Ian’s Blog 19th November 2023

It was very exciting to listen to Matt Lewis interviewing Philippa Langley about her Missing Princes Project on the Gone Medieval Podcast. Here is the link to it:-

https://podfollow.com/gone-medieval/view

I am now reading Philippa Langley’s new book about this subject and have just watched the channel 4 documentary which tells us about the new evidence that has been discovered. I won’t go into too much detail but I will mention some of my thoughts about all of this.

I believe that Thomas Moore’s narrative about the murder of the Princes of Edward IV cannot be relied upon and I don’t believe he meant it to be used as true history. In fact I believe that he never finished writing it and it wasn’t published in his lifetime.

With respect to the bones found under the stairs at the Tower of London I think that they are highly unlikely to be from the period of the late 15th century and I find it hard to believe that the bodies of the Princes would be buried in such a location where there would be lots of people about to witness such a strange burial.

Two pretenders claiming to be the sons of Edward IV during the reign of Henry VII seems to me to be rather odd as opposed to a much more likely scenario that they were Edward V and his younger brother Richard. Why on earth would the Earl of Lincoln support an imposter if Edward V was dead. If Edward V was no longer alive then the Earl of Lincoln would be attempting to seize the throne for himself at the battle of Stoke as he had a stronger claim to the throne than Henry VII and I would argue that this Earl was legally entitled to be King if the sons of Edward IV were both dead.

Here is another thought. It seems very strange that after Henry VII made Richard of York sign a confession that he was actually called Perkin Warbeck, that he didn’t execute him straight away but allowed him to be treated well in his court. Was it because of his Queen who was the sister of Richard of York? 

I would imagine that some historians will find it hard to accept a rewrite of the history books but I expect that with the passage of time Philippa Langley’s discoveries will gradually be accepted as the true version of history. When I think about the actions of the people at the time in question then it makes much more sense if it was Edward V at the battle of Stoke and it was his brother Richard attempting to claim the throne from Henry VII.

It also needs to be stated that there was another Prince in the tower who was the son of George Duke of Clarence. Richard III did not imprison this Prince but Henry VII did and eventually had him executed.