. The theme of innocent children awaiting an uncertain fate was a popular one amongst 19th-century painters.
Louvre, Paris Dominic Mancini recorded that after Richard III seized the throne, Edward and his brother Richard were taken into the "inner apartments of the Tower" and then were seen less and less until the end of the summer to the autumn of 1483, when they disappeared from public view altogether. During this period Mancini records that Edward was regularly visited by a doctor, who reported that Edward, "like a victim prepared for sacrifice, sought remission of his sins by daily confession and penance, because he believed that death was facing him." The Latin reference to had previously been translated as "a doctor from Strasbourg", because the Latin name for the city of
Strasbourg, , was still current at the time; however, D. E. Rhodes suggests it may actually refer to "Doctor Argentine", whom Rhodes identifies as
John Argentine, an English physician who would later serve as provost of
King's College, Cambridge, and as doctor to
Arthur, Prince of Wales, eldest son of King
Henry VII of England (Henry Tudor). The princes' fate after their disappearance remains unknown, but the most widely accepted theory is that they were murdered on the orders of their uncle, King Richard.
Thomas More (1478–1535) wrote that they were smothered to death with their pillows, and his account forms the basis of
William Shakespeare's play
Richard III, in which
Tyrrell murders the princes on Richard's orders. In the absence of hard evidence a number of other theories have been put forward, of which the most widely discussed are that they were murdered on the orders of
Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham, or by Henry Tudor. However,
A. J. Pollard points out that these theories are less plausible than the straightforward one that they were murdered by their uncle who in any case controlled access to them and was therefore regarded as responsible for their welfare. In the period before the boys' disappearance, Edward was regularly being visited by a doctor; historian
David Baldwin extrapolates that contemporaries may have believed Edward had died of an illness (or as the result of attempts to cure him). An alternative theory is that
Perkin Warbeck, a pretender to the throne, was indeed Richard, Duke of York, as he claimed, having escaped to Flanders after his uncle's defeat at Bosworth to be raised by his aunt,
Margaret, Duchess of Burgundy. In 1486 Edward IV's daughter
Elizabeth, sister of Edward V, married Henry VII, thereby uniting the Houses of York and Lancaster. In 1516,
Dame Margaret Capel bequeathed a chain that had belonged to Edward V to her son
Giles Capel. This is one of the few known references to the personal possessions of the Princes in the Tower. In 2021, researchers from "The Missing Princes Project" claimed to have found evidence that Edward may have lived out his days in the rural Devon village of
Coldridge. They linked the 13-year-old prince with a man named John Evans, who arrived in the village around 1484, and was immediately given an official position and the title of Lord of the Manor. Researcher John Dike noted Yorkist symbols and stained glass windows depicting Edward V in a Coldridge chapel commissioned by Evans and built around 1511, unusual for the location. Bones belonging to two children were discovered in 1674 by workmen rebuilding a stairway in the Tower. On the orders of King
Charles II, these were subsequently placed in Westminster Abbey, in an urn bearing the names of Edward and Richard. The bones were re-examined in 1933, at which time it was discovered the skeletons were incomplete and had been interred with animal bones. It has never been proven that the bones belonged to the princes, and it is possible that they were buried before the reconstruction of that part of the Tower of London. Permission for a subsequent examination has been refused. In 1789, workmen carrying out repairs in
St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, rediscovered and accidentally broke into the vault of Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville. Adjoining this was another vault, which was found to contain the coffins of two children. This tomb was inscribed with the names of two of Edward IV's children who had predeceased him: George, Duke of Bedford, and Mary. However, the remains of these two children were later found elsewhere in the chapel, leaving the occupants of the children's coffins within the tomb unknown.
Missing Princes Project In 2022,
Philippa Langley led "The Missing Princes Project" to discover the fate of the
Princes in the Tower. The project began in 2015, following the reburial of Richard III in Leicester and was formally launched in July the following year. In 2023 she claimed to have discovered new evidence that disproved the theory that Richard III was responsible for the deaths of the princes. Along with
Rob Rinder, she hosted a
Channel 4 programme called
Princes in the Tower: The New Evidence, in which she revealed her own theories and new archival discoveries. Although praising Langley's discoveries,
The Spectator's reviewer called the programme "a calculated insult to the viewer";
The Times called it "compelling" and awarded the documentary its "Critics Choice". The programme achieved a large audience with Richard III and the Princes in the Tower trending on Twitter / X. The
Richard III Society issued a press release stating: Three leading members of the Dutch Research Group who had assisted in the project subsequently distanced themselves from Langley's documentary and book, arguing that the documents they had discovered "are in our own opinion open to various interpretations and do not constitute irrefutable proof" for the survival of the princes. Langley responded that her conclusions were based on "the totality of evidence thus assembled and the outcomes of a modern police
missing person investigation methodology ... (and not through a traditional historical research method)". Historian
Michael Hicks said that the new documents "do add to knowledge of the Tudor impostors, but they fall short of proof that either Edward V or Richard Duke of York survived beyond their disappearance in the autumn of 1483". ==Epitaph==