own regard could hardly deny your right as husband of Elizabeth of York. It was simple and it was brilliant.
However, for this plan to work, the princes had to be dead. You knew you would have to repeal Titulus Regis in order to legitimise your future wife. If the Princes were alive then they two would be legitimised in the process and your crown would disappear at a stroke. You probably hoped that the princes would be dead, killed by their uncle's orders. You would have hoped that you could have found the bodies and displayed them, thus proving at a stroke that Richard III murdered them and Elizabeth of York was the heir of Edward IV.
But we have seen that this is hardly likely to have been the case, Richard was secure on the throne and did not kill the Earl of Warwick so it stands to reason he did not kill the princes either.
Sir Robert Willoughby was given this most important task. He found the princes, imprisoned, probably in an awful state, on his search of the Tower of London. He completed the awful deed that you commanded of him.
This would explain why you refused to undertake a major search for the bodies of the princes. You knew that the only bodies that could be found and displayed would be fresh, and would clearly implicate yourself as the murderer. Instead, you mounted a “show” search, quietly and with zero intention of finding anything of worth. But at least it could be said that you did search.
You decided the simplest cause of action would be to not mention the princes and let them disappear from memory. After all, most people believed that Richard III had killed them some years before, although it is interesting that you never accused Richard III of murder yourself. You aided the process of wiping the boys from history by hunting down every single copy of Titulus Regis and destroying it. You hoped that by destroying the documentation you could destroy your own guilt.
This left you with a problem when the pretender Warbeck appeared on the scene. You knew that the man wasn't Richard, Duke of York because you had killed him. Yet you obviously could not declare this. As a result you could not prove that he was not the younger of the two boys until he confessed on his capture some years later.
You did a fine job of hiding your guilt. You probably never even told your wife what had happened, but by the simple act of repealing Richard's Titulus Regis you confirmed you were one hundred percent sure that the two boys were dead, and as a result you confirmed your own guilt.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Author's Notes
After researching and writing this book it is clear why the case has remain unsolved for so long. The evidence is a series of complex webs that all seem to lead to events that could be perceived in a number of different ways.
I have simply made my determinations the way I see the key evidence. I have no doubt that others might see things differently. Further forensic tests on the bones in the Abbey could at least eliminate either Richard, Anne and Buckingham, or Henry Tudor from the list of suspects. Elizabeth of York and Margaret Beaufort spanned both regimes; ages at death would not eliminate either woman from the enquiry. Of course, if the bones are proven not to be those of the princes, then we are back to square one.
Undertaking the research for this book brought up a number of very interesting mysteries, the most interesting of which is those unidentified coffins in Edward IV's vault in Windsor. Who lies inside them?
I hope you enjoyed the book and the approach I took to come to my conclusion. I hope you are not disappointed in the fact I was not searching boxes of long lost documents to make my case. As I said on the opening page, I am not an historian, I am a solver of crime. This is my first book and it probably will be my last. I enjoyed the process, but it is not something I would like to do every day.
I'm sure you will come to your personal conclusions about the fate of the
However, for this plan to work, the princes had to be dead. You knew you would have to repeal Titulus Regis in order to legitimise your future wife. If the Princes were alive then they two would be legitimised in the process and your crown would disappear at a stroke. You probably hoped that the princes would be dead, killed by their uncle's orders. You would have hoped that you could have found the bodies and displayed them, thus proving at a stroke that Richard III murdered them and Elizabeth of York was the heir of Edward IV.
But we have seen that this is hardly likely to have been the case, Richard was secure on the throne and did not kill the Earl of Warwick so it stands to reason he did not kill the princes either.
Sir Robert Willoughby was given this most important task. He found the princes, imprisoned, probably in an awful state, on his search of the Tower of London. He completed the awful deed that you commanded of him.
This would explain why you refused to undertake a major search for the bodies of the princes. You knew that the only bodies that could be found and displayed would be fresh, and would clearly implicate yourself as the murderer. Instead, you mounted a “show” search, quietly and with zero intention of finding anything of worth. But at least it could be said that you did search.
You decided the simplest cause of action would be to not mention the princes and let them disappear from memory. After all, most people believed that Richard III had killed them some years before, although it is interesting that you never accused Richard III of murder yourself. You aided the process of wiping the boys from history by hunting down every single copy of Titulus Regis and destroying it. You hoped that by destroying the documentation you could destroy your own guilt.
This left you with a problem when the pretender Warbeck appeared on the scene. You knew that the man wasn't Richard, Duke of York because you had killed him. Yet you obviously could not declare this. As a result you could not prove that he was not the younger of the two boys until he confessed on his capture some years later.
You did a fine job of hiding your guilt. You probably never even told your wife what had happened, but by the simple act of repealing Richard's Titulus Regis you confirmed you were one hundred percent sure that the two boys were dead, and as a result you confirmed your own guilt.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Author's Notes
After researching and writing this book it is clear why the case has remain unsolved for so long. The evidence is a series of complex webs that all seem to lead to events that could be perceived in a number of different ways.
I have simply made my determinations the way I see the key evidence. I have no doubt that others might see things differently. Further forensic tests on the bones in the Abbey could at least eliminate either Richard, Anne and Buckingham, or Henry Tudor from the list of suspects. Elizabeth of York and Margaret Beaufort spanned both regimes; ages at death would not eliminate either woman from the enquiry. Of course, if the bones are proven not to be those of the princes, then we are back to square one.
Undertaking the research for this book brought up a number of very interesting mysteries, the most interesting of which is those unidentified coffins in Edward IV's vault in Windsor. Who lies inside them?
I hope you enjoyed the book and the approach I took to come to my conclusion. I hope you are not disappointed in the fact I was not searching boxes of long lost documents to make my case. As I said on the opening page, I am not an historian, I am a solver of crime. This is my first book and it probably will be my last. I enjoyed the process, but it is not something I would like to do every day.
I'm sure you will come to your personal conclusions about the fate of the
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