We visited North Devon last weekend so that we could see and hear Philippa Langley being interviewed about Richard III and the sons of Edward IV. I was able to see her after the interview and she signed my copy of her book about the missing Princes project.
When I say ‘we' that means myself and Elaine and on Wednesday afternoon we performed a set of our Richard III themed songs at the Little Theatre. This included my song about Philippa Langley and later on there was a questions section and John Miles asked me if Philippa had heard my song about her. I told the audience that she had and I showed everyone my copy of her book and that she had signed it ‘ To Ian, keep on singing.’ That made everyone laugh. On the 14th September a similar question had been asked at the Richard III Society meeting in Plymouth after I had finished singing the song about Philippa.
Since I am on the subject of Richard III I might as well mention a couple of reasons why I think the sons of Edward IV weren’t murdered during Richard’s reign. I think I’ve gone on about this in a previous blog.
At the battle of Stoke the army of Edward V was commanded by the Earl of Lincoln who would not have supported an imposter as the Earl of Lincoln had a very strong claim to the throne. Only the princes had a stronger claim than him. All three of them had a better claim to the throne than Henry Tudor.
Surely the royal houses of York and Europe would not have permitted public denigration of their royal blood to support imposters named as Lambert Simnel and Perkin Warbeck by the Tudor dynasty. Could Margaret and Maximillian in Burgundy have been fooled by two imposters pretending to be the Princes? That really seems unlikely. Also 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. Later on Henry VIII would execute the daughter of the Duke of Clarence. By this time the Tower of London was more like a prison rather than the Royal Palace that it had once been during the reign of Richard III.
Philippa Langley has provided a very long list of evidence to show that the Princes were probably alive during the reign of Richard III and if any King needs to take the blame for their deaths then a much more likely suspect is Henry VII.
Here is a link to Philippa Langley’s brilliant books
https://www.philippalangley.co.uk/bookshelf.html#book-princes
