Thinking Sideways: The Princes in the Tower

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Thinking Sideways. I'm stories of things we simply don't know
the answer too. Well. Hi there and thanks for joining
us again. This is Thinking Sideways the podcast and I

(00:25):
am Steve as always joined by Joe Hello and Devon Hey,
who I like to introduce uh it for ourselves? No, no, can.
I always remember my own name. So that's a good thing.
A micro manage this stuff. But you know what, we
need a micro manager, Yeah we do. Okay, Well, today

(00:48):
we're going to get into a story that I've I've
been really looking forward to to sharing with everybody, as
that you two know, but our listeners probably don't. Recently,
I was in England. It's such a long time, but
yeah it was. It's such an extended amount of time.
But when I was there, I of course was touring
around London and I got the chance to go to
the Tower of London and was reminded of a story

(01:11):
that I had heard of but it never really thought
much of until I actually got to see the site
where a bunch of the action happened. By the way,
just as in the side. I was the first time
I saw the Tower of London myself, I was kind
of surprised because I was expecting an actual tower. It's
like a fortress, you know. It's a Yeah, it's very cool.
But where's the tower. There's several of them. Yeah, they're

(01:33):
they're short towers. They're short squat towers. They don't really
look like towers. I just remember how giant the ravens are.
The ravens. Oh, yes, they are disturbingly big giant there. Well,
they're hand fed, basically. Yeah, it's seven of them. There
has to be seven on the grounds at all times
or the monarchy falls. Is that what the legend is? Yeah,

(01:54):
they not know about this, this particular story. Yes, I
I seven might not be the right number, but I
know that they maybe it's nine, but they have to
have them on the grounds. And they're they're big. I
mean like ravens, you see how kind of like when
you are hiking here, not crows. But ravens are not
as big as these things. And maybe it's because I
was a kid when I saw him, but like I
remember them being giants. Yes, European ravens. That's that's a path, Yes,

(02:27):
were going down the path. So anyway, the story that
we're going to talk about is the princes in the tower.
This is a story about two young princes that we're
in the Tower of London, thus the name creative job.
So our story takes place in three and at that time,

(02:50):
the people that we're gonna be talking about our aristocracy.
So they have really fancy titles to go with everybody's names,
and they're all the same names, and they're all the
same names, which makes it a little rough to keep
straight and tell. So I'm gonna preface this episode right
now with saying I'm gonna use everybody's more commonly known names.

(03:13):
In other words, the first king that we're going to
talk about is Edward the Fourth, so I'm going to
refer to him as Edward the Fourth, not his full title,
just for simplicities reasons. Otherwise, even I'm going to be confused,
and I could never keep track of all that stuff
to this day, and I sure, I'm sure I could
have found out, like say, why, why, prince what's his
name is called the Prince of Wales. I mean, you know,

(03:36):
these the Prince of Wales. I'm sorry, but Wales is
like another country over there, you know what, You're the
Prince of Wales. Okay, Yeah, so there you go. Some
of that stuff is just I'll explain it to you later, Joe, Okay,
just not now, okay, okay, all right, So let's go
ahead and get into the story itself, which is on

(03:57):
April nine three, King Edward the Fourth, the King of England,
dies unexpectedly sick for a couple of weeks and then
just up and dies. It did happen a lot in
those days the king and somebody wanted your throne. Well,
he did leave airs. He had two sons. They were

(04:21):
they were by his wife, yes, so they were not,
you know, from a mistress. They were from the woman
who were married. You know that that question did sort
of pop up that you're going to talk about. Yeah,
we're gonna we're gonna get there. Um okay. So we
have Prince Edward, who is referred to as Edward five
and then and he was thirteen when this happened, so

(04:43):
he's a boy king. And then there is his little brother, Richard,
who is because he doesn't have an official number title,
we're gonna just refer to him as Richard, the Duke
of York. He's nine. Can we call him Richie? You
can call him Richie? Alright, So we cool, I mean
you're nine years old and you have to be duke.
I think he was duke from the day he was born. Yeah,

(05:04):
that's the way it works. Well, what happens, of course,
is their father dies and their uncle, whose name is
Richard the third. Yep, it's already getting confusing. He is
declared the Lord protector of the boys by the king
before he dies. Now this isn't recorded officially anywhere, but

(05:24):
everybody presumes that that's what happens, because he takes him
and he goes to take the boy back to London
to reside in the Tower of London, because the Tower
of London is traditionally where the king would stay until
the coronation. His coronation, the coronation of our young King
Edward the five was originally supposed to take place on

(05:49):
the fourth of May. Then it was pushed back to
June that year. Before the coronation could take place, their uncle,
Richard the Third, began to cast outs on the validity
of the marriage between the deceased king and his wife,
Elizabeth Woodville. And at the time she was alive, she

(06:11):
had she was still alive, she had several daughters at
the as well. They had I think a total of
nine children, not all of whom survived child but yes,
nine kids. I believe it was nine children. Evidently the

(06:31):
church got behind this idea that the marriage was invalid,
and this was actually brought to the front. Let's see here.
It was the twenty two of June, like six days
before the coronation. Three days before the cornation, the preacher

(06:53):
at St. Paul's Cross claimed that Richard had was the
only Richard the third was the only legitimate heir to
the crown because they were saying that his brother, Edward
the Fourth had initially been engaged to another woman and

(07:13):
then married the mother of these two young princes. That's
the weirdest thing I ever heard in life. It's it's
very weird. I think it's something to do with I
don't know if it's contractual is the way that is
the right word for it, But I don't know exactly
how they treated engagement back in those days. Yeah, basically
claimed that because he was engaged with someone else, he

(07:36):
couldn't get married to her the way he did. Surprising
nobody noticed until this particular moment. And there's there's some
doubts as to whether or not he was actually engaged
the woman that they said he was engaged to. Which
was she like a queen or princess of a different
place or was she No, she was, she was she

(07:57):
was English royalty. But yeah, was It was really really weird.
So what happens is this, this sermon happens, and then
on the twenty five of June, which at this point
I believe the coronation has already been shoved back again,
though there's no official date for it to happen. Now,
a group of and I quote lords, knights and gentlemen

(08:20):
petitioned Richard to take the throne. Everybody's changing their allegiance
from the current king, who has not yet been crowned
and who's thirteen years old, and they're throwing their weight
and their beliefs over to Richard the Third, who's an adult.
And these guys probably just saw which way the wind
was blowing. I mean, when he heard the news about

(08:42):
the declaration about the marriage, they knew what was happening.
And it's hard to say in in the history, it's
hard to get a clear sense of who's first started
casting these doubts about Edward the fourth and his wife.
We don't know if it's Richard the third. If it
was somebody else, how this whole thing happened, We're not

(09:04):
exactly positive. It's kind of lost in the sand, yeah,
but basically, obviously enough, Richard takes the throne and he
is now the king. The issue at the church with
the validity of Edward the Fourth's marriage actually gets passed

(09:25):
into an act by British Parliament the next year. It's
called Titless Regius I believe it's how you say it,
the Titles Regius Act, and that stated that their marriage
King Edward the fourth and Elizabeth Woodville was invalid. So
therefore those boys could absolutely not be king, and none
of their children were had any claim to the throne

(09:49):
at all. So these little guys are kind of left
out in the cold. Yeah, but they're still family, right,
so you can kind of assume even if you know
the uncle is like, well, they've got a mother who's alive,
and they're separated from their mother. Their mother had initially
gone into hiding when her husband died. And then the

(10:12):
boys didn't come to the tower at the same time.
The young king came first, and then later his brother
came and joined him. They found him well basically what
happens Joe's kind of hitting it is that the two
princes were seen on the grounds of the Tower of
London in the spring of four three, and then, according

(10:37):
to some writings, they just up and disappeared, and some
others they were seeing less and less and were moved
into the rear apartments of the castle, and then they
were gone and they were never seen again alive. I
wonder if maybe the mother kind of knew what was up, right,
I mean, why does a woman go into hiding when

(10:58):
her husband, Yeah, it dies from totally legitimate causes, ostensibly right,
with two sons who have totally legitimate again ostensibly claims
to the throne. And it is I've read some accounts
of what she could have been thinking, because the thing is,
she does eventually sort of give some allegiance to Richard

(11:20):
the third, and then later on she then shifts her
allegiance to the next king, which is Henry the seventh.
So I think that, to steal the words out of
Joe's mouth, she saw the writing on the wall, she knew,
she knew that the only way her family was going
to survive was to play ball. Yeah, because she had
more more more children, and also, you know, I mean,

(11:44):
who knows. Maybe he was holding the kids still and
she was being blackmailed, although more likely the kids were
already dead. Maybe she thought decided, now I'll just protect
what's left with my family. Maybe she thought they were
still alive. Well, let's jump forward. Yeah years. Oh no,
no, no no, no, two hundred years. We're gonna get the

(12:05):
time machine. Okay, two hundred years have gone by. It
is sixteen seventy four. We are still on the grounds
at the Tower of London, and we're at the White Tower,
which is one of several towers on the grounds. And
there's some workmen digging under the stairs in the tower

(12:25):
and they come across a wooden box. And now I
imagine these guys, Hey, there's a big wooden box buried
under the stairs. They crack it open. Not gold. It's
got the skeletons of two children in it. Have you
noticed that it's always workmen who find the skeletons. That's

(12:46):
why I don't want to be a workman. I haven't
found fun yet. I'm really happy about it. But no,
they find this box and this the remains that we're
in this box are widely believed to be the remains
of these two princes who went missing at ages thirteen
and nine. Again, I've I've seen accounts that say that

(13:07):
there was velvet wrapped around them in the box, which
would lead credence to the theory that, yeah, they probably
were royalty because common people didn't have velvet. They're very
expensive fabricle crazy expensive at that point in time. It's
still expensive now and we can like mass produce it

(13:27):
my velvet jumpsuit. Oh my god, I don't want to know. Alright,
So back to the story. I'll okay. The remains that
they found were later on, I would say within a
month or so. We're placed in an urn and were
interred in Westminster Abbey by King Charles the Second. But

(13:49):
there was some analysis done of the bones. This was
done in three I don't know why, but the royalty
actually agreed to open up the urn and let somebody
examine it. So the burn they didn't burn, the bones
and the ashes it was actual. Yeah, And it's weird
to me whatever I think, and I know this is

(14:10):
confusing to some people. I think of an urn, and
I think of a little urn that's got ashes. Yeah,
there's big ERNs too, so that's something to clarify. I'm
not sure why they would choose an urn to put
bones in. I'm guessing they piled them up. I don't
think they had temper were. Yes, So the analysis was

(14:32):
done on the bones and the guy who did it
again history has gone back and people have really chewed
up his analysis of it. But he said, yeah, they
could both be boys, but I can't tell that for sure.
I'm pretty sure one of them is about twelve or thirteen,
and I think the other ones around ten. They were

(14:53):
then sealed back up and no one has ever been
allowed to get at him again. You think with modern
technology we could just use Yeah. And you know, I
gotta say, in a way, I kind of agree with
the Royalty in this situation because there's been a lot
of coverage of it here and there, and there's a

(15:16):
footnote on this story that explains why it became so
popular again. But they said, you know, okay, well you
could do all this work and you could go ahead
and check it out, and you could figure out if
they are indeed the bones of those princes, and well,
two things are gonna need to be figured out then, One,
if they're not what are we supposed to do with
the bones? Where do we put them? And to dfill

(15:38):
and to it doesn't solve the mystery. No, we still
don't know who or why who killed them and specifically
why that happened. So it does nothing to solve the mystery.
So I can kind of understand, you know, for out
of respect reason. Yeah, And I would assume that they
just kind of have come to terms with it at
this point, right, I mean you can kind of see

(16:00):
how maybe in the thirties, you know, it's been a
couple hundred years, is maybe somebody in the royal family
deeply connected with this story for whatever reason, so they
were very interested and very curious to know if you know,
this was a valid claim. And and you know, I
think since then maybe it's just family has decided well

(16:23):
that's just it. Yeah, Yeah, you don't shake it up,
you don't shake up behind let it go. That. And
the other thing too, is at the royals. I mean,
they've got all kinds of people buried in places like
Winds Mr At Westminster Abbey, and you know, it's kind
of questionable and maybe maybe not everybody buried in there
was part of the royal family, something that was brought
up as well. Now we're gonna have to do everybody

(16:46):
can of worms. If you exhumed all of their corpses
and a lot of extensive DNA testing on all of them,
you might find a lot of them were like like
not actually the children of the kings. Everybody thought that
were the children of all kinds of things like that.
It wouldn't look like I said, a big can of worms.
It's just not a good thing. So because like, for example,
you know, imagine that there was actually a break in
the lineage somewhere like a couple of hundred years ago,

(17:07):
and our present royal family doesn't actually have any legitimate
claim to royalty anyway. I mean, that's entirely possible, and
that would be a giant scandal. Yeah, well and think
about it. Think what that would do to the housewives
of America who they got to obsess over. Yeah, yeah,
it's true. So now we're gonna go ahead and we're

(17:30):
gonna get into the theory section of everything, And I'm
gonna kind of break this up into two subsections. Sure
that or not a theories they were murdered or they worked.
So we're going to start with they were murdered, So
who could have done it? Who could have killed them?
Colonel Mustard Candlestick exactly, all right, So our first and

(17:53):
most obvious culprit is Richard the third one. Okay, well
but and and well you might like some of the
stuff that's in this theory then, because there's holes in
this theory, I think the problem. What do you got? Well,
it just seems like he had a pretty solid grip.
I mean, it's not like there were a bunch of
people running around saying no, you don't have a legitimate claim.

(18:16):
You know, the Church was behind him, Most of the
powerful people in England were behind him. Parliament later passed
a thing that said, yeah, I know these boys don't
have any claim. Their mother was on the run. Which
was a great argument for why they wouldn't have been
legitimate sons is that if you have royalty that potentially

(18:36):
could somehow revalidate their claim to the throne. That's a threat.
But they're not always going to that's true. But if
they if they disappeared too, that's kind of like that's
kind of like an implicit acknowledgement on your part, if
you're Richard the Third that they are the legitimate airs
if you felt that that their claim was so strong

(18:57):
that you needed to kill them. Well, and the thing
is is that there were all these rumors about the
boys having been killed, and he never responded to any
of those. And he also never opened an investigation as
to where were the boys. That's kind of funny that
you think somebody would be asking those questions. I mean,
they sort of go away, and well, it was everybody,

(19:18):
it was. It was rumor. Everybody's we haven't seen the princes, Well,
they must have been killed, on and on and on.
So it's hard to say. But here's here's the problem
with saying, well, Richard must be the one who's responsible
for this. In history, it's always written by the people
who win the wars. And Richard was only on the

(19:39):
throne for I believe two. Yeah, he died in August
or Foive, so he wasn't there very long. And this
is the time when we're going they're going through the
War of the Roses, which is a giant battle between
two sides of the family. They got really down and

(20:01):
dirty the his Richard, the third side of the family,
lost out, and history was written over them. There's things
about Richard, that aren't exactly true, that are just accepted
commonly is having to be the truth, such as like
a lot of a lot of the propaganda the year
fed today, you know, in the media out there. And

(20:24):
the thing is is that one of the things that
you hear is that he had a humped left or
right shoulder. In other words, he was physically deformed. And
there are paintings of him where he's got a humped shoulder. Uh.
They've actually done X ray analysis of those paintings and
they were altered at some point after the fact to

(20:47):
match that description. Although when they actually discovered his core
or his bones on his corps, they just as I'm
sure you're aware, you're gonna tell our listeners, they discovered
his corps recently, excuse me, his bones again underneath the
car park. He did have his back and he had
severe scoliosis. So it's quite possible, is that his portrait,
Sure that was done while he was king. It was

(21:09):
like tactfully he was actually readjusted to look normal. Yeah, yeah,
and then somebody went back and said, we'll really make
this look like Yeah, that's that's very very likely a possibility. Uh.
The other thing is that Richard lost the battle and
was killed. It's the Battle of bosworth Field is where

(21:29):
he's killed, and Henry the Seventh takes over. He was
on the Tutor side of the family, so again the
opposite side that didn't like his side, and Henry the Seventh,
over the course of his reign systematically went through and
wiped out the majority of the people that were on

(21:50):
I believe the York side of the lineage. We don't
know how much of the information that's out there that
says that Richard the three is guilty in the one
who ordered it's true, because it could be propaganda. Absolutely, yeah,
you know, And again I say that like they're they're
thirteen and nine, and I think I don't know a
thirteen year old that, like, you know, their father died

(22:11):
of natural causes. Everybody says, you don't have a legitimate thing.
You just like take him in and you treat him
really well and give him a lot of land. The chances,
you know, treat him like your own son, the chances
of him coming back and saying, no, I'm the rightful king.
I just don't feel like they're that big. And maybe
maybe they are. Maybe they were. Maybe he was showing that.
But then you kill both of them. Why because if

(22:33):
you kill the elder, the younger becomes Yeah, you're right,
and nine year olds are really really good at holding grudges.
But yeah, I think that especially. You know, you got
to look at the royal the royals of yourpe, the
royal families, they were basically crime families. Yea, they're they're
like you know, yeah, they were like the corleonest they

(22:55):
and so the backstabbing, you know, in fighting and fighting
wasn't and deadly and continually and deadly. So the idea
that Richard could have taken him and treated him like
just treated them just one like his own, like his
own kids, and they would never come back at stabman
the back and try to take the throne away. Of
course they would. That is the way it's done, its

(23:16):
way business is practice. So the next up on the
list is a fellow by the name of James Tyrrell.
I believe it's how you pronounced his name. He was
a loyal knight to the House of York. He served
under Richard the Third. Evidently he was quite loyal to Richard,
though eventually he did leave England and went to France

(23:38):
and when he came back, he was leading a revolt
against the monarchy. He came back in fifteen o one,
which it was the tutors at that point. So we've
got Henry the Seventh is on the crowd and his
rebellion doesn't go so well, and he's captured, and back
in those days and in his in terror gation, which

(24:01):
is actually tortured. Oh man, No, it's more than that though.
In those days, like we do these days, like whatever,
we do some really horrible stuff. But what they did,
I gotta say, if I had to choose between that
and water boarding, I mean, I'm not gonna watch. I
gotta wine about water board. Yeah, well, that's a pretty
civilized torture. Well, during his his interrogation, he supposedly confessed

(24:29):
to killing the princess. I would have to if somebody
were doing that to me right now, I would be like, yeah,
I killed them, Yeah, I don't care. Yeah, I'll confess
to anything. Hell yeah. So that's the problem. And you
know the thing is is that we know that information
gotten out of torture is not reliable. And the other

(24:51):
issue with it is that there's only one writing or
one recording of this confession, and it was written thirty
years afterwards. It was a fellow by the name of
Thomas Moore wrote this and said that this is what
came out of it. But he's the only one to
ever write it, so we don't again have a whole

(25:12):
lot of support how true it is. There weren't official
transcripts of the interrogator that. Well, they didn't use their smartphones.
Come on, man, I know it is. However, from the
writing of that confession, at least from what I can gather.
When you hear the story told, and you hear the

(25:33):
murder of the princess told, it tends to go that
they were smothered with a pillow in their sleep. So somebody,
three men went into their room and smothered them. Takes
three of them, three grown men better, I mean, that's
herol here. He said that he and two other men

(25:56):
were the ones who did it, upon the orders of
the then King Richard the third. And did he give
a time frame for that? Uh? No, was it before Richard?
Well it was, it was. It was in It was
that first year, that first summer that they were in London. Unfortunately,

(26:17):
he also couldn't say where the boys were buried, which
is an issue. He said somebody else just took care
of the bodies, was his way of saying of getting
out of having that piece of information. And that's actually
a legitimate I mean, in a sense a little. And
I'm not so sure that the bones found in the
tower are the princes, because it would actually make a

(26:39):
lot more sense to get rid of the bodies and
transport them far away or burn them or something, or
buried them under a set of stairs so nobody finds
them for two hundred years. Yeah, but obviously they were found,
whereas by the time they were found, it was it
didn't affect anybody who was alive. But where they found,
I'm sorry, were they found like just like chilling under

(27:00):
the stairs, or where they encased in like rock, or
like they were burying in the dirt and they were
in a box. They were in a box in the
dirt is right next to the Thames. If they had
just taken them out and pitch them into the river
and they you know, they would have been, that would
have been. But that nobody would bat an eye and
those days that a corpse floating down the Thames. True,
but people would see you leaving with the corpses of children,

(27:21):
which were not things that usually left to the tower grounds.
So there there's an issue with that. I know where
you're headed with it, and I like it, and it
makes sense, it's simpler. But I can also think we
don't want any witnesses at all because people just never
stop talking about things they see. We just don't want
to talk about, especially in England. But yeah, but the

(27:44):
whole thing about it is I'm not I'm not saying
you just walk out with the corpse slug over your shoulder.
You stuff them at a barrel or something like that first,
you know, and then you put them on bring out
your dead. They put them my stuff in a barrel
and put them on a hand truck, you know, and
just wheel them out to the front gate and says
I'm going to take back this empty and get us
a full one, and then nobody nobody's true. It's yeah,

(28:04):
I know that that is a possibility, but it doesn't
seem to be the way it happened. So let's move
on to our next suspect, which is a guy by
the name of Henry Stafford. Stafford at the time this
is again three was another very popular supporter of Richard
the third. He then very quickly changed allegiances and is

(28:28):
said to have tried to mount a rescue for the princes,
and upon discovering that they were already dead for some means,
I don't know what that is, switched his allegiance then
over to Henry Tutor Henry the seventh, and he was
quite quickly captured and executed. In so he has considered

(28:54):
a possibility for the murderer, yes, because it's it's possible
that he went ahead and he's the one who actually
killed the boys to weaken Richard the third stands because
oh look at this guy, we want this guy as king.
He killed children again to undermine his reputation. But for me,

(29:17):
the timeline on this doesn't work because he was executed
for treason on November two, so that even if he
did supposedly try to mount this rescue, that would mean
the boys had to have been dead months prior to that,
so basically June they had to have been killed right
around the time that Richard said I'll take the throne,

(29:38):
well pretty much when they arrived. So now, if if
this guy was the killer Henry Staffory Stafford, okay, so
if this guy, Henry Stafford was the killer then and
he mounts this raid, so obviously then he killed them
months before. He stashed the body somewhere, so he wanted
to like mount this raid, go in, find about it

(30:00):
of the children, you know, put out theatrical show shock
and dismay and everything like that, Right, and then that
will discredit Richard the third and strengthened his side. Is
that is that the idea behind this theory. No, the
theory is that he was going to mount a rescue
and rescue the princes to restore them to the throne. Yeah,
but when they he found out that they were dead,

(30:21):
he turned around and supported Tutor. No, but the theory
of him killing oh yes, yes, yes, you're that That
is one way that that theory has gone is that
he went in and had them killed to then mount
the supposed rescue and discover them corpses. But yeah, there
is one big flaw with the logic of that theory.
How do you know they're under the stairs exactly? How

(30:44):
how exactly you know where to look with their little corpses? Yes,
there is a gigantic issue there. Yeah. So so next
up on the lineup, and I admit this is a
very tenuous, tenuous theory that Shakespeare No, no, Shakespeare is
actually the reason that Richard the third kind of is
also revered as a villain, but he is not considered

(31:08):
one of the people who could have killed princess. So
now this one is uh, Margaret Beaufort. She is the
mother of the future King Henry, the seventh King. Henry
is a tutor. Yes, people say that it is possible
that she from Afar orchestrated and ordered their deaths in

(31:33):
order to help solidify her son's claim to the throne.
It makes sense accepted that if you think about if
you see the way that how far away from the
throne Henry was at that time, It really seems like
a serious stretch to me. I don't know, He's at

(31:55):
the throne like a couple of years later, right, So
his claim couldn't have been that week, wasn't He didn't
have the strongest claim in the world. And really, by
having killed the king and asserted himself as king and
taken power is sort of how he would have had invalidated. Well,
I guess that's it's he who holds the crowd, So

(32:15):
I guess, you know, if we're going to look at
this in terms of, you know, it's one thing to
like go into like actual battle with a king that
is a grown man. It's another thing to like murder
two children. So if you're going to say, Okay, what's
the best way to get this person off of the
throne and reassert our family's claim to the throne, Well,

(32:36):
you vilify the current king and at the same time,
two birds one stone get rid of the actual legitimate
claim to the throne of these sons. So you murder
the son's and frame it like it was Richard the
third and then, you know, so there will be a
certain public there will be a certain like voice in
the back of people's head thinking like, well, they disappeared.

(32:59):
Maybe he them. He he's the kind of guy who
would have killed That's exactly why she's on the list.
I just personally find it to have too many convenient leaps.
And you know what, it's weird that I like this
one more than I like Richard. You've just got a
soft spot in your heart for Richard, that's all it's.
I think it's because I would have probably done what

(33:22):
Margaret did. Could she could have been part of an
overarching conspiracy to bring Henry the Seventh to the throne.
But so the question is, is like, let's say she
had a hand in it, so it could it could
go a couple of different ways. Her her agents could
murder the princes and then dispose of the bodies, so
they effectively had disappeared. And so at that point, doesn't

(33:44):
Richard mounts like a little search, a little search and
rescue inside the tower to find the kids and find
out where the hell they went to. Doesn't he like
start interrogating and and torturing all the various people who
would have had access to them, You would think, but
if he worried about that, but we never heard of
that happening, well, you know, but seriously, you know, he's

(34:05):
he's he may not he might not be sad and
sorry that the kids are gone, but he recognized it
that their death presents a serious problems, or their disappearance
creates a serious issue. I wonder if he just assumed
that like their mother came and got them up from school,
had a note, I mean, obviously not that right, but

(34:25):
that somebody helped. I don't know, you would think that
somebody would have somebody would have noticed and somebody would
have so so so again, if said they were murdered
their little corpses were found there, then Richard could like,
I guess that's in a Sanchia kind of putting a
turd in his pocket because you got in. He murdered
the kids, left their bodies there, and now Richard, Richard

(34:48):
and his agents look at that and saying, well, everybody's
gonna be looking at us. I guess we should like
sweep the sound of the rug. Maybe yeah, I don't know. Maybe.
I mean people didn't tend to come out and cry wolf,
Well you did air that longer, So let me just
you know, play Devil's advocate here, right. So, Okay, Richard
does mount very like a secret search, right because he's
not going to be like, ah, we lost the princes.

(35:10):
Oh no, because that's a bad idea for publicity. So
anounces the search. He finds out they've been murdered, and
he says, there's literally no way I can spend this
so that people believe it wasn't me. Yeah, probably, so
let's just ignore it and just you know, I think
that's the that's the way that you kind of have
to do with something, and that brings us to our

(35:31):
final potential culprit, the man himself, Henry the seventh. So
people say that it is possible that Henry the seventh
had the boys killed from afar much This runs in
the same vein as the theory that his mother did.
It's because he was in exile in France at the time,
or there are theories that when he took the throne.

(35:57):
So this is five, this is two years after the
boys went to the Tower of London, that it is
possible that the boys were still alive but secreted away
in the tower and he had them killed because he
didn't want them to have the legitimate claim. And the

(36:18):
reason that the theory states that maybe they were still
alive is that in July of five there was a
regulation issued by Richard the third Household that stated the
children should be together at one breakfast. Doesn't say what children,
It doesn't make any reference to where or who, But

(36:41):
people have construed that to say possibly the boys were
still alive and just secreted away could mean that could
mean anything else too. Yeah, I mean there were children
because there were children living in the tower, right, Yeah, Yeah,
people lived there. People lived there, they had families, they
had children, But maybe all he was saying was that
the children should all be at the children's table and
not pastor in the adults at the big table. Yeah,

(37:06):
maybe he had them alive for a couple of years
to kind of suss out if you know Edward was
going to be like I am, I'm thirteen. I know
I'm thirteen, but I'm the king, So let's get this
going again, because there's different temperaments. Yeah, there definitely is
a tradition of these kids coming back and like murdering

(37:27):
everybody else. But you know, maybe he keeps them alive
for a couple of years and then decides to know
they actually are a legitimate threat, let's kill them. Maybe.
I don't know what did what did Edward die of?
Didn't they die of like like acute a cute lead
poisoning or something? I don't know. You know, he was
sick for three weeks, and I could never find that

(37:47):
it wasn't like a sickness. He was sick. I mean,
it was ill, but I can never find exactly what
he could have been. It could have been poisoning. I
mean that that kind of stuff happened all the time
back in those days. I guess that question leads to
don't know if you have this theory of um, you know,
maybe they just had what he had and we do
have something to go along with that, so we'll get

(38:09):
to that. I do have one little footnote here for
Henry the seventh, which is kind of funny, is that
do you remember that act that I talked about that
was passed by parliament that said the boys were not
legitimate regius. Yeah, something like that. Well, Henry the seventh

(38:30):
repealed that and he took the throne. Interesting now, some
people say that he did that because he didn't agree
with what Richard had done, But then there's also the
fact that he was courting and was going to potentially
marry one of their sisters, one of the young Prince's sisters,

(38:51):
to bring the houses together. And indeed he did eventually
marry somebody from the York side of the family and
end the War of the Roses via blood. And obviously, yeah,
if you want that kid to have that that that's
super lineage, then you have to re establish the legitimacy. Yes,
and that's he did it so that they were legitimate again.
So then when he married, there was none of these

(39:13):
issues again. But so that that brings us to the
end of they were murdered. So if the princess weren't killed,
then what happened to him? Okay, well they were. They
were misplaced and they still haven't found them. The longest
game of hide and seek happen to be all the time.
You know how many times today? Just my glasses? Yeah, well,

(39:35):
here we go. So it's known that the young King
Edward the five was suffering from an illness, which is
where you were headed just a minute ago, Devon. I
don't know what that illness is. I couldn't find detail
of what it is. So it's quite possible that he died,
either from his illness or from whatever from whatever treatment

(39:56):
he was getting for that illness. The treatments were pretty
back in those days. Yeah, I was like, oh, let's
put some slugs on and we'll see what happens in
their head. Yeah, So we don't know if that's you know,
that could be how he died. Yeah, and those you know,
those diseases especially are fairly communico he had, like the

(40:18):
plague for instance, He probably didn't because everyone have the plague.
But if he had, you know, the plague, his little
brother definitely would have gotten it from him, right, and
then they just but we know that he was ill.
So that leaves us with his brother, Richard, the Duke
of York. Now, I know all of our listeners are screaming,

(40:39):
but Steve, what about the theories where he survives? There
aren't any. I haven't come across any solid theories that
say that the young King could have possibly survived and
escaped the Tower of Lund. Now you're talking. You still
are talking, correct, Yes? Yes, well you know if obviously,

(41:00):
boy King, if you're listening to us years later, all right, well,
there are theories that young Richard escaped on his own
or with help, we don't know, and that he fled
the country. This was something that actually plagued Henry the
seventh because in four eight seven, man by the name

(41:27):
of Lambnert Lambert Simnel claimed to be Richard came forward
and was claiming to be the young boy they now
would be the legitimate boy king. Uh. He then eventually
changed his story to say that no, he wasn't the
the young King, he was just another royal named Edward Plagenet, Plantagenet, Plantagenet,

(41:52):
Edward Plantagenet. So what what back? In those days was
the penalty for impersonating royalty. It was usually pretty bad,
yea death. But he was very very young when this happened,
when he made these claims of appropriate age, he was
very close to it. Yes, so it was possible that

(42:13):
it could have been him, well, Henry. They obviously arrested him, Henry.
It sounds like took pity on him and pardoned him
because he was pardoned, and he was allowed to work
in the royal kitchens until he died four or fifty
years later. He worked for the royal family for the

(42:34):
rest of his life. Huh, Well that was that was
very nice, unusual but yes, yeah, for for a guy
like Henry, that seems really kind. Yes, yeah, I'm not
sure if I was Henry, if I won't to have
that guy preparing my food? Yeah yeah, who knows exactly
what the circumstances were. But not too long after that,

(42:55):
So now we're jumping ahead another four years, we have
another person coming forward and claiming to be Richard. And
this was a man who eventually was discovered to be
named Perkin Warbeck. And he went to Ireland. He went
all over, but he went to Ireland, and that's where
his story really gained traction and he got a bunch

(43:16):
of support, and he got an army together, and he
came back to England to take the throne back. That
didn't go so well. His army was routed, he was captured,
he recanted his story, and then they executed him. Yeah,
so that seems like Ireland at that time would have

(43:36):
been a really easy place to be, Like, hey, I
have some kind of vague claim against some people. A
lot of people convinced he had royalty, offering their daughters
to him for marriage. I mean, this guy was evidently
a pretty good con man, real deal or he was
a real deal. But the only other theory about what

(44:00):
have happened to if one of them escaped is that
they escaped and they lived out their life unknown. Unlikely,
doesn't It does a little bit. But actually, you know,
when you think about it, uh yeah, you would think
that they would have come out of the closet sooner
or later. I mean, I mean, essentially after the reconciliation
between the two sides of the family. I could see
why they would stay hidden until then. Yeah. But but

(44:23):
what's interesting to me as the pretenders, the two pretenders
pretended to be Richard and not Edward the Fifth, Yes,
because it could just as easily have been Edward who
escaped the tower. And so why people would pretend to
be Richard instead of Edward is kind of beyond me,
I use less dangerous. Well though, I actually think it's
because he was the younger and so he therefore is

(44:44):
harder to I d in his paintings because he's still
a boy. He's still a very young boy. His facial features,
you know, I mean you look at somebody, Yeah, you
take a picture of somebody at nine, and you take
a picture of him at twenty, and they look similar,
but you couldn't say that it was this guy, or

(45:04):
maybe the guy sitting next to him in a restaurant
was actually who that nine year old was. So I
think that it's because he was so young that was
easier and not as recognized. People didn't see him as much. Well. Yeah,
and also like if you say, hey, I am Richard,
I'm not the oldest son, I do believe that you
may have a better claim than me. That's much safer

(45:28):
than saying I'm Edward and that's my throne, right, very possible,
but that unfortunately ladies and gentlemen's where the story ends.
Those are the theories that we've got, except for the
part where we solved the mystery. Okay, it's Joe's mystery solving,
all right, So let's let's get out your magical mystery
book and tell me, Joe, who which one of these

(45:48):
theories do you you're back? Which do you think it is?
Actually none of them? Really, Let's get back to the
early part of the story of the Ravens. How big
they are, could easily have carried away a couple of
small kids, right, except the Ravens are always incageous. They
didn't escape. No, no, let me thank, let me thank

(46:09):
any other ones? So, uh, what do you got? Which?
I like Henry's mom yea for it because I think, yeah,
I don't know why I have this particular fondness in
my heart for women of that era doing particularly treacherous
things to further their son's goals in life, but I do.
That's like one of my favorite things because there's a

(46:31):
there's a good documented history of this kind of thing
happening where women would have a son and they would
think this guy, he's got a legitimate claim to the throne.
I'm going to do something about it. And I think, yeah,
so I like her. I like her killing the boys
or them being sick and dying, and Richard being like, well,
maybe we should just sweep this underthrock. Yeah, SIPI dad, Richard.

(46:54):
You know probably at that point in time, you know,
you got you got a twelve year old kid who's
now the king, and you're in this have a turmoil.
Maybe the kids sick too. Maybe time for me to
pull a few strings and do some bit of stuff
and take over the throne. And like you said, maybe
she did had the kids murdered not only as a
part of the scheme to bring Henry back, but also
to discredit Richard. She's got kind of two for there.

(47:16):
I a good reason. I like that one. I personally,
I think the one that I back, which still has
its holes. But I think that James Tyrrell might possibly
have been telling the truth because he was known to
be a pretty you know, he really followed every order
he got from the king at the time, essentially well,
but we don't know, see, And this is something that

(47:38):
I came across in some of my reading, is that
it might have been that Richard could have simply said
I wish I didn't have to deal with those brats anymore.
I wish they just weren't. They just weren't in the
way he goes, oh that was a secret wink wink,
order and take care of things. Or he was just

(48:00):
like I like to do anything to make my master happy. Yes, yes,
or perhaps he just really enjoyed murdering children. Quite possible. Yeah,
So yeah, this is uh my, my, my thing with
this is again, history is written by the winners, and
that's what makes this one difficult. There may have been
a lot of details that were known at the time

(48:22):
that didn't get recorded, or got recorded and destroyed. So no,
I'm sure if you know, if they all kinds of
people wandering around the tower, and there must have been
all kinds of people who saw the kids and had
some inkling of what had happened to them, and a
lot of people could have said, you know, well it
was about this time that the kids just sort of disappeared,
and all those little details, like you said, are just

(48:43):
lost there. Unless somebody uncovers the manuscript one of these days,
it will probably be some workmen, you know. Uh well, yeah,
well I gotta say too that those those those bones
of those kids. They may or may not be the
two Princes, but there's a lot of there's a lot
of other stairways in the Tower of London, and there's
probably all kinds of bones hidden in that place there

(49:06):
all over the ground. They've done that and accidentally found
lots and lots of bones and lots and lots of places. Yeah,
that they have not yet uncovered the two Princes if
they're still in the town. The tower of the grounds
of the Tower of London are chucked full of corpses
because right outside the Tower of London is where they
used to hang in behead everybody and then they bring

(49:26):
him inside and bury them, and they there's so many
stories about corpses being found everywhere in that place. Yeah,
I guess say, I don't want to be there during
the zombie apocalypse. Yeah, Well, ladies and gentlemen. That is
the end of today's story. Now, as always, the research
links for this particular story will be up on the website.

(49:46):
That website is Thinking Sideways podcast dot com. If you
have any thoughts or comments, you can go ahead and
do that right on the website, or if you want,
you can also go ahead and send us an email.
Are email address is Thinking Sideways podcast at gmail dot com. Yeah,
and we actually have some listener mail. I know, we

(50:08):
do actually get a good amount of listener mail, but
sometimes we get suggestions or you know, things stick out
at us and we just want to read them. So
I really love going out to our email box. It's
almost like you know when you were a kid and
you'd run out to the mailbox at your house every day.
I'm like, click on it. Yes, yeah, And actually you

(50:30):
don't do what the intern does that well, you know
in our comments on our website go there too, so
we need to check all that stuff out. But this
one is from a guy named Tom Williams and he's
from London, which is super awesome, and he says, hello,
Sideways Thinkers. I've been listening to your podcast for a
long time, with one of my favorite episodes being the

(50:51):
Blue Signal. Yeah, that's why you want to On the
subject of signals, have you guys ever thought about the
the miss Wow signal sent back from outer space in
ninety seven and we have, Actually we were just talking
about this. I've been uh. We the listener suggestions we
get are always the like really big ones, you know,

(51:14):
they're always the really giant mysteries that you want to
invest a lot of time. And so I have been
investing sometime in this one, and we will be recording
one soon, you know. I gotta admit It's It's funny
is when we look when we're looking for stuff, I'm
so aware of the Wow some of the crosses. So
many times it didn't even come up on radars. Is

(51:34):
what I'm I'm doing searches or whatever to try to
find topics. I know that one and that one is
so cool that I just automatically go, oh, the while
signal keep going because and not to say that I
don't want to do what I'm just it's just so
embedded in my brain and for me, the Wow signal
and you know, a couple other ones have been kind
of on my radar for a long time, even since

(51:55):
the beginning of us talking about doing the show. But
I just have always thought that so much research, there's
so much stuff out there on this to do it
is just going to be a huge undertaking. Yeah. It's
also the other thing about the wild signal is not
not to say that we're not going to do it,
because of course we will we'll tackle this and we'll
solve this damn mystery. But it's one of those things

(52:16):
that you see so often, and I try to find
the more obscure little mysteries like those you like the
big ones. Yeah, there you go, but sweet but yeah,
good suggestion. Wow is all I can say. Ha ha ha.
You can listen to the episode right on the website
as well, or most likely you're downloading it from my tunes,
which is where most people get it. If you're on iTunes,

(52:38):
go ahead and take the time to subscribe and leave
us a rating. Those kind of things really great to know,
and they let other people find out about us. If
you forget to download a show and you're run around,
you realize there's gonna be a new one out. You
can always listen to us on Stitcher from your mobile phone.
You can just stream it right there, easy as that.
And last, but certainly not least, go a head and

(53:00):
uh find us on Facebook. I know we've got a
bunch of people have been tracking us down on Facebook lately,
and we're getting a ton of activity, which is awesome.
We're gonna have some really good conversations with folks about
some really cool things so definitely definitely go ahead and
find us on that. And uh, with that, ladies and gentlemen,
we're gonna go ahead and sign this one off. We
appreciate it, and we'll talk to you next week. Everybody,

(53:24):
Bye bye,