Pod Insights Gone Medieval What happened to the Princes in the Tower? About this episode Did Richard III really murder the Princes in the Tower?
Join Matt Lewis to dive into the enigmatic tale of the Princes in the Tower, joined by expert Philippa Langley. The discussion traverses recent discoveries that shed new light on the disappearance of Edward IV’s young sons. Highlighting the rigorous research of the Missing Princes Project, Langley reveals groundbreaking evidence, from accounting receipts to witness statements, supporting the survival of the princes beyond King Richard III's reign.
Gone Medieval is presented by Matt Lewis and edited by Amy Haddow. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.
All music used is courtesy of Epidemic Sounds.
Gone Medieval is a History Hit podcast.
Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.
You can take part in our listener survey here https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/6FFT7MK: https://uk.surveymonkey.com/r/6FFT7MK
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:01 Matt Lewis? From long-lost Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places, to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr Eleanor Jarniger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life, only on History Hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with a brand-new release every week, exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe.
0:42 Speaker 01 Hi, everyone. It's Katie Couric. And on my podcast, Next Question, we love stories about how women are taking control of their lives. They are increasingly leading financial decisions in their households. Yet, many say they don't feel fully prepared for the long-term financial choices ahead. Real confidence comes from knowing your financial future is protected, whatever happens. Pacific Life has helped generations protect what matters today and prepare for tomorrow with life insurance and lifetime income solutions. It's a promise Pacific Life has kept for nearly 160 years, so its customers can keep theirs.
1:24 Speaker 01 Ask a financial professional about how Pacific Life can help you create a more confident financial future. Pacific Life Insurance Company, Omaha, Nebraska, and in New York, Pacific Life and Annuity, Phoenix, Arizona.
1:40 Speaker 02 I always appreciate when thoughtful and luxurious design can help change the way a space feels. That's why I love how the 48-inch panoramic display stretches across the entire dashboard in my Lincoln Navigator SUV. It helps make it easy to stay connected while giving the cabin an open, expansive feel. Whether I'm juggling errands or just enjoying some quiet time, this feature brings a fresh perspective and helps elevate even the everyday moments. Visit lincoln.com to learn more.
2:15 Speaker 03 Hi folks, this is Mark Bittman from the podcast Food with Mark Bittman. And I'm here to suggest that you host Thanksgiving with industry-leading quality standards from Whole Foods Market. There are, as usual, no antibiotics ever in their meat department. So carve up turkey and spiral cut ham with peace of mind. Shop organic sides like stuffing mix and cranberry sauce from 365 brand. And guess what? All of their fabulous, delectable pies are made with no high fructose corn syrup. Where else are you going to find that? Gourmet Thanksgiving flavors with the quality you want, only at Whole Foods Market.
3:01 Matt Lewis? Hello, I'm Matt Lewis. Welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit, the podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history. We've got the most intriguing mysteries, the gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research, from the Vikings to the printing press, from kings to popes to the crusades. We cross centuries and continents to delve into rebellions, plots and murders to find the stories, big and small, that tell us how we got here. Find out who we really were with Gone Medieval.
3:46 Matt Lewis? Welcome to this episode of Gone Medieval. I'm Matt Lewis. The story of the young sons of Edward IV, who we remember as the princes in the tower, is rarely far from the news. If you hang around my corner of social media, it's a perennial hot topic. There are as many takes and theories as there are chocolates on offer over Christmas. Like the chocolates, I've got my favorites, but I'm keen to partake of whatever's on offer, apart from the coffee ones. No thanks to lopes. The princes were recently the subject of another television documentary. After one with Philippa Langley last year revealed some evidence one way in the argument, this sought to push back in the other direction. So this seemed like a good time to return to an episode I did a while ago, explaining
4:30 Matt Lewis? the story of the princes in the tower and offering some of my thoughts on the subject. Don't worry, it isn't hours long like talking to me in real life. I hope you'll enjoy this trip into the back catalogues. Let me know afterwards as well. What do you think happened to the princes in the tower?
4:53 Matt Lewis? So I guess to start off this conversation, we're going to get to the really juicy stuff in a little bit. But what is the Missing Princes project? Why was this project begun?
5:03 Speaker 04 I think there's a two-part answer to this question because we have to go back a little bit because I was influenced by the Looking for Richard project and the importance of evidence-based research. A lot of research was done for that project, which counted the belief by historians based on a 17th century story of rumour, hearsay and gossip that the king's remains had been dug up and thrown into the river Sore. I'm sure you remember that story. So a lot of that project was about undertaking evidence-based research in order to find out what really happened and where the king was buried.
5:48 Speaker 04 But I think the second part to this question is there was a catalyst. There's always a catalyst, isn't there, for everything? And there was a major catalyst for this one. And it came from an article in the Daily Mail that was published during the reburial week of Richard III. And its headline said, and I'm probably paraphrasing here, but it headline said...
6:17 Speaker 04 It's mad to make this child killer a national hero.
6:22 Matt Lewis? I think I remember reading that same headline. I remember seeing that, yeah.
6:25 Speaker 04 Do you remember seeing that? Because that was a really big moment for me because it went through all of the traditional narrative, if you like. At the time, I was thinking, okay, this might be true. This might be what happened. But it didn't cite any evidence. So I started to think that, you know, we needed to undertake another evidence-based project. So literally, leaving Leicester, leaving the reburial of Richard III, I was thinking I needed a new research project. So it was straight out of one and into another.
7:02 Matt Lewis? And I mean, where else would you go after finding Richard III, then perhaps the greatest mystery controversy that has surrounded his reputation ever since his lifetime? Again, before we get into the real juicy meat of what we're going to talk about, how and where has the project been working? How has it been looking for material?
7:21 Speaker 04 Well, it's formulated as a police cold case investigation. And what's been really exciting about that is you open all doors, if you like. You look under every stone. So the project operates on an international level and we look for everything. So my intelligence gathering, I don't judge anything. I can't prejudge anything. I can't tell people what to look for. All I say is go and look and find things and whatever you find, send it in to me. So it's pretty huge and it got huge pretty quickly. I've got over 300 members worldwide involved in it.
8:04 Speaker 04 And the intelligence gathering as well got enormous. And I've currently got on my computer over 300,000 files relating to this investigation. And it destroyed three computers. So in the end, I had to get a specialist to build a supercomputer so that it could cope with all of the information that I was uploading the whole time. But I think what is really useful about that is it allows you to cross-check and reference all of the material that's coming in. And I think, as I said, I just opened the door. I said, whatever you find. And the welcome email, if you like, for all those members who joined,
8:46 Speaker 04 it was very clear and it said, go to your local archive, ask what they have for fourteen eighty-three, then fourteen eighty-four, then fourteen eighty-five, then fourteen eighty-six.
8:59 Speaker 04 So it was completely open and that's what the police instilled in me is, you can't put any biases into this. It has to be a clean sheet. You must start with a complete clean sheet. So it was a really, really useful exercise, a fascinating exercise. And yeah, got huge very quickly.
9:20 Matt Lewis? Yeah, I mean, that's an important way to approach it, I guess, because definitely you and I have skin in this game, you know, we both have an interest in this story, but you kind of have to set that aside to do justice to whatever evidence might come out, because presumably as well, you couldn't have known what any of that evidence might say. It could have proved what I wouldn't want it to prove.
9:41 Speaker 04 Yeah, absolutely. I think you and I know that we've been searching records and accounts for decades and we can't see, you know, any evidence for the boys being murdered or dying during Richard's reign. But I was now doing something completely different. I was throwing open the doors and saying, find things. And I had to make peace with that. And I spoke to so many people and a number of researchers in the Richard the Third Society and I said, look, this is a forensic investigation and it's going to find what it's going to find and I don't know what it's going to find. And they were really great and I think you were one of them and they all said the same thing.
10:25 Speaker 04 The Richard the Third Society is about researching and reassessing Richard the Third. So whatever we find, it's going to move our knowledge forward. But I guess there was always the, do we find anything? Was there anything to be found? But I think, you know, from the book and from the documentary, that there was a lot of things waiting to be found.
10:46 Matt Lewis? Absolutely. And I think this book is an incredible collection of all of the sources that speak to this period, really all drawn together to paint a very clear picture. What did the act of bringing all of those bits of information together reveal about the story of the princes in the tower? Because I think for most people who aren't particularly invested in it, they will assume that everybody knew the boys were dead and probably Richard killed them.
11:13 Speaker 04 Yeah, absolutely. And I think this is another huge learning curve from the police and the specialists that I was working with, you know, the barristers, the lawyers, the judges, all of that, in terms of the methodology of the project. Because the big, big takeaway from what they gave me was you cannot use hindsight. You cannot think that you know what's going on. You can't prejudge anything. So what the intelligence gathering did, which was absolutely remarkable, was it built a chronology, it built a timeline, starting from the key moment, which was the
11:54 Speaker 04 location and the place where the last sighting of them. So you go right back to the Tower of London, right back to June of 1483, and that's your entry point there. And then you build the timelines from there, using every single source that you possibly can. And once you started to do that, that was about four years of work for me to start building that and to looking at it. And once you do that, what I found was quite remarkable, because it defied all of my
12:32 Speaker 04 expectations across the board, because I could find no evidences at all for the boys dying during King Richard's reign. There was nothing. And to give you an example of that, we have the elder boy mentioned in administrative records throughout King Richard's reign.
12:54 Speaker 04 And this is one of the things that the police told me. In order to find the truth of what's really, really going on, you've got to go to the administrative accounts. You've got to go to the ordinary, everyday nuts and bolts of what was going on. Follow the money, follow the law. I mean, obviously, there was chronicles that were written, and I couldn't afford to ignore them because you can't afford to ignore any information. And this is where we could see the change, if you like, in the chronology. Because what you're seeing is Edward V being mentioned in these day-to-day administrative accounts.
13:32 Speaker 04 And he's mentioned simply in terms of the timeline. So if they're talking about something that took place from April to June 1483, when Edward V had been the named king, they talk about at the time of the bastard Edward V, the bastard king. So they talk about him in these terms, and that goes on throughout Richard's reign. But what is really, really interesting in terms of this is they don't offer any prayers or pious observances for his soul. So nobody's saying that he's died.
14:15 Speaker 04 So what we get is this picture of normal life, if you like, that things are just ticking over as you would expect them to see in all of the administrative accounts. There's nothing unusual going on. And I think in terms of, well, as the younger boy, he wasn't so important. He wasn't the heir, or hadn't been the heir, hadn't been the named king. And there's an account in Cambridge, again, it's in the treasurer's accounts for the city of Cambridge, which records a payment to Richard Duke of York. And this is written on the 8th of September 1484.
14:55 Speaker 04 Now, once you analyse the timeline, this actually looks like it was probably a mistake and they were meaning Edward Earl of Warwick, who was in King Richard's household at this time, because King Richard had visited Cambridge in, I think it was the 9th to the 11th of March 1484, with his household, including the Queen Anne, and including his son, and John Howard, Duke of Norfolk, was there.
15:22 Speaker 04 So we think it was a cleric who was writing it up in September, getting it wrong. But what is really interesting about that, again, is the cleric was writing these records of payments to Richard, Duke of York, and not thinking there was anything abnormal in doing that. So it was highly suggestive that in Cambridge at least, in September 1484, they believed that Richard, Duke of York, was alive.
15:52 Speaker 04 So that is a very long-winded way of saying that, yeah, the first four years of the project, I delved into every single administrative account and upturned everything that I possibly can. And I think it was at that point that I had to extend the investigation, because I'd been looking for their deaths, for anything that I could see, and there was nothing. So I needed to then say, okay, what if they survived? So I needed to go into that now. And that was in about 2019. The other thing that I do need to tell you was I made another discovery. And this again was a huge discovery in terms of the project, because what I had to do,
16:37 Speaker 04 and again, this came from the police specialists, is you have to do a forensic analysis of key moments, and you have to absolutely dive in, and you have to look at things, if you can, second by second, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day. And I had to do this for Bosworth, for the Battle of Bosworth, because this is where the worlds of Richard III and Henry Tudor collided. This was a key marker for me in trying to understand what was going on in this period of history. And what I could uncover from this was we could see that the entry point for the story
17:19 Speaker 04 of murder into England came with Henry Tudor and his French and foreign invasion force. We have the first mention of the boys being murdered. On and around the fourteenth of August, fourteen eighty-five, with a Welsh poet who writes a poem about Henry Tudor, after the Battle of Bosworth, immediately after the Battle of Bosworth, and he says that Richard the Third murdered the two sons of Edward the Fourth. And then it snowballs, then the murder story gains full traction in England, and you see it growing and growing and growing. But the other thing that we found was that
18:03 Speaker 04 Henry Tudor, immediately after winning Bosworth, he doesn't head to London, which he should have done, and where he was heading. And grabbing London, as we know, is really important. Whoever holds London holds the kingdom. He stops, and he delays for about five days. And what he does is he sends searches out, and he goes in search of something. And what it looks like, and what I can see from the information that I found, was he was looking for the sons of Edward the Fourth.
18:37 Matt Lewis? Which you wouldn't do if they were dead.
18:39 Speaker 04 Yeah.
18:40 Matt Lewis? Okay, so there are some pretty important and explosive finds in the book from amongst those archives. Before we get into the exact detail of what those were, what did it feel like when people started calling you up, saying, I found this, and sending you copies of things, saying, I found this, and I found this? How does it feel to have some of that stuff appear in front of you on your computer and think, this changes everything?
19:04 Speaker 04 Yeah, you sit there and you pinch yourself. And it's thanks to the internet, thanks to the connectivity that we have now, that I can do this project. There's no way I could have done this before the internet. And I remember the first one that came in, the big one, in terms of when we'd extended the project to look for what we could see, particularly on the continent, because so many documents were lost and destroyed by Henry the Seventh and his historian, Polidore Virgil, that it was hampering the investigation in the UK. But I remember it was May, two thousand and twenty, and I got contacted by a member of the Dutch research group called Albert Janderroy. And he said, Philippa, I've found
19:49 Speaker 04 something in the Lille archive in France. And I can't believe what I'm looking at.
19:56 Speaker 04 He then sent me a receipt and again it's follow the money, follow the law is just an accounting receipt. But that totally blew my mind. It was a game changer, an absolute game changer because it confirmed proof of life for the elder boy, Edward V, on the 16th of December 1487. And that he was the leader of the invasion force into England in 1487 that ended up at the Battle of Stoke. And I think this might be a big one for you, Matt, because your research was taken very
20:39 Speaker 04 much into account in terms of what you've done on Edward V.
20:43 Matt Lewis? So this is what history remembers as the Lambert-Simil affair, which history tells us, has told us in the past, was an uprising in favour of Edward Earl of Warwick, who was a cousin of the princes in the tower, that it was some fake boy from Oxford who was held up to be the genuine Warwick. He was crowned in Dublin, they invade, have a battle at Stoke, the rebels lose, Henry VII gets control of the boy, puts him to work in his kitchens, but more importantly, they get in control of the boy, Henry has control of the narrative. There was always this kind of underlying uncertainty about how true what Henry had told the world was. And I've kind of championed this notion that the Lambert-Simil affair was actually about Edward V, which hasn't always been very popular in many quarters.
21:27 Matt Lewis? But the evidence that you're uncovering in this book seems to support that, vindicate that kind of view, because it's clear that people are supporting Edward V in 1487, which means they don't think he's dead, he's not dead, he's there leading an army. I mean, what does the legal receipt actually tell us in terms of Edward V?
21:53 Speaker 04 The legal receipt, it's remarkable. I mean, it was just found in a wadge of papers, lost, you know, as Albert was working through the archive and looking through things, it was literally just slotted in there, completely forgotten by time and everything.
22:09 Speaker 04 So what it tells us, it's a receipt for King Maximilian I. He became the Holy Roman Emperor and he was a very, very important and powerful man in Europe at the time. And it's for him and he's come to collect four hundred pikes. Now, pikes at that time were like the elite weapon for elite troops, if you like, in battle. So he's come to collect them and he's paying for them. And he's paying for them on behalf of the Dowager Duchess, who is Margaret of Burgundy, who is the sister of Richard III and Edward IV, but the aunt of Edward V.
22:55 Speaker 04 Let me quote you what it says in the middle of this receipt, because it's really important. It says that the pikes are to take and lead across the sea with a specialist, a German mercenary, who Madame the Dowager, who was Margaret of Burgundy, sent at that time, together with several captains of war from England, to serve her nephew, son of King Edward, late her brother, who was expelled from his dominion. So there's four really key, important points there. First of all, we're telling us that this is Margaret of Burgundy's nephew.
23:39 Speaker 04 It's also telling us that it's a son of King Edward, but it's also, most importantly, telling us that he was expelled from his dominion. So what this tells us was it's the elder boy, because he was the one who had been having a dominion in fourteen eighty-three.
23:59 Speaker 04 It's a remarkable, remarkable discovery. But I think what is even more important, it's an accounting record. Very clear, you can see that's an accounting record. It names fourteen individuals in the accounting record. Most of which are key players, very, very important players in the Burgundian court. Including Maximilian, his son-in-ear, and Margaret of Burgundy. But it's signed. And it's signed in the first instance by Maximilian's secretary. Though he's saying that this account is true, this account is clear, this is the money. This is the payment that King Maximilian is making for these weapons. But then it then goes on.
24:45 Speaker 04 It's then authenticated and signed by two other leading members of Maximilian's court. And they are controllers of the artillery and the weaponry for Maximilian. And what they do is they authenticate it and then sign it themselves. So you've got three signatures on this one accounting receipt for King Maximilian. That confirms all of its information is accurate and correct. And King Maximilian is happy with it. And he's taken the pikes and paid for them.
25:25 Matt Lewis? And so there are three opportunities that if this is the wrong person, that if this is actually about George, Duke of Clarence's son, the Earl of Warwick. There are three people there, three opportunities to say, hang on, this isn't what we're signing up for. Someone make that change, but nobody does. They all put their name to this to say this is Edward the Fourth's son. He was expelled from his kingdom.
25:46 Speaker 04 Yeah, and the receipt when it's actually paid, because obviously you pick up goods and then if you're king, you will pay for them later. The receipt is signed sixteenth of December, fourteen eighty-seven. And again, it doesn't say, may God rest his soul, which it should do for those really, really religious times. It would have done that. So this is a really interesting point because it's suggestive that Edward V survived the Battle of Stoke, or at least they thought he had.
26:19 Matt Lewis? Yeah, so Stoke is in June 1487, and if that receipt is being written in December, that suggests that six months later, people were still saying that this was an uprising in favour of Edward V, but also at least suggesting that they, as far as they knew, he was still alive at that point.
26:36 Speaker 04 Yeah, so this was a real game changer moment. It's doing everything the police told me to do, follow the money, follow the law, and its veracity, which has been checked by a number of specialists, is overwhelming.
27:04 Matt Lewis? This time of year can easily just feel a bit off. The days get shorter, the routines change, and honestly, you might just find yourself feeling irritable, perhaps a little less motivated or a bit more tired. Just getting through things feels like more of a slog than normal. It might feel easier to just push through it, or even try and ignore how you're feeling and just blame the season. But if it's starting to affect your day-to-day life, talking to a therapist can help you to better understand why you're feeling like this, and can genuinely help. That's where Ruler comes in. Ruler makes it easier to find a licensed therapist who meets your needs and importantly, takes
27:46 Matt Lewis? your insurance. You don't have to spend weeks searching or sitting on a waitlist. They partner with over 120 insurance plans, and the average copay for Ruler patients is just $15 a session. Ruler helps you pick a therapist based on your goals, preferences, and needs, with appointments available as soon as tomorrow. Getting support shouldn't add another layer of stress, so let Ruler lighten the mental load. If this time of year has you feeling less like yourself, talking to someone can be a good place to start. Visit ruler.com-medieval to get started. That's R U L A dot com
28:28 Matt Lewis? forward slash medieval. You deserve mental health care that works with you, not against your budget.
28:37 Speaker 05 Hey, it's Adam Grant from TED's Rethinking Podcast. As businesses scale, success depends on how well knowledge is captured, shared, and kept up to date. Camtasia Pro turns teams' expertise into engaging training, onboarding, and documentation. No professional editing experience required. With the industry's best screen recording, video editing, and AI-powered workflows, you can train faster and boost operational efficiency. Get over $100 off your first year at camtasia pro.com and start building a smarter way to EDGK customers, onboard employees, and ensure valuable expertise is shared across teams.
29:13 Speaker 06 Whoever said good things come to those who wait, never shopped Black Friday early at Lowe's. Right now, get up to 50% off select major appliances. Plus, get free delivery, free hallway, and free basic installation and parts when you spend $896 or more on select major appliances. Shop Black Friday early in-store and online now at Lowe's. Valid through 12/2 while supplies last. Selection varies by location. See associate on lowe's.com for details.
29:41 Speaker 07 This episode is sponsored by Zocdoc. Have you been putting off a doctor's appointment or need a dentist and you don't know where to start? We've definitely been there, and that's why we use Zocdoc. Actually, over the holidays, Michael had a dental emergency and seemingly every office was closed. But we hopped onto Zocdoc, found an in-network dentist, had great reviews, saw real-time appointments available, which was key, it was on New Year's Day, and booked an appointment in just minutes. It took so much of the stress out of the already stressful situation. Zocdoc makes it easy to search and compare over 250,000 local in-network providers across more than 200 specialties.
30:24 Speaker 07 So you can find the right doctor or dentist and book instantly. Taking care of your health just got easier. Download the Zocdoc app today and book that appointment on your to-do list. That's Z-O-C-D-O-C, Zocdoc.
30:53 Matt Lewis? I was going to ask, what does this mean for the story of the princes in the tower? But that seems like a daft question when what we're saying is this means the older one was still alive in 1487, according to the evidence that we have there. People were following him back into England in 1487 to try and retake his throne. That changes everything. If they've survived Richard III's reign, it completely changes the story around him and their fate and the early years of the Tudor regime, doesn't it?
31:21 Speaker 04 Yeah, it does. And I think that's one of the sideline things that with this project, it allows us to reassess everything that we knew about the Yorkist dynasty and certainly the final years of the Yorkist dynasty with Richard III. But it also means that we'd need to reassess Henry VII and what was going on during his reign. Though it's an incredibly exciting project in that terms, in that it will affect how we view the history from two dynasties.
31:55 Matt Lewis? Yeah. And I think as well, for people who are wondering why some of this stuff doesn't crop up in England, the book does a really good job of explaining precisely how and where Henry Tudor, Henry VII's early government is rooting out and destroying paperwork in a fairly insidious kind of way. You look at what's missing, the records from Lambeth Palace of the Archbishop of Canterbury for this period, all of Richard's northern castles for his reign. There's a fire in Jersey that destroys information there that is potentially of interest too. We know that Irish records are burnt when the two big pretenders during Henry VII's reign have a strong Irish connection. So we know what Henry VII is destroying.
32:39 Matt Lewis? And the fact is, these European archives give us an insight into places that Henry couldn't reach, the kind of things that he couldn't destroy. And so the information that's coming out of there, you have to imagine how much other stuff there might have been in the English archives that were systematically rooted out and deliberately destroyed so to obscure the continued existence of the princes in the tower.
33:03 Speaker 04 And I think you're absolutely right. And the burning of the Jersey archives is key, because what I can see from where Edward V was during Richard III's reign and the early part of Henry Tudor's reign, we can see that he was very likely in the Channel Islands. Because again, following the law, following the money, we have accounts that this King Edward, who was going to fight against Henry VII, came from Guernsey, he came from the Channel Islands. So he had been expelled from his dominion.
33:36 Matt Lewis? And I think when you put this receipt in the context as well of all of the other suggestive information that we have about the Lambert-Simil affair actually being about Edward V, it really tips the scales for me. It really shifts that momentum and makes that feel much more likely. And I guess then if Edward, the older of the princes in the tower, survived beyond 1485, you'd like to think that Richard, his younger brother, might have done too. What did you discover in relation to his story?
34:06 Speaker 04 Yeah, you're right. I mean, it would be suggestive that his younger brother survived as well. But again, you can't take anything as read. And you just have to go in and start looking and see whatever you can find. And I was then contacted in November 2020. 2020 was a big year in terms of the Missing Princes project. And this came from the Dutch Research Group again, but this was from a person called Natalie Nijman. And she's the lead member of the Dutch Research Group. She's a criminal lawyer. And she'd spent four years searching archives. She'd done an awful lot of research work. And she found something that, well,
34:50 Speaker 04 I think I say at the time when I see it, you'll see this in the documentary, it was just utterly mind blowing.
34:59 Speaker 04 Never in a million years did I expect us to find what we found. When I launched the Missing Princes Project, I did it at the Midlum Festival, and I did it with a presentation and a talk at Midlum. And I was asked a number of questions after my talk, and somebody said to me, Philippa, you're going to look in archives, you're going to do this investigation. Is there anything that you would hope to find? So I sort of smiled and I sort of laughed. And I said, you know, what would be great is to find a witness statement, is to find an account from one of the sons of Edward IV, who tells us his life story,
35:45 Speaker 04 who tells us exactly what happened to him. And you can imagine, the audience laughed at that one. But this is exactly what Natalie Naaman found. And she found it in the Gelderland Archive in Arnhem in Holland. It's four pages, and it's Richard Duke of York telling us his story in first person, saying, this is what happened to me. And it takes us from the sanctuary at Westminster Abbey, leaving there with the Archbishop of Canterbury, going to the Tower, and everything that happened to him from arriving in the Tower of London.
36:30 Speaker 04 And, I'm going to say it again, it's mind-blowing, absolutely mind-blowing. And to give you a top-line takeaway from this, he was removed from the Tower of London by John Howard, Duke of Norfolk, and sent to safety abroad with two retainers, Ricardian Yorkist retainers, called Thomas Percy and Henry Percy, and sent abroad
36:58 Speaker 04 and sent over to France and the Low Countries as a boy.
37:04 Speaker 04 And it was John Howe, Duke of Norfolk, who did it and organised it. And it's remarkable, it's absolutely remarkable.
37:11 Matt Lewis? I mean, it is, it is mind blowing. I literally read it, I think with my jaw open and then just stared at it for a bit longer with my jaw still open. Because that's the kind of thing you can't possibly have hoped to have found something like that when you embarked on this. You must have been expecting odd scraps, odd snippets, pieces of a jigsaw that you might have to fit together. But a four-page diary of the younger of the princes in the tower is a ludicrous thing to find, isn't it?
37:41 Speaker 04 Yeah, totally, unexpected. Like you said, I hoped for little bits and pieces, like trying to put a giant jigsaw piece together. And you can have little pieces here, there and everywhere. But what we got with this, we got pretty much most of the jigsaw. And when you put all of his information into everything we know from the administrative records, the jigsaw just went click, click, click. Everything then fell into place. And I think what was even more remarkable was when you now look at the actions of some of the key players involved. I mean, Elizabeth Woodville, the prince's mother, is a key person.
38:22 Speaker 04 When you look at her actions, they defy expectation because she shouldn't have been acting in the way she was acting. But when you now put this witness statement, when you now put the leal receipt, when you now put all of the administrative records from Richard's reign into the jigsaw, all of her actions make absolute sense because she knew both boys were alive. And the actions of the other main players of the Woodville family, particularly Thomas Gray, Marcus of Dorset, his actions now fall into place. And we now know why Henry VII had to lock him up for possibly nearly two years in the Tower of London because the boys were alive.
39:19 Speaker 06 You know you don't have to wait to shop Black Friday at Lowe's, right? Save up to $150 now on select power tools, equipment and accessories. Got gifts to get? We've got plenty under $50. Plus, MyLowe's Rewards members get same-day delivery for free. Shop Black Friday deals before the rush at Lowe's. Valid through 11/18. $25 minimum and loyalty membership required. Order eligible items by 2 p.m. Subject to weight and size restrictions and availability. Terms at lowe's.com/shippingterms.
39:48 Speaker 03 Hi folks, this is Mark Bittman from the podcast Food with Mark Bittman. And I'm here to suggest that you host Thanksgiving with industry-leading quality standards from Whole Foods Market. There are, as usual, no antibiotics ever in their meat department. So carve up turkey and spiral cut ham with peace of mind. Shop organic sides like stuffing mix and cranberry sauce from 365 Brand. And guess what? All of their fabulous delectable pies are made with no high-fructose corn syrup. Where else are you going to find that? Gourmet Thanksgiving flavors with the quality you want, only at Whole Foods Market.
40:42 Matt Lewis? I guess the first question some people might have is, have you been able to check the authenticity of this document? Is it the right age? Is it the right period? Is it the right language to be genuine?
40:53 Speaker 04 Yeah, 100%. We had to do that. What we first did was we went back to the archives that had made these discoveries and said, okay, we think this is an important discovery. We now need you to check this, double-check it, triple-check it with all of your experts. So both archives did that and signed them off as fully authentic. But then we had to go for a deeper layer than that. So we then sent all of the documents to Dr. Yanina Ramirez at Oxford University, who's a leading medieval scholar, as you know. She checked them all and three of them, she gave full clean bills of health.
41:36 Speaker 04 But with the Gelderland document, she said, I'm worried about this one. It feels too good to be true. You need to do more checks on this one. So we did. So what we then did was we went to, now this was done blind actually by the documentary film company. Because for me to check it, it felt like it's too close. So they had to go and do this themselves. And in terms of Yenina, Rob Rinder, who I make the documentary with, he did that with Yenina without me being involved in it. So it had that separation element to it. So what the documentary film company did was they got two leading experts.
42:19 Speaker 04 There was one in Belgium, who was a specialist in Middle Dutch, because it's written in Middle Dutch. But then they also went to Dr. Andrew Dunning, who is the leading expert at the Bodleian Library in Oxford. And he's the leading expert in this. And he said, yes, it's a semi-legal document. You can see from the way it's laid out, you can see it's fully authentic. The writing, the watermark, the paper, the grammar, the wording, everything. It's fully, fully authentic. This is the real deal.
42:58 Matt Lewis? And that's not even the only bit of information that you found relating to Richard Duke of York either. There were some more receipts and documents that had kind of seals attached that all kind of add weight to this idea that the person that history remembers as Perkin Warbeck being the real, genuine Richard Duke of York. That's the direction that all of this evidence now points.
43:18 Speaker 04 Yeah, and you know, what was really interesting was after we found the Gelderland document, the witness statement.
43:26 Speaker 04 We're still searching. We're searching archive after archive after archive across Europe. And it seemed that now the floodgates opened. And we started finding, as you said, we found something in Dresden, which was remarkable because it had Richard, Duke of York's signature. But now he's calling himself Richard of England and he's got his royal monogram. And he has a royal seal attached to it with the Royal Arms of England, with the closed crown of a king. And it's got a royal R at the bottom, a little R at the bottom. But it's also got the roses of York and the suns in splendor of his father surrounding it and encircling it. So this is the most remarkable find, again, that we've had double and triple checked.
44:11 Speaker 04 But then we also found another document in the Austrian archives, which comes from King Maximilian, and it's a letter from King Maximilian. And he describes meeting Richard, Duke of York. And he talks about the three birthmarks, the three bodymarks that he has that are absolutely unique to him and that everybody who knew him recognized him by these marks. And it's his eye, his mouth, and he's got a mark on his thigh. And then Maximilian says, he's the real deal. This is Richard, Duke of York. And then he comes in with his full support behind Richard's push for the throne.
44:54 Speaker 04 So not only do we have Maximilian plowing, well, millions and millions and millions into the push for the first boy, Edward the Fifth, and his drive for the throne. He now comes again with the second boy, Richard, and plows in even more money for his drive for the English throne. He fully supports both princes in the tower.
45:18 Matt Lewis? Do you have any sense of what was in that for Maximilian?
45:22 Speaker 04 I think he was very close to Margaret of Burgundy, but also he does seem to have had Yorkist tendencies. You can see that he tried to make peace with Henry the Seventh and do deals with him. But Henry was not treating him well. And I don't think he raided Henry. He clearly felt that he was not of the blood royal. And he wanted somebody of the proper blood royal, a Yorkist, who could be the true King of England. But for sure, if one of the boys became king and Maximilian was behind that and aided that,
46:03 Speaker 04 there's going to be great trading deals. There's going to be a great relationship between the two. So he's going to get his money back big time. But of course, when Edward V died at Stokefield, he didn't get that money back. And then he then goes in and goes again with Richard, Duke of York, which again defies expectations. He shouldn't have done. He should have just said, look, I've done it once. I'm not doing it again. But he goes fully behind him.
46:29 Matt Lewis? Yeah. And I mean, we do know from other documents that Maximilian also extracts from Richard of England, uh, promised that if he dies without heirs, then Maximilian's family will become heirs to the throne of England as well. So Maximilian is acquiring the potential for a bigger empire there too, if he backs this to some extent.
46:48 Speaker 04 Yeah, for sure. Hundred percent.
46:50 Matt Lewis? And I guess then just to round off the two stories, you alluded there to the fact that there's a suspicion that Edward V could have died at the Battle of Stoke in June fourteen eighty seven. How certain are we about what happened to him at the end of what we remember as the Lambert-Symal affair?
47:04 Speaker 04 Do you know, that's one of the big parts of the investigation that we're undertaking now. And there's a key line which is happening at Coldridge in Devon. And you may have seen this. It was reported in The Telegraph and in the newspapers. Because Coldridge is very, very unusual. It is full of Yorkist imagery and it has a big window to crowned Edward V, aged sixteen, wearing his crown with his sceptre.
47:36 Speaker 04 Being crowned in Dublin Cathedral. So we don't know. The person at Coldridge who put a new chantry chapel in is somebody called John Evans. We've not been able to find this man in the records anywhere. Even though he's in quite a position of some authority locally and he's quite wealthy because he can build this new chapel on the Coldridge Church. So that investigation is really interesting to see if Edward V had a connection there. And there is a thought, was Edward V John Evans? Had he been badly injured at Stoke Field?
48:17 Speaker 04 And was allowed to live his life out there at Coldridge in peace? Because one of the really interesting things that we see is that Elizabeth of York was not crowned until November fourteen eighty seven. There was a huge delay. Now, this delay has always been thought to be because Henry Tudor didn't want her to be crowned because he needed a moment to be king without her being crowned queen. That could be part of it. Another part of that could be that Elizabeth Woodville and the Woodvilles didn't want Elizabeth
48:58 Speaker 04 of York crowned because they knew that Edward V was alive. Because once you're crowned, you can't go back. You absolutely can't go back. So there's another line of investigation there. But yeah, looking for what happened to Edward V after Stoke is a big one. He may have died. But again, you'll see in the book that there's evidences from Ireland that they believe that he was still alive in fourteen eighty eight. The only thing that we can say for sure is that he was politically dead. By April fourteen ninety one, because that's when his Garter stall was reallocated to Prince Arthur, Henry the Seventh's heir.
49:42 Matt Lewis? And then if we are understanding now that Perkin Warbeck was in fact the real Richard Duke of York, then he's executed in fourteen ninety nine, and is that the end of the younger of the princes in the Tower?
49:53 Speaker 04 Yes, it seems that that probably was, but again, there's a question mark, because before he was executed, he was badly beaten and tortured, so that his face was unrecognisable.
50:06 Matt Lewis? And presumably those two marks on his face that he's talked about are the reason that his face has to be obscured.
50:12 Speaker 04 Yeah, the eye in the mouth, and plus, we have a drawing of Perkin Warbeck taken from a portrait made during his lifetime. And by the way, we're searching for that portrait now, because we want to find the original. But you can see that his resemblance to Edward the Fourth is remarkable. He's like a mirror image of Edward the Fourth. So did they do that so that people wouldn't have been looking at him and thinking, well, you're killing a son of Edward the Fourth? Or was it done so that he too could live out his life in anonymity?
50:46 Matt Lewis? I mean, I believe what I believe about all of this, and you know that full well. But there will be skeptics out there, I think, who are still convinced that Richard the Third murdered the princes in the Tower, and there's no way around it. There's no amount of evidence that's going to prove this. If I'm not inclined to believe the discoveries in this book, what would you say to me? How would you convince me?
51:09 Speaker 04 Do you know, I absolutely understand that view. You know, change is difficult. But before Richard the Third was discovered, everyone thought that he'd been thrown into the River Sore. But we don't think that now. Our thinking has changed. Do you know, what I would say is that evidence-based research enables people to have an informed opinion. And if you have an opinion that goes against the evidence... I think just ask yourself why and have a think about that. I think that's what's most important.
51:46 Matt Lewis? And so, bringing all of the evidence together in this book, what does the story of Edward V and Richard, Duke of York, look like after the accession of their uncle now? It's widely been believed that they were locked up in a prison and just awaiting his decision to kill them and then they're done away with and that's the end of it. What does their story look like now?
52:07 Speaker 04 Yeah, their story's very different. So what happened was they were separated at the Tower of London on a before the 11th of August 1483. The younger prince was sent abroad with Yorkist Ricardian retainers to look after him. And the elder boy, from what we can see, there's a number of locations where evidences that we have suggest he stayed. Potentially in Gipping in Suffolk, which was Sir James Tyrrell's home, he might have been there for a while. But there's also a contemporary eyewitness account from a
52:48 Speaker 04 Silocean envoy called Nicholas von Poplo, who records that sons to the princes were kept like princes at Pontefract Castle. And he visited Richard from the first to about the 5th of May 1484. And he records that. And you know, Pontefract Castle at that time makes absolute sense, because this is where King Richard's bastard children stayed. So to put one or more of the bastard children of Edward IV, living with them in a royal nursery there, makes sense. So definitely, it looks like, from what I can see, that
53:29 Speaker 04 Edward V was sent north. But at some point, probably immediately prior to the Battle of Bosworth, he was expelled from his dominion and sent to the Channel Islands. And that makes sense, because you've got an invasion force coming and Richard needed him out of the way. And the Channel Islands was the ideal place for Edward V to be sent.
53:53 Speaker 04 And then when Richard dies at Bosworth, he is removed from the Channel Islands and sent to Yorkshire to join Francis by Count Lovell, who was Richard III's right hand man in Yorkshire. And from there, they go to Ireland. And from there, he starts his claim for the throne. Because what had happened by then was in January 1486, he'd been legitimised by Parliament. So he was now the legal King of England, the legal heir to the throne.
54:24 Matt Lewis? Is the Missing Princes project ongoing? Is it still exploring archives in the hope of finding more information?
54:30 Speaker 04 Yeah, it is. It absolutely is. Because we've got this big jigsaw and most of the pieces are now in place. But there's some pieces that we still want to find. You know, can we find the final resting places of both princes? You know, their burial locations? So we're really, really strongly looking into that. Basically, anything we can find in Europe, in particular, where Henry VII's arm and hands couldn't reach.
54:56 Matt Lewis? And so, all of this begins to feel a lot like job done. Is Richard III exonerated of any involvement in the murder of the princes in the Tower?
55:05 Speaker 04 Yes, I would say yes. The book is a 165,000 word manuscript of evidences that are presented, and the totality of evidences in the book confirms that. But in terms of the documentary that you're going to watch tomorrow evening, then you need to watch the documentary.
55:24 Matt Lewis? I'm looking forward to it already. I know what I'll be doing with my Saturday evening. Well, thank you so much for joining us, Philippa, and running through all of that. It's absolutely incredible, a testament to what can be found if you look at things with open eyes, I think. Thank you very, very much for joining us.
55:38 Speaker 04 Matt, you're very welcome.
55:40 Matt Lewis? There's plenty more Richard III and Wars of the Roses content dotted across Gone Medieval's back catalogue, including a three-part explainer covering the Wars of the Roses. If you'd like to find out more about the period that I like to call my history home. There are new instalments of Gone Medieval every Tuesday and Friday, so please come back to join Eleanor and I for more from the greatest millennium in human history. Don't forget to also subscribe or follow us on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts and tell all of your friends and family that you've gone medieval. You can sign up to History Hit to access hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a new
56:18 Matt Lewis? release every week and all of History Hit's podcasts ad-free. Sign up now at historyhit.com/subscribe. Go on, you know you want to. Anyway, I better let you go. I've been Matt Lewis and we've just gone medieval with History Hits.
56:55 Speaker 05 Hey, it's Adam Grant from TED's Rethinking Podcast. As businesses scale, success depends on how well knowledge is captured, shared, and kept up to date. Camtasia Pro turns teams' expertise into engaging training, onboarding, and documentation. No professional editing experience required. With the industry's best screen recording, video editing, and AI-powered workflows, you can train faster and boost operational efficiency. Get over $100 off your first year at camtasiapro.com and start building a smarter way to educate customers, onboard employees, and ensure valuable expertise is shared across teams.
57:29 Speaker 02 Confidence. It's listening to your gut. It's moving forward even when the path ahead is unclear. For nearly 160 years, Pacific Life has helped people keep their promises, building confidence for generations. Whether you're confident in your financial future or just beginning to envision it, we're here to help. Ask a financial professional how. Pacific Life: The Power of a Promise. Pacific Life Insurance Company, Omaha, Nebraska, and in New York. Pacific Life and Annuity, Phoenix, Arizona.
Previous Christmas Movie Knight Next Midwinter Medieval Traditions Page updated November 5, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated