Saturday, September 9, 2017

Who Killed the Princes in the Tower?

From On the Tudor Trail:
My biggest problem lies with the traditionally accused King Richard III and it boils down to two key holes in the case against him. Richard III must remain the prime suspect in any investigation, if the boys were indeed killed. The first problem with accepting that Richard III killed his nephews to prevent them being a threat to him is his failure to act against other nephews and nieces. If Richard chose to dispose of Edward IV’s sons to secure his own position, why would he fail to deal with Edward’s daughters and the children of his other older brother, George? It is true that they probably represented less of an obvious threat than the Princes in the Tower, but by October 1483 Henry Tudor was invading with the intention of marrying one of Edward’s daughters to improve his own claim to the throne, so within weeks of the disappearance of the Princes, their sisters were being identified as clear threats. George’s children Edward, Earl of Warwick and Margaret, later Countess of Salisbury lacked a personal affinity but nevertheless, Edward possessed a male line claim senior to Richard’s. He was barred by his father’s attainder, but that might be overturned by Parliament in an instant. Every other niece and nephew of Richard’s that was alive at the start of his reign was still alive at his death, so why not the sons of Edward IV? (Read more.)
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