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True Crime of the Historical Kind returns to the scene of the crime...
We uncover the deeper story. The world that shaped the violence, and the humans that played a hand in history's tragedies.
Because the past may be distant, but human nature rarely is.
More than five hundred years ago, two young English princes disappeared from the Tower Of London, and there was no explanation. Were they murdered? Had they escaped? Or was it something else entirely? So what really happened to the princes in the tower?
Speaker 1:You're listening to true crime of the historical kind. This is part one of the disappearance of the princes in the tower, bad blood. To fully understand how two royal children could just up and vanish, we need to take a step back and take a look at the cultural fabric of England in the mid to late fourteen hundreds. This was right before the Renaissance period hit England. So picture a medieval world that's full of castles, kings, and very complicated claims to the throne.
Speaker 1:From nobility to royalty, England was caught up in a dangerous game where influence and loyalty could all shift overnight in the name of self promotion. You weren't even safe from your own family. If it came down to a division of power, it sometimes meant every man for himself. You had to be very careful with who you trusted because if your alliance went south, you might just end up losing everything like your head. If this sort of intense royal drama is sounding familiar, it might be because this is the same time period that inspired George RR Martin when he wrote the epic book series, a song of ice and fire, aka the books that were turned into the HBO TV series, Game of Thrones.
Speaker 1:Just think of the infamous quote from Cersei Lannister when she says, when you play the Game of Thrones, you win or you die. There is no middle ground. That's the mindset here. But instead of Westeros, this story takes place in London. The lifeblood of the city is the River Thames, and standing on its North bank is a formidable fortress called the Tower Of London.
Speaker 1:If only the walls could talk. It's been a silent witness to countless stories of power lost and lives cut short. Despite the name, the tower is not just a singular building, unless you're thinking of the White Tower, but that's really just one building in a complex of structures as a whole that represents the Tower Of London. There are thick medieval walls, a moat, and buildings within that have served a lot of purposes over the years, and it's taken many shapes. Yet surprisingly, the layout from the fourteen hundreds is generally about what we see today.
Speaker 1:And in medieval times, it basically functioned like a small city within the city. You would have found markets, taverns, and workshops, and even a menagerie with lions, elephants, and a polar bear. Yet despite all of that, because of its bloody history, it tends to be remembered mostly as a prison, though it was also a royal residence. The problem was that sometimes those lines blurred. Royals could find themselves inside the walls as honored guests or suddenly as captives.
Speaker 1:Outside the tower's walls was a very different world. Most people lived in cramped timber frame houses along narrow lanes, shoulder to shoulder with their livestock. It's no surprise that life for peasants was brutal. The plague came in waves, working conditions were harsh, and they had very little to no control over their future. Even though commoners were subjects to the king, the real power was the Roman Catholic church.
Speaker 1:And keep in mind, this is right before the English reformation. So at this point, England was still very much a Catholic country. The church provided moral authority, social structure, and explanations for things that people couldn't otherwise make sense of. It was expected that every marriage, death, or dispute all passed through the church Because back then, the church was the authority. Period.
Speaker 1:The same went for the nobility, though their focus leaned toward legitimacy and lineage. Our was either in your blood or it wasn't. Fueling this mindset was the divine right of kings, which basically means that rulers were chosen by God. And that divine authority passed down through family lines, which made royal blood and succession something sacred. Funny how that sounds simple, but in reality, it was messy and often deadly.
Speaker 1:Legitimacy was the keystone of government. It outweighed whether a person even had the ability to rule successfully. Of course, that doesn't mean people weren't constantly attempting to find loopholes to circumvent power. To survive a royal court, you had to be strategic. It mattered who you were connected to.
Speaker 1:So, essentially, you were constantly politicking. The goal was to align yourself with the winners, cut ties with the losers, and stay in favor with those who held power all while getting the timing just right. That might mean arranging a marriage, scheming for titles, or cold blooded murder. The family that embodied this era's drive for power, ambition, and chaos were the Plantagenets, a royal dynasty that had ruled England since the twelfth century. The Plantagenet's reign was marked by bloodshed, betrayal, and an unrelenting thirst for dominance.
Speaker 1:So it's no surprise that eventually two rival factions emerge from within their own house. That would be the Lancastrians who are symbolized by a red rose and the Yorkists who are symbolized by a white rose, or more simply, the Lancasters and the Yorks. This family rivalry exploded into bloody conflicts now known as the Wars of the Roses. Naturally, things got ugly. Blood was spilled, alliances crumbled, and families were ripped apart.
Speaker 1:But that's not all the Plantagenets were known for. They also had a reputation for producing a lot of children, and many of those children believed that they had a claim to the throne. That's part of what made their stories so volatile. There were too many royals and only one throne to sit on. It's safe to say that the Plantagenets were along the ride of the wheel of fortune, which was a popular medieval concept tied to the goddess Fortuna.
Speaker 1:She spun a great wheel to determine the fates of men. One moment, you could be at the top, wealthy, powerful, and triumphant, and the next, crushed at the bottom by a whim. For the Plantagenets, this was their reality. Their pursuit of sovereignty brought both greatness and ruin. This brings us to one of the boldest players of them all, Edward the fourth.
Speaker 1:Edward the fourth was one of the last monarchs of the Plantagenet dynasty. He rose to power after a very dramatic victory at the Battle of Touton in 1461. There, he defeated his Lancastrian cousin, Henry the sixth. Touton is often described as one of the bloodiest and nastiest battles in English history with around 28,000 lives lost. The Yorkist won that day.
Speaker 1:Henry the sixth fled, but was eventually captured and held in the Tower Of London as a prisoner. His fellow Lancastrians were left to be chased down or killed. The scene of the battlefield was so horrific. Legends say that the nearby river ran red for days with blood. But this was the victory that placed Edward on the throne and gave the Yorkers the upper hand even as the family rivalry only grew deeper.
Speaker 1:Edward the fourth was newly victorious. His new court seemed to like him. He was handsome and tall at about six four. So, naturally, the expectation was that he would now make a politically advantageous marriage as he began his reign. In fact, negotiations were already underway with powerful European families, most notably the French royal house.
Speaker 1:Royal marriages were made to secure allies, gain lands, and produce wealth. For Edward the fourth, it could also create much needed international stability. So who does this very eligible bachelor decide to marry? Well, as it turns out, he was already married. Edward had married in secret and kept this very important information hidden for months.
Speaker 1:It wasn't until later when his advisers pushed him to formalize a royal engagement that he finally confessed that he already had a wife. So who was his wife? Edward the fourth had married Elizabeth Woodville, a widow with two children from a previous marriage and with Lancastrian ties. She wasn't royalty. She wasn't for a nobility, but they were in love or in lust and married secretly to protect the relationship from the court, which does sound pretty romantic, but this secret marriage would reshape the entire court.
Speaker 1:You'll sometimes hear her get called a commoner, but that's not entirely accurate. The Woodvilles were more gentry, recently turned nobility, which, of course, upset the other nobles because they saw them as completely undeserving of power and influence. Yet here they were, suddenly elevated at court, and there were a lot of Woodvilles to elevate. Overnight, they became a new power faction. No one was more enraged than Edward's counsel, especially Richard Neville, the sixteenth Earl of Warwick, also known as the kingmaker.
Speaker 1:Warwick had spent years putting Edward on the throne. He expected repayment, marriages, titles, and influence for his allies. Instead, the Woodvilles were taking it all. Like when Elizabeth Woodville arranged for her teenage brother John to marry Warwick's aunt, Catherine Neville, who was a 65 year old dowager duchess. Warwick saw it as a personal insult because even by medieval standards of arranged marriages, it was pretty scandalous.
Speaker 1:Later generations would even call it the diabolical marriage. You see, Warwick didn't have any sons, and he could see where his family fortune was being diverted. A furious Warwick began plotting revenge. And soon, he found the perfect partner, Edward's jealous younger brother, George, the duke of Clarence. George married Warwick's daughter, Isabel, and without the king's consent.
Speaker 1:Together, George and Warwick began to turn against Edward. In a bold coup, they captured Edward. They pulled the fragile Henry the sixth out of the tower and put him on the throne as a sort of puppet king. Warwick then married off his other daughter and Neville to Henry's son in a desperate bid to revive the Lancastrian line. The kingmaker was once again trying to make kings.
Speaker 1:Once Edward's greatest ally, Warwick was now the York's greatest enemy. But it didn't last. In 1471, Edward struck back at the Battle of Barnet. Warwick was killed. Edward had a message to send to any potential traders.
Speaker 1:He had Warwick's body put on display at Saint Paul's Cathedral for two days. Soon after, Edward crushed the remaining Lancastrians at Tewkesbury. There, Henry the sixth only son was killed, leaving Anne Neville a widow. The puppet king Henry the sixth was returned to the tower, and within weeks, he was found dead in his cell. Officially, it was said that he died of melancholy over the grief of losing his only son, but more than likely, he had been murdered, his death clearing the path for Edward the fourth secure return to power.
Speaker 1:Just adding yet another body to the betrayals, shifting alliances, and brutal family treachery of this period. Now the path was cleared. Edward was back on the throne, and his reign settled into a period of relative calm. The future of the York family seemed bright. Edward and Elizabeth ended up having 10 children together.
Speaker 1:Sadly, not all survived infancy, which was a harsh reality for many at the time, even for royalty. The children most important to our story were their two surviving sons, Edward, prince of Wales, and Richard of Shrewsbury, an heir and a spare. While this dynamic can cause deep rivalry in an unpredictable world, it's usually seen as a benefit to a royal house. It's added security, which further the York stability on the throne. But I do wanna mention one of their sisters, princess Elizabeth of York.
Speaker 1:She doesn't come into play much right now, but keep her in mind because she's going to play a major role in the future of England. If we try to imagine what life was really like for these royal children, it wasn't all ceremony and duty. There would have been plenty of play, running through gardens, racing on horseback, or acting out scenes as knights of the crusades, things like that. At the same time, they were given an impressive education, and their days were never far from the watchful eyes of servants, tutors, and family members. Royal children were often raised alongside the sons and daughters of nobles or with carefully chosen household companions.
Speaker 1:For those noble families, it was a great honor to send a child to court, one that might lead to future marriages and alliances. So it's safe to say that from a very young age, everyone in their world was being carefully prepared to fulfill the duties of their rank and station. And while the Yorkists continued to control the throne, it didn't exactly mean unity. Old rivalries and bad blood continued. They somehow still managed to find enemies, sometimes in the most dangerous of places, like their own house.
Speaker 1:We know that the king's brother, George, the duke of Clarence, had switched sides to support the kingmaker, his father-in-law, the earl of Warwick. But before Warwick's final defeat, Edward offered his brother George a chance at reconciliation, meaning full restoration of his titles and standings if and only if he abandoned Warwick and the Lancastrians for good. George had taken the offer, likely sensing which way the tide was turning, but regardless, he rejoined his brother Edward. Yet while they reunited politically, the trust between them was permanently strained. Even though it had been years since George defected, Edward never fully trusted him.
Speaker 1:Even though George and then George's son, Edward Plantagenet, were technically next in line to the throne after Edward the fourth and his children. I know. There are a lot of Edwards. This line to the throne was like a deadly tightrope. The very people closest to you, your own family, were often your greatest rivals.
Speaker 1:So when rumors began to circulate that George was once again plotting against Edward, Edward wasn't willing to take any risks. So whether it was true or not, Edward had George arrested and confined in the Tower Of London. Under charges of treason, the king had his own brother condemned by parliament and executed. The exact method of George's death is still debated, but the most famous version says he was drowned in a barrel of malmsey wine, which is a sweet dessert like wine that was popular at the time. Could you even imagine drowning in a barrel of wine?
Speaker 1:Whether the story was meant symbolically or literally, it stuck. It was a strange and decadent end for a man that was accused of reaching too far. With George dead and his son now disinherited, that raised Richard of Gloucester to be next in the line of succession. Richard of Gloucester is Edward and George's little brother, but Richard differed from George and that he was always loyal to Edward. He kept a lower profile, also fought in the Wars of the Roses, but he played his role quietly.
Speaker 1:He seemed to support Edward without complaint. Even still, George's death changed the family dynamic. His proximity to the throne had grown much closer, perhaps closer than he had ever expected. After all, Richard was the youngest surviving York child, and there were about 11 or 12 children. A shift like that can change how someone sees the world and their own ambitions.
Speaker 1:Still, Edward had no real reason to fear Richard. He had his sons. His court was stable. And for a time, it seemed like the Yorkist legacy would carry on smoothly into the next generation. But, and there's always a but, everything changed.
Speaker 1:In early fourteen eighty three, Edward the fourth died suddenly. Some sources suggest that he may have sensed his health was declining, but even so, his death came as a shock to the court and created an immediate power vacuum. His eldest son became king Edward the fifth at just 12 years old. His younger son, Richard of Shrewsbury, was only nine. But I'll still be referring to them mostly as princes just for the sake of ease.
Speaker 1:With a young boy set to take the crown, the kingdom was once again thrust into uncertainty. Richard of Gloucester, Edward the fourth's trusted brother, was named as the lord protector, which was customary when a monarch was too young to rule on his own. To be clear, 12 was a tender age to rule, but it wasn't that young by medieval standards. Edward the fifth would have been raised from birth to one day wear the crown. He may have lacked experience, but in the eyes of the church and the crown, his authority was sacred.
Speaker 1:Remember, with the divine right of kings, it was his lineage, not his ability that mattered. So, sure, he'd need some guidance, but it wouldn't be for long. So where would that leave Richard of Gloucester once he was no longer needed? It didn't just mean temporary power. It meant that that same power could eventually make him a threat when Edward the fifth came of age.
Speaker 1:At that point, Richard would lose influence and likely be pushed aside completely if not killed. As we know, the Woodfills were already deeply entrenched at court. And while that kind of ambition was nothing new in royal politics, it left many, including Richard, weary of just how much power they now held, especially with the amount of influence they could yield over the young boys. Nobles at court had already been accusing the Woodvilles of blatant greed, using the queen's influence to amass wealth and power at the expense of the old nobility. Now with Edward the fourth dead, a York child was their source of power, and children can be influenced, which meant there was a major risk that the true power would be in the hands of the Woodvilles.
Speaker 1:So this is who Richard of Gloucester was up against. It makes sense that as he took power as lord protector, it created immediate tension. Some nobles were suspicious of Richard's intentions. On the other hand, others saw opportunity in the chaos. Regardless, everyone at court would know anything can happen in a power transition, and they need to move quickly, choose a side, and keep their footing to maintain favor with whoever they thought was going to win.
Speaker 1:I'm sure you can imagine the whispers of noblemen and advisers plotting and scheming because even if these roles were defined, a young king and a lord protector, we've seen enough backstabbing to know that people don't exactly play by the rules. And soon, the princes themselves would be caught in the crosshairs. After hearing of his father's death, Edward the fifth was returning to London. He was being escorted by his uncle, Anthony Woodville, and other nobles when Richard of Gloucester had the party intercepted and took the new king into his custody. Richard declared that it was for the boy's own protection.
Speaker 1:He then had him placed in the tower. We can't help but feel the implication of him being sent there. Even when it's not used for executions, the very fact that Edward the fifth was taken to the tower made the situation far more ominous, and the prince's mother, Elizabeth Woodville, knew it. She sensed the danger her family may be in, so she gathered her remaining children and took sanctuary in Westminster Abbey. Elizabeth had hoped that the sacred rite of sanctuary would protect her and her children.
Speaker 1:Instead, Richard had his own plans for the family. He used his influence within the church and sent the archbishop himself to negotiate the custody of Richard of Shrewsbury, the younger prince, over to Richard, promising to protect him. Elizabeth reluctantly complied and handed over her son. Just like that, the two young princes were now being held in the Tower Of London. You can't help but feel for Elizabeth here because it hardly seems like a choice.
Speaker 1:In reality, she was outnumbered, outmaneuvered, and likely terrified. With her family in danger, her husband dead, and her influence at risk, all she could do now was wait for her son, Edward the fifth, coronation that was set for June. The official ceremony that would name him king and put an end to all of this confusion and tension. Imagine her terror as June came and went. There was no ceremony.
Speaker 1:Richard, as lord protector, had ultimate power within his grasp. All he had to do was reach out and take it. Meanwhile, the princes remained helpless behind the tower's stone walls, leaving the kingdom to wonder not just when Edward would be crowned, but if he ever would.
Speaker 1:This was true crime of the historical kinds. Don't miss part two where the prince's fate slips further into darkness.
Speaker 1:Until next time. Bye.