Tea at Trianon: Who Killed the Princes in the Tower?

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

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.)