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- [00:01]
Matt Lewis
Hello, I'm Matt Lewis.
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Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
And I'm Dr. Eleanor Jaenega and we're.
- [00:05]
Matt Lewis
Just popping up here to tell you some insider info.
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Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
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Philippa Langley
Access and bonus episodes, sign up to.
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Matt Lewis
History Hit with the History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries such as my new.
- [00:21]
Philippa Langley
Series on everyone's favorite conquerors, the Normans.
- [00:25]
Matt Lewis
Or my recent exploration of the castles that made Britain.
- [00:29]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
There's a new release to enjoy every week.
- [00:32]
Matt Lewis
Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com subscribe or find the link in the show Notes for this episode.
- [00:49]
Ryan Reynolds
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- [02:20]
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- [02:51]
Matt Lewis
Hello, I'm Matt Lewis. Welcome to Gone Medieval. From History Hit the podcast where 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 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 favourites, but I'm keen to partake of whatever's on offer apart from the coffee ones. No thanks to those. 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 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? 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 prince's project? Why was this project begun?
- [04:54]
Philippa Langley
I think there's a two part answer to this question because we have to go back a little bit because it 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 countered the belief by historians, Based on a 17th century story of rumor, hearsay and gossip, that the King's remains had been dug up and thrown into the River Soar. 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. 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, it's mad to make this child killer a national hero.
- [06:12]
Matt Lewis
I think I remember reading that same headline. I remember seeing that. Yeah.
- [06:16]
Philippa Langley
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.
- [06:52]
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?
- [07:11]
Philippa Langley
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 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, it was very clear and it said, go to your local archive, ask what they have for 1483, then 1484, then 1485, then 1486. 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.
- [09:10]
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.
- [09:31]
Philippa Langley
Yeah, absolutely. I think you and I know that we've been searching records and accounts for decades and we can't see 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 III 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. The Richard III Society is about researching and reassessing Richard iii. 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.
- [10:36]
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.
- [11:03]
Philippa Langley
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 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 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. 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 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. So what we get is this picture of normal life, if you like, that things are just ticking over as you 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 8th September 1484. Now, once you analyze 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, including his son, and John Howt, Duke of Norfolk, was there. 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. 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, 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 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 14 August 1485, 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 III murdered the two sons of Edward IV 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 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 iv.
- [18:27]
Matt Lewis
Which you wouldn't do if they were dead.
- [18:29]
Philippa Langley
Yeah.
- [18:30]
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, and 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?
- [18:54]
Philippa Langley
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 VII and his historian, Polydore Virgil, that it was hampering the investigation in the UK. But I remember it was maybe 2020, and I got contacted by a member of the Dutch research group called Albert Jandaroy. And he said, philippa, I found something in the Lille archive in France, and I can't believe what I'm looking at. He then sent me a receipt and again, it's follow the money, follow the law. It's 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 16 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 much into account in terms of what you've done on.
- [20:31]
Matt Lewis
Edward V. So this is what history remembers as the Lambert Simnel 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, who's 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 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 Simole affair was actually about Edward V, which hasn't always been very popular in many quarters. But the evidence that you're uncovering in this book seems to, or 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 Leal receipt actually tell us in terms of Edward V?
- [21:43]
Philippa Langley
The Leal 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. 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 400 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. 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, whom 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. 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 1483. 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 it's an accounting record. It names 14 individuals in the accounting record, most of which are key players, very, very important players in the Burgundian court, including Maximilian, his son and heir, and Margaret of Burgundy. But it's signed, and it's signed in the first instance by Maximilian's secretary. So 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, 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 Kim Maximilian is happy with it and he's taken the pikes and paid for them.
- [25:15]
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 IV's son who was expelled from his kingdom.
- [25:36]
Philippa Langley
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 16th of December 1487. 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.
- [26:09]
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.
- [26:26]
Philippa Langley
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.
- [26:58]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
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Philippa Langley
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- [29:27]
Ryan Reynolds
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- [29:48]
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?
- [30:17]
Philippa Langley
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. So it's an incredibly exciting project in that terms, in that it will affect how we view the history from two dynasties.
- [30:51]
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. 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 to obscure the continued existence of the princes in the Tower.
- [31:59]
Philippa Langley
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.
- [32:32]
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 Simul 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?
- [33:02]
Philippa Langley
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 red 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 Nyman 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, I think I say at the time when I see it, and you'll see this in the documentary, it was just utterly mind blowing. 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 Middleham Festival and I did it with a presentation and a talk at Midlam. 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, do 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, who tells us exactly what happened to him. And you can imagine the audience laughed at that one. But this is exactly what Natalie Naiman 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. 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, Riccardian Yorkist retainers called Thomas Percy and Henry Percy, and sent abroad and sent over to France and the Low Countries as a boy. And it was John Howe, Duke of Norfolk, who did it and organised it. And it's remarkable. It's absolutely remarkable.
- [36:07]
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?
- [36:36]
Philippa Langley
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. 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 Grey, Marquess 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.
- [38:16]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
I'll have to keep my voice down because right now I'm between the actual bed sheets of Some of history's most famous figures. Want to know more about what Hitler might have been like in the sack? Or Julius Caesar? Or our very own Billy Shakespeare. You wouldn't believe the details I'm able to uncover here on Betwixt the Sheets, a podcast by History hit. Because sexuality explored through a historical lens can reveal a surprising amount about the human experience, warts and all, if you'll excuse the pun. And we don't just stop at sex. Expect outrageous scandals throughout the centuries as well as probing into everyday issues. The nitty gritty of human life that really connects us to all people throughout history. Join me, Kate Lister, every Tuesday and Friday on Betwixt the Sheets to find out more. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. Right, time to slide out of here and avoid the bedpan.
- [39:12]
Ryan Reynolds
Ryan Reynolds here for, I guess my hundredth mint commercial. No, no, no, no, no, don't. No, don't, no. I mean, honestly, when I started this, I thought I'd only have to do like four of these. I mean, it's unlimited to Premium Wireless for $15 a month. How are there still people paying two or three times that much? I'm sorry, I shouldn't be victim blaming. Here, give it a try@mintmobile.com switch whenever you're ready.
- [39:35]
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- [39:56]
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?
- [40:07]
Philippa Langley
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. Janina 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. 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. So they had to go and do this themselves. And in terms of Janina, Rob Rinder, who I make the documentary with, he did that with Janina 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. 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.
- [42:12]
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 is Perkin Warbeck being the real, genuine Richard, Duke of York. That's the direction that all of this evidence now points.
- [42:32]
Philippa Langley
Yeah. And you know what was really interesting was after we found the Gelderland document, the witness statement, 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 splendour of his father surrounding it and encircling it. So this is a most remarkable find again that we've had double and triple checked. 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 body marks 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. So not only do we have Maximilian ploughing, well, millions and millions and millions into the push for the first boy, Edward V, and his drive for the throne, he now comes again with the second boy, Richard, and ploughs in even more money for his drive for the English throne. He fully supports both princes in the Tower.
- [44:32]
Matt Lewis
Do you have any sense of what was in that for Maximilian?
- [44:36]
Philippa Langley
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 VII and do deals with him, but Henry was not treating him well. And I don't think he rated 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, 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 Stoke Field, 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.
- [45:44]
Matt Lewis
Yeah. And I mean, we do know from other documents that Maximilian also extracts from Richard of England promised that if he dies without heirs, then Maximilian's family will become heirs to the throne of England as well. So Maximilian's acquiring the potential for a bigger empire there too, if he backs this to some extent.
- [46:02]
Philippa Langley
Yeah, for sure, 100%.
- [46:04]
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 1487. How certain are we about what happened to him at the end of what we remember as the Lambert Simmel affair?
- [46:18]
Philippa Langley
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 Coleridge in Devon, and you may have seen this. It was reported in the Telegraph and in the newspapers, because Coleridge is very, very unusual. It is full of Yorkist imagery and it has a big window to crown Edward V, age 16, wearing his crown with his Sceptre being crowned in Dublin Cathedral. So we don't know. The person at Coleridge 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 Coleridge 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 and was allowed to live his life out there at Coleridge in peace? Because one of the really interesting things that we see is that Elizabeth of York was not crowned until November 1487. 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 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 1488. The only thing that we can say for sure is that he was politically dead by April 1491, because that's when his Garter Stall was reallocated to Prince Arthur, Henry VII's heir.
- [48:56]
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 1499. And is that the end of the younger of the princes in the Tower?
- [49:08]
Philippa Langley
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.
- [49:20]
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.
- [49:26]
Philippa Langley
Yeah, the eye and 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 IV is remarkable. He's like a mirror image of Edward iv. 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 Ivan? Or was it done so that he too could live out his life in anonymity?
- [50:00]
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 III 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?
- [50:23]
Philippa Langley
Do you know, I absolutely understand that view. You know, change is difficult, but before Richard III was discovered, everyone thought that he'd been thrown into the River Soar. 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.
- [51:00]
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?
- [51:21]
Philippa Langley
Yeah, their story's very different. So what happened was they were separated at the Tower of London on or before 11 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 Silesian envoy called Nicolas von Poplo, who records that sons to the princes were kept like princes at Pontefract Castle. And he visited Richard from the 1st 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 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. And then when Richard dies at Bosworth, he is removed from the Channel Islands and sent to Yorkshire to join Francis, Viscount Lovel, 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 legitimized by Parliament. So he was now the legal king of England, the legal heir to the throne.
- [53:38]
Matt Lewis
Is the Missing Princes project ongoing? Is it still exploring archives in the hope of finding more information?
- [53:44]
Philippa Langley
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.
- [54:11]
Matt Lewis
And so all of this begins to feel a lot like job done. Is Richard III exonerated of any involvement in the merger of the Princes in the Tower?
- [54:20]
Philippa Langley
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.
- [54:38]
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, Matt.
- [54:53]
Philippa Langley
You're very welcome.
- [54:54]
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 installments of Gone Medieval every Tuesday and Friday. So please come back to join Eleanor and I for more from the 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 release every week and all of History Hit's podcasts ad free. Sign up now@historyhit.com history 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 Hit.
- [56:09]
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- [56:40]
Ryan Reynolds
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