

So, they say, "Bones discovered in the 1980s near the Dungeon Tower."

So, Richard III owned Sudeley Castle.

Bones have been discovered and so people start to think, "Ooh!"

"Are these the Princes?" "Are these the Princes?"

Hello! Loads of them.

So, there were four sets of remains that we

sent off for radiocarbon dating.

And? 18th and 19th century. Oh... So...yeah.

Well, we can say for sure these are not the lost Princes of the Tower.

These are NOT the lost Princes of the Tower.

I think the reason you get sent random bones is because people look

at this in terms of a murder mystery and that someone,

someday will solve the crime.

I don't think that's the right way to look at it.

I think of the little Princes as being like the Romanovs

in the 20th century, people who were killed for political reasons

and whose fate remained unknown, cos it was

better for the people in power that that's the way it fell out.

It's much better to let sleeping dogs lie.

It's really tempting to look at that urn in Westminster Abbey

and think, "Yes! That must contain the remains of the Princes,"

but it's a question that's wide open, really.

In terms of their actual physical human remains,

all that we can say about the Princes is that they're missing.

They're not necessarily murdered. They're missing persons.

I know, for some people, this lack of definitive proof means

there just aren't grounds to condemn Richard III as a child-killer.

The Richard III Society is dedicated to reclaiming

the reputation of a much-maligned King.

Matthew Lewis. Hello, Lucy. You look very studious, there.

Now, then. Let me ask you a question, Matt.

You don't believe that Richard III was guilty, do you?

What's your argument?

I think simply that the case for the prosecution isn't watertight.

You can't prove that Richard III did it.

What we have is two boys who disappear from view in 1483.

We don't really have any strong

record that they were killed.

I don't believe the bodies in Westminster Abbey,

if they were tested, would turn out to be the Princes in the Tower.

And I think we have other potential suspects, if we believe they were

murdered, but I think we also have really compelling theories that they

may well have survived beyond 1485 and beyond Richard III's reign.

So, if this is a murder and if your guy didn't do it, Richard III,

who are the other suspects you'd like to bring to the table?

There are several individuals that we can point directly at,

but the first of them, and perhaps the most widely accepted, is

Henry Stafford, the Duke of Buckingham.

Henry Stafford appears at the right-hand side of Richard

as he moves to become King Richard III,

but by October 1483 he's instigating rebellion against

Richard III, I think, to pursue his own claim to the throne of England.

So, does Henry Stafford do away with the Princes

as part of his efforts to discredit Richard and dislodge him?

There are several sources that point to him.

So, this was found as part of a collection of documents

as late as the 1980s, written probably in the early 1500s.

It says that the sons of Edward IV were put to death

"by the vise of the Duke of Buckingham."

"Vise" is a strange medieval word that can be used to mean

"the advice", but it can also mean

"the device" of Henry Stafford, so it could

have been his plot, his plan to do away with the Princes in the Tower.

Nobody had really looked at that till the 1980s?

It's in a collection of random documents to do with heraldry,

here at the College of Arms, and someone just came across it.

It's a really good example of how some of these key pieces of evidence

can just be lying around somewhere hidden, not yet being turned up.

Interesting.

So, we've looked at the Duke of Buckingham. This is...

Well, this is Henry... Henry VII, isn't it?

So, believing that he's in any way involved means that they were

alive in 1485, and when he becomes King, he finds them alive.

Right, so in this case, the Princes survive into the reign

of Richard III, and Henry Tudor does them in later.

He does, because he has to, to be able to take the throne himself.

What's interesting is almost anyone who is in power

and in London in the early to mid 1480s could have had

an interest in doing away with the Princes.

Now, you personally don't believe that they were even killed, do you?

I don't. What do you think happened to them, Matt?

I think that there's a strong likelihood that at least

one of them was moved to the North of England,

into one of Richard's castles, packed with men loyal to him

and who he could trust to look after these Princes, to keep them

secret and keep them out of the way,

so they couldn't be used against Richard.

We do have two pretenders who come along to threaten Henry VII,

the first Tudor King.

The first one that comes along in 1487 is known to

history as Lambert Simnel.

So, this would be the actual Prince having survived?

He's the right age, he's 16 at this point, good age to be crowned

and to lead an army.

So, if this was the older boy coming back as the pretender,

Lambert Simnel, what possibly happened to his younger brother?

The second pretender, who arrives in the early 1490s, is Perkin Warbeck.

And he comes to a sorry end, doesn't he? He does.

He has this kind of glittering career in the early 1490s,

convincing the crowned heads of Europe that he's really

Prince Richard, that he should be King Richard IV,

but he ends up being captured

as part of an invasion of England,

he's executed in 1499. So, it's your belief that the boys survived...

I believe that they survived beyond 1485 and went on to challenge

Henry VII and that he dealt with that challenge by covering it up.

You see, I believe that you've done your research,

I just worry that you've been attracted to an exciting

story with a heroic narrator and an unexpected ending.

That's my fear for you, Matt.

It's definitely an interesting story, if it's true,

but I think the key here is following the evidence.

What I just worry about is the idea

that you and a lot of other people

still treat this as a detective story

and we want somebody to hang a "guilty" label on.

And that's human nature.

It isn't necessarily the way that history works, though.

But it's so interesting because the sources say such ambiguous things.

You and I could pick up the same piece of original source material

and come to a completely different conclusion. Yeah.

There are few stories where things are that ambiguous and have that

much space in them to investigate further

and to feel like there must be more to learn.

One thing I agree with Matt about is the ambiguity of the evidence.

"Sir James Tyrrell devised that they should be murdered in their beds."

Maybe new clues will come to light,

but until then, I think the key to this mystery is to

interrogate the sources we have.

"To the execution whereof he appointed Miles Forrest,

"to him he joined one John Dighton."

Thomas More's account includes such specific

detail about the night of the Princes' murder.

I want to know if what he tells us can be verified

and if More can be trusted.

So, this is Buckfast Abbey. It's my first visit.

Hello. Can I go on in?

Thank you.

I'm here to find out about some

exciting new research into More's

text, but first, I want to see

an extraordinary religious relic.

Thomas More was a devout Catholic.

Henry VIII had him

executed for opposing his plan to reform the Church.

Hello. May I come in? You may, indeed.

And as an act of religious devotion, he often wore,

concealed beneath his clothes, a painfully coarse goat-hair shirt.

Is this really it? This is really it.

I just feel a huge in-built scepticism about the exact

nature, not just of holy relics, but of all, you know,

secular relics, anything that is said to be

the hat of Henry VIII, the hat of Cardinal Wolsey....

This is the most remarkable object because it's highly possible...

In fact, it's certain, in your eyes, that that touched

the skin of a man who was alive 500 years ago.

What happened was he was beheaded on the 6th of July 1535,

and the day before,

he gave this hair shirt to his adopted daughter,

Margaret Giggs, and it then passed to the Diocese of Plymouth.

The Diocese of Plymouth then asked

us to have it here for public veneration.

These are all verifiable historical events.

Mm. And that makes it a very significant relic, I think.

What sort of a person does his

hair shirt say that he was, then?

This is something that he chose to wear,

because he identifies with Christ,

and Christ suffered on the cross.

Wearing this every day is a very close connection with

the sufferings of Christ.

That's a really different world view, isn't it?

A lot of people would say that Thomas More's

book about the rise of Richard III is pro-Tudor propaganda.

I suppose if he's someone as committed to his faith as to

do something like this on a regular basis,

he's not going to be bullied by worldly authority in any way, is he?

I think the fact that he would not go along with Henry VIII becoming

the head of the Church in this country would certainly

indicate that. He was willing to put his life on the line.

I think that's a massive argument against him

having been purely a propagandist.

Yes, I think his character, his life, his writings

all indicate that he was interested in what is fair, what is just.

So, if Thomas More was interested in the truth,

he must have trusted his sources.

One historian has taken a new approach to verify

information More claimed to have got from James Tyrrell's confession.

Hello. Hello, Lucy. I'm excited to meet you.

It's good to meet you, too. This is a really splendid library, isn't it?

Yeah, I love libraries,

but this just has a fantastic atmosphere, doesn't it?

Tim, how on Earth is it possible that you've managed to find

a new avenue of investigation? What was your approach?

Well, this is the most investigated

mystery of the late Middle Ages.

For most people,

the summer or the autumn of 1483 is where the story ends,

but I think, in truth,

the summer or the autumn of 1483 is where the story begins,

and if we're really going to understand what happened,

we need to look at what happened next.

And I think one of the fascinating things about More's account

is that central to it are several people

who are survivors into the period

when he was writing, in the 1510s, and what I wanted to explore

was the possibility that More had direct access to those individuals.

So, you wanted to put More and his sources in the same place,

at the same time, or at least

in close contact with each other. Indeed.

So, if we look at the text of More, you can see that he's providing us

with the names of the murderers - Miles Forrest and John Dighton.

Are they real? Is there evidence for them?

What have you been able to uncover? So, these are real people.

John Dighton, and also the two sons of Miles Forrest, Edward and Miles.

They were active at the court of Henry VIII in the 1510s,

just as More was active at court.

So, what I was doing was looking for all the evidence

I could for More's activities in the 1510s,

when he was writing the History of King Richard III,

and his connections to John Dighton

and also the two sons of Miles Forrest.

And what established the connection between More doing his research

and these people who were witnesses?

It was a bit of a eureka moment, really.

I came across this letter from 1515,

when More was on embassy in Bruges,

in the Low Countries,

and the embassy are exchanging messages back and forth

from England,

and so you can see in this letter More's signature at the foot.

Mm. Thomas More, he was there. Fascinating.

But the messenger,

who is referred to in the second line, is one M Forrest.

So, this is one of the sons

of the man that More says killed

the Princes in the Tower. Miles Forrest.

It was one of those moments, I'm afraid, for a historian, that makes

the hairs stand up on the back of your neck because it puts him

in the same place at the same time as one of his key witnesses.

Where were you when this happened?

Were you in the reading room, where you have to be quiet,

and you went, "Yes!"? I did restrain myself,

but, yes, I came across it among the records in the National Archives.

And I think it increases

the credibility of More's account significantly.

So, this letter proves that just at the time that More was

writing his history, he was personally in contact,

face-to-face, with the son of one of the murderers... Indeed.

..from 1483. Indeed.

So, it's perfectly possible that he said, "Well, my dad did it.

"He did the deed."

There's a lot of ifs and buts here,

but what you have done is

make it more comprehensible that

More is in fact telling the truth. You've sort of built up

the foundations of his credibility a bit more.

I think we've demonstrated very clearly where the sources

potentially lay for what's previously been considered

a potentially speculative, or even deliberately deceptive account. Mm.

You know, I've been really convinced by Tim that Thomas More was a

truth-teller, one of the first people to try to find out what had

happened to the Princes.

I'm persuaded that Richard III did have them murdered, but I think we

get much too caught up in the guilt, or not, of wicked Uncle Richard.

It seems to me to be much more interesting to look at the deaths of

these boys as part of the cut-throat, kill-or-be-killed,

game-of-thrones political culture of

the 15th century.

If you were an heir to the throne,

you were nothing more than a pawn in the game of power.

And being a child made no difference at all.

This is still an active case for historians.

So many of us are out there, still looking for evidence.

And maybe new clues will surface that settle the matter

once and for all, but it's the nature of history

that it's never fixed.

It speaks to us in different ways, at different times,

and that's why I think this story is set to run and run.

The madness of King George.

How did one woman's attempt

to kill the King inspire a change

in attitudes towards mental health?

It caused a scandal.

People were offended by this idea of a double standard

for rich and for poor.