Princes in the Tower Stories.

[𝘗rincess 𝘵uvstarr]

There is a bonkers new theory that Edward V of England and his younger brother survived the Tower of London doing the rounds (they were almost certainly murdered by their uncle Richard III), are there any ghost stories surrounding this event?

[Swampirella]

Nov 17, 2023 15:38:08 GMT 𝘗rincess 𝘵uvstarr said:

There is a bonkers new theory that Edward V of England and his younger brother survived the Tower of London doing the rounds (they were almost certainly murdered by their uncle Richard III), are there any ghost stories surrounding this event?

From this site: www.mylondon.news/news/nostalgia/tower-of-london-murdered-princes-18596633

In the year 1483, two young boys disappeared after being locked up in the Tower of London.

These boys happened to be princes, Edward and Richard, the sons of Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville, and to this day the truth about their deaths remains a mystery.

The murders of these nine-year-olds were never solved and so many believe they have seen them wandering around the tower and disappearing into its walls as ghostly spirits.

Those who believe it think they have seen the shadow-like figures of two small boys holding hands and walking around.

They have supposedly been spotted walking around the White Tower, which is the famous part of the Tower of London, originally built to both impress and terrify Londoners. Apparently they drift around the corridors.

Then there's this one:

www.express.co.uk/news/uk/751013/Edward-V-ghost-photobombs-picture-Tower-London

[helrunar]

It's neither bonkers nor new; Josephine Tey laid the case very persuasively in her novel The Daughter of Time for the survival of the Princes and the general frame-up job done on Richard by the person who successfully usurped the Throne and extensively re-wrote history.

Some pseud named Lucy Worsley did a telly show about all this a year or two ago and completely ignored all the evidence to support the argument in favor of Richard's innocence in this matter. So it goes.

Hel.

[𝘗rincess 𝘵uvstarr]

Nov 17, 2023 17:19:29 GMT helrunar said:

It's neither bonkers nor new; Josephine Tey laid the case very persuasively in her novel The Daughter of Time for the survival of the Princes and the general frame-up job done on Richard by the person who successfully usurped the Throne and extensively re-wrote history.

Some pseud named Lucy Worsley did a telly show about all this a year or two ago and completely ignored all the evidence to support the argument in favor of Richard's innocence in this matter. So it goes.

Hel.

Maybe you should check out the new theory as it includes one of them surviving as John Evans in the village of Coleridge.
How is Henry killing them more likely than Richard? Given that Richard controlled access to the Tower and the princes, and also Thomas Moore says they were smothered and he was close to the event.

[Shrink Proof]

Nov 17, 2023 16:37:12 GMT Swampirella said:

Nov 17, 2023 15:38:08 GMT 𝘗rincess 𝘵uvstarr said:

There is a bonkers new theory that Edward V of England and his younger brother survived the Tower of London doing the rounds (they were almost certainly murdered by their uncle Richard III), are there any ghost stories surrounding this event?

From this site: www.mylondon.news/news/nostalgia/tower-of-london-murdered-princes-18596633

In the year 1483, two young boys disappeared after being locked up in the Tower of London.

These boys happened to be princes, Edward and Richard, the sons of Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville, and to this day the truth about their deaths remains a mystery.

The murders of these nine-year-olds were never solved and so many believe they have seen them wandering around the tower and disappearing into its walls as ghostly spirits.

Those who believe it think they have seen the shadow-like figures of two small boys holding hands and walking around.

They have supposedly been spotted walking around the White Tower, which is the famous part of the Tower of London, originally built to both impress and terrify Londoners. Apparently they drift around the corridors.

Then there's this one:

www.express.co.uk/news/uk/751013/Edward-V-ghost-photobombs-picture-Tower-London

I remain unconvinced. Because the only thing printed in any copy of the Daily Express that's true is the date.

[humgoo]

Nov 17, 2023 17:19:29 GMT helrunar said:

It's neither bonkers nor new; Josephine Tey laid the case very persuasively in her novel The Daughter of Time for the survival of the Princes and the general frame-up job done on Richard by the person who successfully usurped the Throne and extensively re-wrote history.

It's interesting you mention this, Hel. Having finished The Franchise Affair, I just began listening to The Daughter of Time . Not sure if I should go on though: the physiognomy (thanks spelling checker; I never knew how to spell this word) stuff just got on my nerves.

There's some of that in The Franchise Affair ("The real murderer's mark is not the colour of the eyes but their setting" etc), but only in passing. In The Daughter of Time physiognomy seems to be the very premise though? It's like a throwback to the 18th century.

[Swampirella]

Nov 18, 2023 7:44:10 GMT Shrink Proof said:

Nov 17, 2023 16:37:12 GMT Swampirella said:

From this site: www.mylondon.news/news/nostalgia/tower-of-london-murdered-princes-18596633

In the year 1483, two young boys disappeared after being locked up in the Tower of London.

These boys happened to be princes, Edward and Richard, the sons of Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville, and to this day the truth about their deaths remains a mystery.

The murders of these nine-year-olds were never solved and so many believe they have seen them wandering around the tower and disappearing into its walls as ghostly spirits.

Those who believe it think they have seen the shadow-like figures of two small boys holding hands and walking around.

They have supposedly been spotted walking around the White Tower, which is the famous part of the Tower of London, originally built to both impress and terrify Londoners. Apparently they drift around the corridors.

Then there's this one:

www.express.co.uk/news/uk/751013/Edward-V-ghost-photobombs-picture-Tower-London

I remain unconvinced. Because the only thing printed in any copy of the Daily Express that's true is the date.

Same here; for all we know they don't even get that right.

[dem bones]

The perfect little Chapel of St John in the White Tower is the earliest Norman building in London. Here rested Richard II's body in 1400 after he had been murdered in Pontefract Castle, here too the body of Elizabeth of York, Consort of Henry VII in 1503, lay in state after she had died in the Tower in childbirth. Five hundred tapers and candlesticks surrounded her bier. Here while praying before the altar in 1483, Sir Thomas Brackenbury received instructions to put to death his nephews, the young princes, and the pathetic ghosts of these young brothers have long been reputed to haunt the vicinity of the White Tower, where their bodies were buried at the foot of the staircase, although they were murdered by Sir James Tyrell and two assistants in the Bloody Tower.
It may be that this murder gave the tower its name - it was originally called the Garden Tower as its upper storey opens on to that part of the parade ground which was formerly the Constable's garden. At all events the silent ghosts of Edward V and Richard, Duke of York, have also been seen here, hand in hand, in white nightgowns, at the angle of a wall, outside the gate to the right, where the little bodies were hastily buried by their murderers. An 1674 excavation revealed the bones of two young boys. Charles II believed them to be the royal remains and they were buried in Westminster Abbey.

— Peter Underwood Haunted London (Fontana, 1973)

But if the stones could speak, surely they would lament the deaths of the two little princes in 1483. Confined, it is said, in the upper chamber of the Bloody Tower, the two small boys, twelve-year-old King Edward V and his nine-year-old brother Richard Duke of York, were taken from their mother's care into the custody of their uncle, Richard Duke of Gloucester. Placed in the Bloody Tower, they were never seen again. The country could not continue without a ruler, and so the Duke of Gloucester became King Richard III.
Tradition states that one boy was smothered, the other stabbed to death. Skeletons discovered in 1674 beneath an external stairway of the White Tower were assumed to be theirs.
And so their two small ghosts, hand in hand, clad in white nightgowns, have been seen around the Bloody Tower, a sight for pity and compassion rather than terror.

— G. Abbott - Ghosts of the Tower of London (Heinemann, 1980)

Much of the Tower's reputation as a grim, evil fortress stems from the famous story of the little Princes of the Bloody Tower, murdered by order of their wicked uncle who was later to become Richard III. This happened soon after they had been imprisoned here in 1483: King Edward V was twelve years old and his brother Richard, Duke of York only nine. No one knew their fate for certain until 1674 when two small skeletons were found beneath a stairway outside the White Tower. It was generally assumed that this was where the Princes had been hidden after their murders, and their ghosts are said to have ceased to haunt the Bloody Tower after the bones had been reburied in Westminster Abbey. Certainly there have been no recent reports of a pathetic pair of little-boy ghosts clad in long white nightgowns.

— J. A. Brooks Ghosts of London, Jarrold, 1982.

The Abbott and Brooks excerpts are indebted to Underwood, but I wonder where he got the story from as for once Elliott O'Donnell seems entirely blameless in the affair. The Select bibliography at back of Haunted London includes Lord Ronald Sutherland-Gower's The Tower of London from 1901 which certainly references the murders though no mention of ghosts or white nightgowns that I could see.

[helrunar]

Again, Josephine Tey's Daughter of Time gives the sources for the various stories about those kids' supposed double murder. 

But it's fun to read these colorful old stories. My favorite film version for the sheer way-out melodramatic overdrive of Vincent Price's performance is the 1963 Tower of London--fiction from start to finish, but great fun for those with a camp (or sadistic) streak.

Hel.

[𝘗rincess 𝘵uvstarr]

The main source of Tyrell as the man who organised the murders is Sir Thomas More's History of King Richard III. 

For sir James Tirel deuised that thei shold be murthered in their beddes. To the execucion wherof, he appointed Miles Forest, one of the foure that kept them, a felowe fleshed in murther before time. To him he joyned one John Dighton, his own horsekeper, a big brode square strong knaue. Then al the other beeing remoued from them, thys Miles Forest and 30 John Dighton, about midnight (the sely children lying in their beddes) came into the chamber, and sodainly lapped them vp among the clothes, so bewrapped them and entangled them, keping down by force the fetherbed and pillowes hard vnto their mouthes, that within a while smored and stifled, theyr breath failing, thei gaue vp to God their innocent soules into the joyes of heauen, leauing 5 to the tormentors their bodyes dead in the The yong kyng and hys brother bed. Whiche after that the wretches parceiued, murthered. first by the strugling with the paines of death, and after long lying styll, to be throughly dead; they laide their bodies naked out vppon the bed, and fetched sir James 10 to see them. Which vpon the sight of them, caused those murtherers to burye them at the stayre foote, metely depe in the grounde vnder a great heape of stones. Than rode sir James in great hast to king Richarde, and shewed him al the maner of the murther, who gaue hym gret thanks and, 15 as som say, there made him knight. But he allowed not, as I haue heard, the burying in so vile a corner, saying that he woulde haue them buried in a better place, because thei wer a kinges sonnes. Loe the honourable corage of a kynge! Wherupon thei say that a prieste of syr Robert 20 Brakenbury toke vp the bodyes again, and secretelye entered them in such place, as by the occasion of his deathe, whiche onely knew it, could neuer synce come to light. 

[helrunar]

It's thought, according to Tey, that More did not write that history--he just made a copy of it in his own handwriting. I don't remember what she cited about this, but the Richard III society has oodles of stuff you can trawl through on their website if you really want to know.

I can't continue commenting on this thread, but I will say in closing that a lot of "accepted fact" in various parts of various countries' histories often proves to be a story somebody concocted to suit their own convenience, or need for legitimization--or a myth fabricated to foster a sense of national identity in the "common people." Howard Zinn's People's history of the United States has a lot to teach a US citizen like myself about that.

Hel.

[𝘗rincess 𝘵uvstarr]

I don't think any serious historian believes More didn't write the History of Richard III (there are Latin and English versions), it seems cardinal John Morton, whose household More was in for a short time was put forward as the possible author a century after More's death. It doesn't stand up to today's idea of a historical biography, he was a humanist and it follows classical models of histories, sources are rarely given, they often invented dialogues for instance to put forward a particular view (In Tacitus there is a wonderful speech given by Calgacus at Mons Grampus to his Troops as he stands at the edge of the world, which is completely made up to criticise Roman policy), but it doesn't mean it doesn't contain essential truths. It seems to be anti-tyranny rather than straight Tudor propaganda. He may well have distorted facts, but then again as The Daughter of Time is a work of fiction Josephine Tey did too. Her main source seems to have been Richard III: His Life & Character by Sir Clements Robert Markham (1906) which accuses Henry VII of the crime. Of course what we have with the Princes in the Tower is a mystery, and humans like mysteries, but it's not wild speculation to suggest the most obvious candidate might have been responsible.

[𝘗rincess 𝘵uvstarr]

Anyway when I set up the thread (the Da Vinci code John Evans theory that I was specifically mentioning was an aside) I was wondering if as well as ghost sightings, there were any actual stories concerning the lost princes?

[𝘗rincess 𝘵uvstarr]

Apologies to helrunar for continuing to mention the princes, but this is interesting:

Immediately opposite the Traitor's Gate, another ancient arch with a portcullis admits us to the Inner Ward. The old ring on the left of the arch is that to which the rope was fastened, stretched across the roadway, from the boat which brought in the prisoners. This is altogether the most picturesque point in the building. It is called the Bloody Tower, from the belief that here the sons of Edward IV. were murdered by order of their uncle Richard III. There is not, however, any proof that, if the murder was committed, it occurred here, and the present name has only been given to the place since the reign of Elizabeth: it was previously called "the Garden Tower," because it joined the constable's garden, which now forms part of the parade.

Though there is no proof that the princes were murdered here, a very old tradition points out the angle at the foot of the wall, outside the gate on the right, as the place of their hasty burial by their reputed assassins, Dighton and Forrest, before their removal by Richard III. to the foot of the staircase in the White Tower.

It gives a tradition of where the alleged assassins buried the bodies originally. It is from Walks in London by Augustus J. C. Hare, published 1878. Nothing spectral is however mentioned in this book.

[dem bones]

Nov 22, 2023 12:02:04 GMT 𝘗rincess 𝘵uvstarr said:

I don't think any serious historian believes More didn't write the History of Richard III (there are Latin and English versions), it seems cardinal John Morton, whose household More was in for a short time was put forward as the possible author a century after More's death. It doesn't stand up to today's idea of a historical biography, he was a humanist and it follows classical models of histories, sources are rarely given, they often invented dialogues for instance to put forward a particular view (In Tacitus there is a wonderful speech given by Calgacus at Mons Grampus to his Troops as he stands at the edge of the world, which is completely made up to criticise Roman policy), but it doesn't mean it doesn't contain essential truths. It seems to be anti-tyranny rather than straight Tudor propaganda. He may well have distorted facts, but then again as The Daughter of Time is a work of fiction Josephine Tey did too. Her main source seems to have been Richard III: His Life & Character by Sir Clements Robert Markham (1906) which accuses Henry VII of the crime. Of course what we have with the Princes in the Tower is a mystery, and humans like mysteries, but it's not wild speculation to suggest the most obvious candidate might have been responsible.

Marc Alexander's take.

The ghosts of Edward V and his younger brother Richard—the tragic Princes in the Tower—have been seen at various times over the last five centuries in the Bloody Tower where tradition tells that their uncle Richard III was responsible for what Sir Thomas More (who was also to die in the Tower) described as "the dolorous end of these babes".

Unfortunately these two pale spectres have not been able to give any clue as to one of the greatest mysteries in English history what was their real fate. Since Tudor times the enigmatic Richard has been blamed for their deaths. Tudor writers, including Shakespeare,† vied with each other in portraying the last Plantagenet monarch as a despicable monster. Yet the only evidence against Richard was given by Henry Tudor nearly two decades after he had usurped Richard's throne.

To some the pendulum has made a full swing and Richard is portrayed as a wronged Sir Galahad.

† Shakespeare's history was so faulty that he described Richard as fully adult and revelling in the slaughter of the Battle of Towton when in fact he was only eight years old.

— Marc Alexander, Haunted Castles, 1974.

Nov 22, 2023 12:07:42 GMT 𝘗rincess 𝘵uvstarr said:

Anyway when I set up the thread (the Da Vinci code John Evans theory that I was specifically mentioning was an aside) I was wondering if as well as ghost sightings, there were any actual stories concerning the lost princes?

As to your initial query, my first thought was there must be tons of ghost stories written about the murdered Princes, surely the Armada ghost books are full of them. Three days later, I've not found a single one. Anyone else?