Philippa Langley on the Princes in the Tower: “It was clear we had to consider the possibility that they survived”

Read more | A ‘car park king’ timeline: the discovery of Richard III

The article then cited the traditional narrative around that story – that after King Edward IV died on 3 April 1483 (not 9 April, as was previously believed), his sons Edward and Richard were taken to the Tower of London, and said to have been murdered there on the orders of Richard III.

But there was no evidence in it. I thought: okay, maybe that take is right – but you have to go in with an evidence-based analysis and methodology. By the time I was on the train leaving Leicester after the reburial, I was putting together this new evidence-based research project.

Read more | Did Richard III really kill the Princes in the Tower?

Some sceptics might say that, in light of your work on Richard III, it would be hard for you to be an impartial investigator. Was that a question you had to confront?

One hundred per cent. It was something I had to come to terms with in my own mind, because the story of Richard murdering the two princes is so incredibly powerful. It’s enmeshed in our psyche, thanks to Shakespeare’s play and Sir Thomas More’s literary narrative. I had to say to myself that it’s about finding whatever we find.

The reburial of Richard III was an attempt to make peace with the past, but I think that – because of this article in the Daily Mail – it was very clear that the debate was still ongoing. In order to lay Richard III to rest, we had to see if we could answer this question either way.

Read more | Like father, like son: Richard Plantagenet and Richard III

Is there anything that might have made you think that Richard III had been guilty of murder?

I was looking for something in the record somewhere that said the boys died, or which recorded pious prayers or observances recited for the souls of the princes. In those highly religious times, that should have been there.

What we found defied expectations – and this is the first big discovery of the project – because, in all of the day-to-day administrative accounts we studied, it’s business as usual. When either of the boys are mentioned, it talks about them in terms suggesting that they remained alive.

One of the most important areas of investigation was the battle of Bosworth in 1485, when the worlds of Henry Tudor and Richard III collided head on. In exploring that event forensically, I discovered a number of key aspects, among them the entry point into England for the story of the murder of the boys – the moment when we first see it in English accounts and documents. It arrived with Henry Tudor and his French invasion force.

Read more | Alternate history: what if Richard III had won at Bosworth?

Henry was heading to London, because whoever holds the capital holds the kingdom, when Richard III intercepted him and cut him off at Bosworth. But Henry paused and undertook searches in the north, sending out messengers and gathering intelligence. He tried to get hold of the Yorkist heirs, and he was looking for the boys at the same time.

What have you discovered about the fate of the two princes, Edward and Richard?

In terms of the elder boy [who became King Edward V on the death of his father], the most remarkable discovery was made in the archives in Lille, France in May 2020 by Albert Jan de Rooij, a member of the Dutch Research Group, part of the Missing Princes Project team, which involves more than 300 people around the world. He discovered a long-lost accounting receipt dated 16 December 1487, made out to King Maximilian I, who was one of the leading players in Europe – a powerful man who went on to become the Holy Roman Emperor.

This receipt is for his payment for 400 pikes, weapons for elite troops, which he collected in June 1487. It tells us that he paid for these weapons on behalf of a nephew of [Richard III’s sister] Margaret of Burgundy – the son of King Edward IV, who was expelled from his dominion. It’s very clearly telling us that this was Edward V, the elder of the princes in the Tower.

We’ve had the authenticity of the receipt checked by numerous experts. It’s signed by Maximilian’s secretary, Florens Hauweel, and names about 14 key individuals from Maximilian’s court and the court of Burgundy at the time. In another section, two other leading members of Maximilian’s court signed it and confirmed that all the details were accurate and correct. It’s quite an astonishing find.

We already know that the Yorkist invasion of 1487, ending with the battle of Stoke on 16 June, was in support of the claim by one Edward. And we know that the coronation that took place in Dublin on 27 May 1487 was for a claimant to the English throne called King Edward. Because of the receipt, we now know that this person was the eldest son of Edward IV.

But is it not the case that the boy crowned in Dublin, and for whom the battle of Stoke was fought, was claimed by his supporters to be Edward Plantagenet, Earl of Warwick?

No. His supporters called him ‘King Edward’, and the only King Edward at this time was Edward V. The Earl of Warwick had never been proclaimed king, and was barred from the throne by his father’s attainder [the Duke of Clarence had been executed for treason].

The story that the boy was Warwick (at that time being held in the Tower of London) was put about by Henry VII and his supporters. This, we now know, was smoke and mirrors by Henry, so that he could claim that the Edward in Ireland was an imposter. He was later, by November 1487, given the name Lambert Simnel, purportedly a 10-year-old commoner, the son of a joiner, tailor, baker or cobbler.

One of the leading players at the 1487 coronation in Dublin was John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln. After the death of Richard’s son, Edward of Middleham, Lincoln was heir apparent to Richard III. So you’ve basically got the man who could have been King John II of the House of York sitting in the audience to watch this unknown boy being crowned.

We are meant to believe, according to the later Tudor stories, that he was happy to sit there and let a common boy be crowned in this highly religious, most holy of ceremonies. And Edward V was the only member of the House of York who had a greater claim to the throne than John de la Pole at that time. So the actions of such individuals begin to make sense.

Do you reject the theory that Lambert Simnel was an imposter?

I do, because we’ve now got proof of life for Edward V, in the form of Maximilian’s receipt, dated over four years after the last recorded sighting of the princes in the Tower. And everything else we’ve discovered – including in the timelines, the person of interest files, the referencing, the cross-checking – confirms that the boy crowned in Dublin in 1487 was Edward V.

What did you discover about the other prince?

The next key document discovered by the project relates to the younger of the princes, Richard of Shrewsbury, Duke of York. It’s a manuscript that was first discovered in the 1950s but was dismissed by a Dutch historian who said: oh, this is nothing – this is just the story of the imposter York – and it was just put back into the archive. But then, in November 2020, another member of the Dutch Research Group, Nathalie Nijman-Bliekendaal, came across the same docu- ment in the Gelderland Archive in the Netherlands.

It really is astonishing. This is a semi-legal document – a witness statement – written in the first person. In it, Richard tells what happened to him, from leaving sanctuary in Westminster in 1483 to arriving at the court of his aunt, Margaret of Burgundy, in 1493. It’s a 10-year account of his experiences after the death of his father.

What evidence is there that this account is authentic?

First, the information in the manuscript itself, and second, the checks we undertook afterwards. It’s a four-page manuscript that includes detail after detail about his story. Police specialists confirmed that if someone is lying, they’re loose about details, but if somebody is telling you the truth, they’ll give you detail after detail. The document names some 20 individuals – key members of the Yorkist court, and other people who would have been at the Tower of London at the time. And Richard also names 19 places he’s been.

One of the Dutch Research Group members, Jean Roefstra, went into all the administrative day-to-day accounts in Holland, looking for this individual and trying to see if he’s given any other names – for example, Perkin Warbeck, which is what he was later called by the Tudor authorities. But he couldn’t find that name anywhere – and he’s been searching for years now. The only names he could find are Richard, Duke of York, or the son of Edward IV, or the nephew of Margaret of Burgundy, or the ‘White Rose’.

The second answer to this question lies in the checks we made in terms of the authenticity of this document. All of the specialists at the Gelderland Archive looked at it and confirmed that it’s absolutely of the right period: the writing, watermarks, paper, grammar and language are all correct. They signed an authenticating document for us confirming their opinion.

We also gave it to independent specialists for the TV documentary on Channel 4, including Dr Janina Ramirez and Dr Andrew Dunning, curator of medieval manuscripts at the Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford. We can say it’s absolutely authentic, and that all of the discoveries in it are real.

How does the manuscript advance our understanding of what happened to Richard?

It’s proof of life, and it gives us his story. It tells us that he was sent to safety on the continent for a number of years by John Howard, Duke of Norfolk, with two Ricardian Yorkist retainers to watch over and look after him. He was later given the name Perkin Warbeck by the Tudor government, and was said to be the son of a boatman, born at Tournai in France. That story is false.

We’ve uncovered further evidence, too. In the Saxon State Archive in Dresden, Germany, Nijman-Bliekendaal found a receipt for a pledge of payment for 30,000 florins made to a leading member of the Burgundian court, Duke Albert of Saxony, a large sum of money, which Richard would repay upon becoming sovereign ruler of England. This document was signed by an individual who called himself Richard of England, and who was claiming the throne. It carries Richard’s royal monogram and has a royal seal, perfectly intact, with the royal arms of England and a crown.

Then another find was made in the Austrian State Archive by Zoë Maula of the Dutch Research Group. It’s a letter from Maximilian to Henry VII, mediating between the English king and Richard, Duke of York. He says to Henry that there are many signs that can’t be counterfeited to confirm that this person is who he said he is. He mentions three birthmarks on his body: on the mouth, the eye and thigh.

So we found several documents in Europe that confirm who this person was, providing ample evidence. It’s hugely compelling.

Assuming, then, that both princes survived and became known as Lambert Simnel and Perkin Warbeck, is there an argument that Richard III made a mistake in letting them survive? After all, they both went on to contest the throne

Yes – but, again, you have to go back and look at the situation in that moment. The princes were declared illegitimate by parliament and, as bastards, they had no claim to the throne.

A lot of historians in the past have said that Richard III took the throne illegally, so we aimed to discover if that was the case. We found a dozen evidences confirming that he was the legal king, which removes his motive to murder the sons of Edward IV. Killing children in those days was, as it is today, the most heinous of crimes.

In those highly religious times, it was believed that God, hell, purgatory and the soul were real, so child murder was not something that anybody would have taken lightly. Could the boys have been murdered by anybody else? I could see no evidence to support that idea.

It seems there was an attempt to remove the boys from the Tower in July 1483 while Richard III was away touring the country – and it seems that Richard then moved the princes to secure locations.

What do you think is the most likely narrative for what happened to the boys that summer?

The older brother, Edward, was removed from the Tower of London on or by 11 August. He may have travelled with John Howard to Gipping in Suffolk, the home of Sir James Tyrrell, a servant of Richard III who was later said to have confessed to the princes’ murder. Or he may have gone to the estate of Francis Lovell, another ally of Richard III, at Longdendale in Cheshire, or at some point to Barnard Castle, now in County Durham.

A key contemporary source is Niclas von Popplau, a Silesian knight who was at Richard III’s court at the start of May 1484. He tells us that he had heard that the princes were being kept at Pontefract Castle. We also know, from a treason trial of Yorkist rebels in 1486, that King Edward V was expelled from his dominion and sent to the Channel Islands before the battle of Bosworth, but then with the death of Richard III, he eventually went to Ireland.

And what do you think happened to Richard?

He was put on a ship by John Howard and sailed to Boulogne-sur-Mer. He was taken to Paris, and stayed there for quite a while with his Ricardian retainers, Thomas and Henry Percy, who looked after him. He travelled around the Low Countries and northern France for the next 10 years with the Percy brothers.

Then, following the battle of Stoke, at which the forces of Edward V were defeated, Richard sent Thomas Percy to his mother, Elizabeth Woodville, in England to make sure that she knew he was alive. He sent her messages and evidences to confirm that it was him.

Richard then went to Portugal with Henry Percy. Henry VII was by then looking for him, sending out spies to wherever Richard was. When Henry Percy died around 1490, Richard travelled to Ireland, where he was known.

A new discovery tells us that he’d been there when he was about six, and was made Lieutenant of Ireland, so the leading earls there would have met him as a boy. It’s clear that he was recognised on his return to Ireland as the younger son of Edward IV.

What do you hope to find in phase two of the project?

We know now, at the end of phase one, that the boys survived, but there are still key moments when we don’t know what happened to them, and we don’t know where they’re buried. That is what we’re now looking into during phase two. We’d really like to be able to tell the final part of their story and, one day, to honour the final resting places of these young men – or, potentially, men who died in old age.

Philippa Langley is a historian and producer, best known for her part in the discovery of Richard III in 2012. It’s a story that she told with co-author Michael Jones in The Lost King (John Murray, originally published as The King’s Grave), which was made into a film by Stephen Frears