Tea at Trianon: The Princes in the Tower: New Evidence Revealed

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

Sunday, November 19, 2023

The Princes in the Tower: New Evidence Revealed

Edward V and Richard Duke of York by Millais

A must-listen podcast from Gone Medieval:

For more than 500 years, history has judged that the Princes in the Tower were murdered on the orders of their uncle Richard III. Until now there has been very little proof - it is quite simply history’s greatest cold case. But this episode of Gone Medieval reveals new and compelling evidence about what happened to King Edward V and his brother Richard, Duke of York in 1483.
Philippa Langley - best known for her role in finding and exhuming the remains of Richard III in 2012 - talks to Gone Medieval's Matt Lewis about her painstaking investigative research and the astonishing new archival discoveries that may forever change what we know about the fate of the Princes in the Tower. (Read more.)

From The Daily Mail:

The historian - whose findings are also outlined in her new book, The Princes in the Tower - has discovered key contemporaneous documents which indicate that Edward V and Prince Richard were Warbeck and Simnel. One is an alleged witness statement from Prince Richard, which describes how he was smuggled from the Tower of London by Henry and Thomas Percy.
Experts have authenticated it as being written during that period. The account reads: 'They shaved my hair and put a poor and drab shirt on me and we went to St Katharine's [dock].' It goes on to say that he was taken by boat to France before travelling to Portugal. Another is a document from Holland, dated 1483, which appears to bear a royal seal and a signature of a 'Richard, Duke of York'. It promises that Richard will pay 30,000 florins to Duke Albert of Saxony after gaining the English throne.
A man claiming to be Richard landed in England with a small army in the hope of gaining the throne. When an initial attempt failed, he fled to Scotland and then launched another bid in 1497. Having been captured, he signed a confession where he declared that he was really Warbeck, a boatman's son, but Ms Langley believes it was likely Prince Richard. Author Anne Wroe expanded on a similar theory about Warbeck being Prince Richard in her 2003 book Perkin: A Story of Deception.
A third document identified by Ms Langley is a receipt for weapons given by German king Maximilian I to the 'son of King Edward IV', ahead of Simnel's failed rebellion in 1487. The dominant belief about Simnel is that he claimed to be or actually was Edward, Earl of Warwick. But Ms Langley suggest that Simnel really was the young King Edward. (Read more.)