1 00:00:00,438 --> 00:00:17,956 This series presents information based in part on theory and conjecture. 2 00:00:17,956 --> 00:00:22,475 The producer's purpose is to suggest some possible explanations, but not necessarily 3 00:00:22,475 --> 00:00:26,475 the only ones to the mysteries we will examine. 4 00:00:27,475 --> 00:00:33,474 Five hundred years ago, it is said two young princes, one heir to the throne of England, 5 00:00:33,474 --> 00:00:37,473 were murdered in the Tower of London. 6 00:00:37,473 --> 00:00:46,472 Their uncle, Richard the Third, the last English king to personally lead troops into battle, was accused. 7 00:00:46,472 --> 00:00:48,472 Others hold this to be slandered. 8 00:00:48,472 --> 00:00:52,472 Richard they say was the most valiant, most virtuous king. 9 00:00:52,472 --> 00:00:57,471 Which was true? Was Richard the murderous villain of Shakespeare's imagination? 10 00:00:57,471 --> 00:01:01,470 Plots have I laid. Inductions dangerous. 11 00:01:01,470 --> 00:01:10,469 By drunken prophecies, libels and dreams, to set my brother Clarence and the king in deadly hate, the one against the other. 12 00:01:10,469 --> 00:01:14,469 Did Richard have his nephews murdered to gain the crown? 13 00:01:14,469 --> 00:01:22,468 The answer to this mystery may yet be found in the Tower of London. 14 00:01:33,467 --> 00:01:40,466 Beside the Thames River flowing through the city of London stand the grim stone walls of the Tower of London. 15 00:01:45,465 --> 00:01:55,464 On the ruins of an ancient Roman fortress, William the Conqueror ordered construction of a huge castle in the year 1078. 16 00:01:55,464 --> 00:02:01,463 It would dominate the landscape and intimidate the local inhabitants. 17 00:02:01,463 --> 00:02:09,462 Over the centuries, subsequent kings made it one of the strongest fortifications in all of Europe. 18 00:02:10,462 --> 00:02:18,461 It has withstood siege, bombardment and the great fire that destroyed London. 19 00:02:24,460 --> 00:02:33,459 For 900 years it has served as a fortress, a royal palace, a dreaded prison and a treasury for the crown jewels. 20 00:02:34,459 --> 00:02:42,458 The crown of England, the pinnacle of power. It cost the lives of many ambitious noblemen. 21 00:02:42,458 --> 00:02:50,457 The quest of it dimmed honor and loyalty. Richard the Third was accused of such an obsession. 22 00:02:50,457 --> 00:02:56,456 The adversary Henry Tudor burned with the same desire. 23 00:02:56,456 --> 00:03:02,456 Peter Hammond, Tower Historian 24 00:03:02,456 --> 00:03:11,454 I think what most people know about the Tower is the time when it was a state prison, a place where important political prisoners were kept. 25 00:03:11,454 --> 00:03:21,453 There were many famous people in the Tower and most of them came to unfortunate ends, beheaded or disappearing mysteriously. 26 00:03:22,453 --> 00:03:32,452 Prisoners were often brought to the Tower by riverboat, the fate of many to have their heads impaled on the spikes of Tower Bridge. 27 00:03:32,452 --> 00:03:36,451 Few who arrived here ever left. 28 00:03:36,451 --> 00:03:45,450 Stairways led to secret passages and torture chambers deep within the walls where terrible screams were often heard. 29 00:03:45,450 --> 00:03:50,450 Beneath these stones the earth was once soaked with the blood of Queens. 30 00:03:50,450 --> 00:03:55,449 Anne Boleyn, Catherine Howard, wives of Henry VIII. 31 00:03:55,449 --> 00:04:04,448 Sir Walter Rolly wrote his history of the world during his 12 year imprisonment here before he too was beheaded. 32 00:04:04,448 --> 00:04:12,447 One sad tale is that of Lady Jane Gray, guiltless herself but a victim of her family's ambition. 33 00:04:12,447 --> 00:04:17,446 She was executed after being Queen for just nine days. 34 00:04:24,446 --> 00:04:31,445 One of the most interesting, fascinating mysteries in the Tower is what happened to the two young princes. 35 00:04:31,445 --> 00:04:41,443 Those two royal children, the sons of Edward IV, who disappeared mysteriously after the elder one lost the crown that was his by right 36 00:04:41,443 --> 00:04:44,443 and his uncle Richard III became king and said, 37 00:04:44,443 --> 00:04:47,443 what we know about it is not very much. 38 00:04:47,443 --> 00:04:51,442 We know that the princes were in the Tower after their uncle Richard became king. 39 00:04:51,442 --> 00:04:54,442 We know that they were last seen in the Tower. 40 00:04:54,442 --> 00:04:59,441 We know that a couple of hundred years later the bones of two young children were found, 41 00:04:59,441 --> 00:05:02,441 who may or may not have been the princes. 42 00:05:02,441 --> 00:05:10,440 In writing we have stories about rumors of the princes having died, but nothing more than that. 43 00:05:11,440 --> 00:05:17,439 There is only one recorded fact concerning the young princes entered into the records of the day, 44 00:05:17,439 --> 00:05:24,438 that they were last seen in June 1483, playing at bows and arrows in the Tower yard. 45 00:05:30,437 --> 00:05:32,437 They were never seen again. 46 00:05:33,437 --> 00:05:42,436 The popular story has it that Richard plotted with one Sir James Tyrell to murder the princes. 47 00:05:42,436 --> 00:05:48,435 Not content with being the young king's Lord Protector, he wanted to throne himself. 48 00:05:51,435 --> 00:05:56,434 The opportunity came, it is said, when young Edward heir to the crown was placed in the Tower, 49 00:05:56,434 --> 00:06:01,434 according to the tradition that all kings to be must reside there before their coronation. 50 00:06:01,434 --> 00:06:05,433 His young brother was brought to keep him company. 51 00:06:05,433 --> 00:06:11,432 Sir James obtained the keys to the Tower and one midnight, accompanied by two henchmen, 52 00:06:11,432 --> 00:06:15,432 secretly came to the place where the boys slept. 53 00:06:31,430 --> 00:06:42,429 As Tyrell kept watch at the door, the accomplices entered the chamber. 54 00:07:02,426 --> 00:07:13,425 Whether the story is true or not, the children were never seen again. 55 00:07:16,424 --> 00:07:21,424 Their uncle Richard is believed by many to be completely innocent. 56 00:07:21,424 --> 00:07:28,423 One group, the Richard III society in London, has thousands of members in branches throughout the world. 57 00:07:28,423 --> 00:07:31,422 Their spokesman is Jeremy Potter. 58 00:07:59,419 --> 00:08:08,418 He was obviously an extremely courageous and extremely generous, I would say extremely straightforward person. 59 00:08:08,418 --> 00:08:13,417 He did care about the less privileged of his subjects. 60 00:08:13,417 --> 00:08:17,417 There would be no good reason for Richard wanting to kill the boys. 61 00:08:17,417 --> 00:08:29,415 When Edward IV, the boy's father, died, he left Richard as Lord Protector of the realm and of the elder boy, 62 00:08:29,415 --> 00:08:34,415 and the country did not wish for a boy king. 63 00:08:34,415 --> 00:08:40,414 So Richard III was the adult heir to the Plantagenet throne. 64 00:08:40,414 --> 00:08:46,413 He was accepted by the City of London, by the House of Parliament, as the rightful king. 65 00:08:46,413 --> 00:08:52,413 Richard would have gained nothing out of the murder of the princes without anybody being certain that they were dead. 66 00:08:52,413 --> 00:08:58,412 I think he was an ambitious man, and at this time he was a frightened man. 67 00:08:58,412 --> 00:09:05,411 And one can see perhaps everything he did, and perhaps the murder of the princes as well, 68 00:09:05,411 --> 00:09:10,410 as things that he did to save himself, to preserve himself from his enemies. 69 00:09:10,410 --> 00:09:18,409 He had to make himself keen because that was the only way he was safe from the princes mother, Elizabeth Woodville, and her family, 70 00:09:18,409 --> 00:09:23,409 who were after his life in fact, as he knew, it was a battle to the death between them. 71 00:09:23,409 --> 00:09:29,408 And once the princes were in the tower, it wasn't safe even to leave them alive, 72 00:09:29,408 --> 00:09:37,407 because their names could be used by any rebels or conspirators against Richard, as indeed was to happen. 73 00:09:37,407 --> 00:09:42,406 So to preserve himself, I think he had them done away with. 74 00:09:48,406 --> 00:09:53,405 At Westminster Abbey, head librarian Howard Nixon added his view. 75 00:09:54,405 --> 00:10:08,403 The evidence of Richard III's complicity was based almost entirely on Sir Thomas More's history of the reign of King Richard III, 76 00:10:08,403 --> 00:10:15,402 in which he was quite convinced that Richard was a double-dyed villain, 77 00:10:15,402 --> 00:10:21,402 and that he was entirely responsible for the murder of the princes. 78 00:10:22,401 --> 00:10:31,400 But Sir Thomas More was a very biased witness, because he was in the service of Cardinal Morton, 79 00:10:31,400 --> 00:10:36,400 one of Richard III's greatest enemies. 80 00:10:36,400 --> 00:10:50,398 And although in his account, More writes as if he was personally present when this story was being unfolded, 81 00:10:51,398 --> 00:10:57,397 in fact, he was a boy probably under six years old. 82 00:11:08,396 --> 00:11:12,395 The part of Shakespeare's Richard III has always been incredibly popular with actors. 83 00:11:12,395 --> 00:11:19,394 David Garrick made his reputation with it, Edmund Keane, one of his favourite roles, Irving Olivier, 84 00:11:19,394 --> 00:11:24,394 and whatever people actually think was the true nature of the historical Richard, 85 00:11:24,394 --> 00:11:32,393 I don't think you're ever going to get rid of this image of him as the bottled spider, as the rey de king, as the evil, evil monster. 86 00:11:32,393 --> 00:11:36,392 Shakespeare was a writer of fiction, he was a writer of historical fiction, 87 00:11:36,392 --> 00:11:41,392 and he made up the plots in order to suit his particular characters. 88 00:11:41,392 --> 00:11:50,391 And of course he based them on some historical facts, but he accepted the Tudor version of Richard III, 89 00:11:50,391 --> 00:11:55,390 because it was very strict censorship at the time, and if he had not, his play would never have been performed, 90 00:11:55,390 --> 00:11:57,390 and he would have been thrown into prison. 91 00:11:57,390 --> 00:12:01,389 Not content with creating one of the most villainous characters in literature, 92 00:12:01,389 --> 00:12:08,388 Shakespeare makes Richard deformed physically. He gives him a hump, he gives him a withered arm. 93 00:12:08,388 --> 00:12:14,388 Shakespeare makes Richard lay bare his character, his motives and his intentions in the very opening speech of the play, 94 00:12:14,388 --> 00:12:17,387 when he turns to the audience and he says, 95 00:12:17,387 --> 00:12:24,386 Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by the sun of York, 96 00:12:24,386 --> 00:12:29,386 and all the clouds that lured upon our house in the deep bosom of the ocean bedded. 97 00:12:29,386 --> 00:12:33,385 Grim-visaged war had smoothed his wrinkled front, 98 00:12:33,385 --> 00:12:39,385 and now, instead of mounting barbed steeds to fright the souls of fearful adversaries, 99 00:12:39,385 --> 00:12:46,384 he capers nimbly in his lady's chamber to the lascivious pleasing of a lute. 100 00:12:49,383 --> 00:12:57,382 That I, that I am not shaped for sportive tricks, nor made to court an amorous-looking glass, 101 00:12:57,382 --> 00:13:04,381 I, that I am rudely stamped and want love's majesty to strut before a wanton, ambling nymph, 102 00:13:04,381 --> 00:13:10,381 I, that I am curtailed of this fair proportion, cheated of feature by dissembling nature, 103 00:13:10,381 --> 00:13:15,380 deformed, unfinished, sent before my time into this breathing world scarce half made up, 104 00:13:15,380 --> 00:13:20,380 and that so lamely and unfashionable that dogs bark at me as I halt by the... 105 00:13:20,380 --> 00:13:27,379 The medieval mind thought that a deformed body indicated an evil person that deformed mine. 106 00:13:27,379 --> 00:13:32,378 It was to the interests of the tutors to suggest that he was a villain, 107 00:13:32,378 --> 00:13:37,377 and they therefore made up a physical deformity in order to back this case. 108 00:13:37,377 --> 00:13:44,377 And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover to entertain these fair, well-spoken days, 109 00:13:44,377 --> 00:13:50,376 I am determined to prove a villain and hate the idle pleasures of these days. 110 00:13:53,375 --> 00:14:01,374 Plots have I laid, induction's dangerous, by drunken prophecies, libels and dreams, 111 00:14:01,374 --> 00:14:07,374 to set my brother Clarence and the king in deadly hate, the one against the other, 112 00:14:07,374 --> 00:14:14,373 and if King Edward be as true and just as I am subtle, false and treacherous. 113 00:14:14,373 --> 00:14:21,372 This day should Clarence closely be mewed up about a prophecy which says that G of Edward's heirs, 114 00:14:21,372 --> 00:14:23,372 the murderer shall be. 115 00:14:23,372 --> 00:14:29,371 This was entirely invented after his death, and also the story about the withered arm. 116 00:14:29,371 --> 00:14:36,370 Well, now how on earth could a man with a withered arm ride a horse and wield a bat-leg? 117 00:14:37,370 --> 00:14:42,369 Barely two years after gaining the crown, Richard was forced to fight to keep it, 118 00:14:42,369 --> 00:14:49,369 and Retutor exiled in France, landed on English soil and raised an army to lay claim to the English throne. 119 00:14:52,368 --> 00:14:56,368 Richard's forces met the tutors in the field at Bosworth. 120 00:14:58,367 --> 00:15:05,367 At a critical moment, Richard, famous strategist in battle, the Fighting Lord of the North, made his decision. 121 00:15:07,366 --> 00:15:12,366 He spurred his horse and charged headlong into the midst of his enemies. 122 00:15:22,365 --> 00:15:27,364 Right sound, headbeams, shoot down! 123 00:15:37,363 --> 00:15:43,362 At the battle of Bosworth to save his crown, Richard III thundered into the midst of his enemies, 124 00:15:43,362 --> 00:15:46,362 seeking to bring down his adversary, Henry Tutor. 125 00:15:46,362 --> 00:15:51,361 But one of Richard's closest allies, Lord Stanford, defecting at the last moment, 126 00:15:51,361 --> 00:15:55,360 intercepted Richard within sight of his goal. 127 00:16:07,359 --> 00:16:12,358 Not even Richard's enemies ever claimed that they had a chance to defeat him. 128 00:16:12,358 --> 00:16:17,358 The only thing that was left of Richard's army was the fact that he was the only one left of his army. 129 00:16:17,358 --> 00:16:22,357 The only thing that was left of Richard's army was the fact that he was the only one left of his army. 130 00:16:22,357 --> 00:16:27,357 The only thing that was left of Richard's army was the fact that he was the only one left of his army. 131 00:16:27,357 --> 00:16:32,356 The only thing that was left of Richard's army was the fact that he was the only one left of his army. 132 00:16:33,356 --> 00:16:39,355 Not even Richard's enemies ever claimed that he lacked courage or skill in battle. 133 00:16:42,355 --> 00:16:47,354 But treachery within his own ranks brought him down. 134 00:17:03,352 --> 00:17:08,351 If Richard had killed to gain the crown, now it was all for nothing. 135 00:17:08,351 --> 00:17:14,351 In the two years of his short reign, he had lost his much beloved son, his wife, 136 00:17:14,351 --> 00:17:18,350 and now his kingdom and his life. 137 00:17:21,350 --> 00:17:25,349 His last cry was treason. 138 00:17:33,348 --> 00:17:40,348 On Richard's death, Henry Tudor became king, and a strange silence fell regarding the fate of the princes. 139 00:17:40,348 --> 00:17:45,347 Twenty years later, Henry ordered the execution of Sir James Tyrrell for treason. 140 00:17:45,347 --> 00:17:52,346 Afterwards, he even waited a further two months, then suddenly said that Tyrrell had confessed to the murder of the princes at Richard's command. 141 00:17:52,346 --> 00:17:58,345 Although there's no evidence of such a confession, it became the source for the stories of Richard's guilt. 142 00:18:03,345 --> 00:18:07,344 But if Richard was not guilty, who was? 143 00:18:10,344 --> 00:18:19,343 Henry VII had very good reason to have the princes murdered, because he'd become king by battle, by beating Richard at Bodsworth. 144 00:18:19,343 --> 00:18:24,342 His claim to the throne wasn't very good, and the princes had a better claim. 145 00:18:24,342 --> 00:18:30,341 So Henry Tudor, who became Henry VII, may well have found the boys alive and murdered them himself. 146 00:18:30,341 --> 00:18:39,340 He did have other people who were in the royal line put out of a way in the tower, imprisoned, or even executed on trumped-up charges. 147 00:18:39,340 --> 00:18:47,339 The only thing that makes me think that perhaps he was innocent is that maybe the princes weren't alive for him to have been murdered when he came to the throne. 148 00:18:47,339 --> 00:18:53,339 Before you have a murderer, you have to have a murder, and there is no evidence that the princes were murdered. 149 00:18:53,339 --> 00:18:56,338 They may have been. They simply disappeared. 150 00:18:57,338 --> 00:19:01,338 And so the story rested for almost 200 years. 151 00:19:01,338 --> 00:19:09,337 Then in 1547, some workmen found what appeared to be the bones of two children under a stairway at the base of the tower. 152 00:19:09,337 --> 00:19:18,335 Believing them to be the remains of the princes, King Charles I had them sealed in an urn and placed in Westminster Abbey. 153 00:19:18,335 --> 00:19:24,335 Ironically, in the Chapel of Henry VII, who might well have been their murderer. 154 00:19:27,334 --> 00:19:35,333 Nearly two centuries later, in 1933, the urn was opened and the bones were examined by experts. 155 00:19:35,333 --> 00:19:50,332 We've got some pictures of the bones here, and there is the almost complete skull of the elder child, and this shows the rather more broken one of the younger boy. 156 00:19:50,332 --> 00:20:04,330 Here are the thigh bones of the two children, and you can see that one is longer than the other, and the jaw bone of Edward VI. 157 00:20:04,330 --> 00:20:08,329 The examination of those bones in the Abbey nearly 50 years ago proved nothing. 158 00:20:08,329 --> 00:20:17,328 It didn't prove the sex of the children. They could be female. It didn't prove the century which they lived, and it didn't prove their age. 159 00:20:17,328 --> 00:20:24,327 And I hope that there will be another and more scientific investigation. Certainly we're pressing the dean and chapter to have them reexamined. 160 00:20:24,327 --> 00:20:36,326 Once somebody has been buried in the Abbey, been given Christian burial, they are in a slightly different position from bones preserved in a museum. 161 00:20:36,326 --> 00:20:45,325 And you cannot keep on poking into bones that have been given Christian burial inside a church. 162 00:20:45,325 --> 00:20:52,324 I think they're reluctant to reexamine them because they're reluctant to disturb royal tombs, but the whole question here is whether they are royal tombs. 163 00:20:52,324 --> 00:21:00,323 Are the bones in the Abbey those of the princes? Were the princes murdered at all? 164 00:21:00,323 --> 00:21:06,322 If so, is Henry VII, who gained and kept the crown responsible for their deaths? 165 00:21:06,322 --> 00:21:13,321 Is Richard the most maligned king in history? Or truly Shakespeare's arch-villain? 166 00:21:13,321 --> 00:21:24,320 Perhaps new dating methods or a forgotten scroll in some dusty library may eventually give the answer to this intriguing mystery of the Tower of London. 167 00:21:24,320 --> 00:21:35,319 The waters at the tower say that sometimes in the early dawn, the figures of two small lost boys walk anxiously and in hand on the tower green. 168 00:21:35,319 --> 00:21:39,318 Are these the princes? And for whom do they search? 169 00:22:13,314 --> 00:22:16,314 The History Channel, where the past comes alive.