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Dive into the enigmatic tale of the Tower of London murders, exploring the profound impact of the disappearance of young princes on England's history.
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00:00This series presents information based in part on theory and conjecture.
00:17The producer's purpose is to suggest some possible explanations, but not necessarily the only ones, to the mysteries we will examine.
00:25500 years ago, it is said two young princes, one heir to the throne of England, were murdered in the Tower of London.
00:36Their uncle, Richard III, the last English king to personally lead troops into battle, was accused.
00:45Others hold this to be slant. Richard, they say, was a most valiant, most virtuous king.
00:51Which was true? Was Richard the murderous villain of Shakespeare's imagination?
00:57Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous, by drunken prophecies, libels and dreams, to set my brother Clarence and the king in deadly hate, the one against the other.
01:10Did Richard have his nephews murdered to gain the crown?
01:17The answer to this mystery may yet be found in the Tower of London.
01:21The Tower of London.
01:34Beside the Thames River flowing through the City of London stand the grim stone walls of the Tower of London.
01:40On the ruins of an ancient Roman fortress, William the Conqueror ordered construction of a huge castle in the year 1078.
01:56It would dominate the landscape and intimidate the local inhabitants.
02:00Over the centuries, subsequent kings made it one of the strongest fortifications in all of Europe.
02:13It has withstood siege, bombardment and the great fire that destroyed London.
02:18For 900 years, it has served as a fortress, a royal palace, a dreaded prison and a treasury for the crown jewels.
02:36The crown of England, the pinnacle of power.
02:39It cost the lives of many ambitious noblemen.
02:44The quest of it dimmed honor and loyalty.
02:47Richard III was accused of such an obsession.
02:52The adversary, Henry Tudor, burned with the same desire.
03:00Peter Hammond, Tower historian.
03:03I think what most people know about the Tower is the time when it was a state prison.
03:08A place where important political prisoners were kept.
03:12There were many famous people in the Tower.
03:14And most of them came to unfortunate ends.
03:17Beheaded or disappearing mysteriously.
03:23Prisoners were often brought to the Tower by riverboat.
03:27The fate of many to have their heads impaled on the spikes of Tower Bridge.
03:32Few who arrived here ever left.
03:35Stairways led to secret passages and torture chambers deep within the walls.
03:42Where terrible screams were often heard.
03:45Beneath these stones, the earth was once soaked with the blood of Queens.
03:50Anne Boleyn.
03:52Catherine Howard.
03:54Wives of Henry VIII.
03:55Sir Walter Raleigh wrote his history of the world during his 12-year imprisonment here,
04:01before he too was beheaded.
04:04One sad tale is that of Lady Jane Grey.
04:08Guiltless herself, but a victim of her family's ambition.
04:12She was executed after being Queen for just nine days.
04:17One of the most interesting, fascinating mysteries in the Tower is what happened to the two young princes.
04:30Those two royal children, the sons of Edward IV, who disappeared mysteriously after the elder one lost the crown that was his by right and his uncle Richard III became king instead.
04:44What we know about it is not very much.
04:47We know that the princes were in the Tower after their uncle Richard became king.
04:50We know that they were last seen in the Tower.
04:54We know that a couple of hundred years later, the bones of two young children were found, who may or may not have been the princes.
05:01In writing, we have stories about rumors of the princes having died, but nothing more than that.
05:11There is only one recorded fact concerning the young princes entered into the records of the day.
05:16That they were last seen in June 1483, playing at bows and arrows in the Tower yard.
05:30They were never seen again.
05:35The popular story has it that Richard plotted with one Sir James Tyrrell to murder the princes.
05:41Not content with being the young king's lord protector, he wanted the throne himself.
05:50The opportunity came, it is said, when young Edward, heir to the crown, was placed in the Tower according to the tradition that all kings to be must reside there before their coronation.
06:01His young brother was brought to keep him company.
06:03Sir James obtained the keys to the tower and one midnight accompanied by two henchmen secretly came to the place where the boys slept.
06:13He came to the place where the boys slept.
06:14He came to the place where the boys slept.
06:15He came to the place where the boys slept.
06:22He got to the place who went in the house in the house.
06:37As Tyrrell kept watch at the door, the accomplices entered the chamber.
06:42chamber.
07:09Whether the story is true or not, the children were never seen again.
07:16Their uncle Richard is believed by many to be completely innocent.
07:22One group, the Richard III Society in London, has thousands of members in branches throughout
07:27the world.
07:29Their spokesman is Jeremy Potter.
07:31Richard III is probably the most maligned character in history.
07:35He reigned only for two years as King of England, and he's been dead for nearly 500.
07:42His reputation has been blackened by the myths that were put out by the Tudors who took the
07:49throne from him.
07:50He was the last of the Plantagenet kings.
07:52He was the rightful King of England.
07:54He was a good king.
07:56He was a better man than most, so far as we can judge his character at this distance of
08:00time.
08:01Well, he was obviously an extremely courageous and extremely generous, I would say, an extremely
08:06straightforward person.
08:08He did care about the less privileged of his subjects.
08:14There would be no good reason for Richard wanting to kill the boys.
08:17When Edward IV, the boy's father died, he left Richard as Lord Protector of the realm and
08:27of the elder boy, and the country did not wish for a boy king.
08:34So Richard III was the adult heir to the Plantagenet throne.
08:40He was accepted by the City of London, by the House of Parliament, as the rightful King.
08:46Richard would have gained nothing out of the murder of the princes without anybody being
08:50certain that they were dead.
08:52I think he was an ambitious man, and at this time he was a frightened man.
08:59And one can see perhaps everything he did, and perhaps the murder of the princes as well,
09:05as things that he did to save himself, to preserve himself from his enemies.
09:10He had to make himself keen because that was the only way he was safe from the prince's mother,
09:16Elizabeth Woodville, and her family, who were after his life, in fact, as he knew.
09:21It was a battle to the death between them.
09:24And once the princes were in the tower, it wasn't safe even to leave them alive,
09:29because their names could be used by any rebels or conspirators against Richard,
09:35as indeed was to happen.
09:37So to preserve himself, I think he had them done away with.
09:46At Westminster Abbey, Head Librarian Howard Nixon added his view.
09:54The evidence of Richard III's complicity was based almost entirely on Sir Thomas More's
10:05history of the reign of King Richard III, in which he was quite convinced that Richard was
10:13a double-dyed villain, and that he was entirely responsible for the murder of the princes.
10:22But Sir Thomas More was a very biased witness, because he was in the service of Cardinal Moreton,
10:32one of Richard III's greatest enemies.
10:37And although, in his account, More writes as if he was personally present when this story was being unfolded,
10:51in fact, he was a boy, probably under six years old.
10:58William Shakespeare, enlarging on Sir Thomas More's story, went even further in perpetuating the image of an evil Richard.
11:05The part of Shakespeare's Richard III has always been incredibly popular with actors.
11:12David Garrick made his reputation with it, Edmund Keane, one of his favourite roles, Irving, Olivier.
11:19And whatever people actually think was the true nature of the historical Richard,
11:24I don't think you're ever going to get rid of this image of him as the bottled spider, as the red king, as the evil, evil monster.
11:31Shakespeare was a writer of fiction. He was a writer of historical fiction.
11:35And he made up the plots in order to suit his particular characters.
11:40And, of course, he based them on some historical facts, but he accepted the Tudor version of Richard III,
11:49because there was very strict censorship at the time, and if he had not, his play would never have been performed,
11:54and he would have been thrown into prison.
11:56Not content with creating one of the most villainous characters in literature,
12:00Shakespeare makes Richard deformed, physically.
12:03He gives him a hump, he gives him a withered arm.
12:06Shakespeare makes Richard lay bare his character, his motives, and his intentions in the very opening speech of the play,
12:13when he turns to the audience and he says,
12:17Now is the winter of our discontent, made glorious summer by this sun of York,
12:23and all the clouds that lowered upon our house in the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
12:28Grim-visaged war had smoothed his wrinkled front, and now, instead of mounting barbed steeds to fright the souls of fearful adversaries,
12:38he capers nimbly in his lady's chamber to the lascivious pleasing of a lute.
12:45That I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks, nor made to court an amorous looking-glass.
12:57I, that am rudely stamped, and want love's majesty to strut before a wanton ambling nymph.
13:03I, that am curtailed of this fair proportion, cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
13:09deformed, unfinished, sent before my time into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
13:14and that's so lamely and unfashionable that dogs bark at me as I halt by them.
13:19The medieval mind thought that a deformed body indicated an evil person, a deformed mind.
13:26It was to the interests of the Tudors to suggest that he was a villain,
13:31and they therefore made up a physical deformity in order to back this case.
13:36And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover to entertain these fair, well-spoken days,
13:43I am determined to prove a villain and hate the idle pleasures of these days.
13:52Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous, by drunken prophecies, libels, and dreams,
14:00to set my brother Clarence and the king in deadly hate the one against the other.
14:05And if King Edward be as true and just as I am subtle, false, and treacherous,
14:12this day should Clarence closely be mewed up about a prophecy which says that G of Edward's heirs the murderer shall be.
14:22This was entirely invented after his death, and also the story about the withered arm.
14:28Well now, how on earth could a man with a withered arm ride a horse and wield a battle axe?
14:35Barely two years after gaining the crown, Richard was forced to fight to keep it.
14:40Henry Tudor exiled in France, landed on English soil, and raised an army to lay claim to the English throne.
14:51Richard's forces met the Tudors in the field at Bosworth.
14:54At a critical moment, Richard, famous strategist in battle, the fighting lord of the north, made his decision.
15:03He spurred his horse and charged headlong into the midst of his enemies.
15:10Strike down, Henry Tudor!
15:25At the Battle of Bosworth to save his crown, Richard III thundered into the midst of his enemies seeking to bring down his adversary, Henry Tudor.
15:45But one of Richard's closest allies, Lord Stanley, defecting at the last moment, intercepted Richard within sight of his goal.
15:53the first moment, not the last moment.
15:56And, Richard, did the first step of his dream.
15:58I've never seen that in sight of his goal.
16:00The one of Richard's forces and the great men have never seen that in sight of his goal.
16:06The second step of his goal is to attack his own side.
16:13But he's not in sight of his goal.
16:18not even richard's enemies ever claimed that he lacked courage or skill in battle
16:42but treachery within his own ranks brought him down
16:46if richard had killed to gain the crown now it was all for nothing in the two years of his
17:10short reign he had lost his much beloved son his wife and now his kingdom and his life
17:17his last cry was treason
17:25on richard's death henry tudor became king and a strange silence fell regarding the fate of the
17:43princes 20 years later henry ordered the execution of sir james tyrrell for treason afterwards he even
17:49waited a further two months then suddenly said that tyrrell had confessed to the murder of the
17:54princes at richard's command although there's no evidence of such a confession it became the
17:59source for the stories of richard's guilt but if richard was not guilty who was
18:06henry the seventh had very good reason to have the princes murdered because he'd become king by battle
18:17by beating richard of bodsworth his claim to the throne wasn't very good and the princes had a better
18:24claim so henry tudor who became henry the seventh may well have found the boys alive and murdered them
18:29himself he did have other people who were in the royal line um put out of a way in the tower imprisoned
18:36or even executed on trumped up charges the only thing that makes me think of perhaps he was innocent
18:42is that uh maybe the princes weren't alive for him to have been murdered when he came to the throne
18:47before you have a murderer you have to have a murder and there is no evidence that the princes
18:52were murdered they may have been they simply disappeared
18:55and so the story rested for almost 200 years then in 1547 some workmen found what appeared to be the
19:05bones of two children under a stairway at the base of the tower believing them to be the remains of the
19:11princes king charles i had them sealed in an urn and placed in westminster abbey ironically in the chapel
19:20of henry the seventh who might well have been their murderer
19:27nearly two centuries later in 1933 the urn was opened and the bones were examined by experts
19:35we've got some pictures of the bones here and um there is the almost complete skull of the elder child
19:44and this shows the rather more broken one of the younger boy here are the thigh bones of the two
19:53children and you can see that one is longer than the other and the jaw bone of edward vi the examination of
20:05those bones in the abbey nearly 50 years ago proved nothing it didn't prove the sex of the children they
20:10could be female it didn't prove the century uh with which they lived and it didn't prove their age
20:16and i hope that there will be another a more scientific investigation certainly we are pressing
20:21the dean and chapter to have them re-examined once somebody has been buried in the abbey being given
20:27christian burial um they are in a slightly different position from bones preserved in a museum
20:36and you cannot keep on poking into bones that have been given christian burial inside a church
20:45i think they're reluctant to re-examine them because they're reluctant to disturb royal tombs but the
20:49whole question here is whether they are royal tombs are the bones in the abbey those of the princes
20:57were the princes murdered at all if so is henry the seventh who gained and kept the crown
21:03responsible for their deaths is richard the most maligned king in history or truly shakespeare's arch
21:12villain perhaps new dating methods or a forgotten scroll in some dusty library may eventually give the
21:19answer to this intriguing mystery of the tower of london the warders at the tower say that sometimes in the early dawn
21:28the figures of two small lost boys walk anxiously and in hand on the tower green are these the princes
21:36and for whom do they search
21:51coming up next in search of continues with a close-up look at claims about the powers of the water divining
21:57rod then 20th century with mike wallace reports on the worldwide spread of industrial pollution
22:03and the dangers we now face from global warming and later tonight what happened to the neanderthal
22:09cave dwellers history's mysteries investigates at eight here on the history channel where the past comes
22:14the past comes alive
22:21the past comes alive
22:21the past comes alive
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