When his brother
King Edward IV died in April 1483,
Richard of Gloucester was named
Lord Protector of the realm for Edward's son and successor, the 12-year-old
Edward V. As the young king travelled to London from
Ludlow with a large and armed entourage, Richard intercepted the party with his own forces and escorted him to lodgings in the
Tower of London, where Edward V's own brother Prince
Richard of Shrewsbury joined him shortly afterwards. Arrangements were made for Edward's coronation on 22 June 1483; but, before the young king could be crowned, his father's marriage to his mother
Elizabeth Woodville was declared invalid, making their children illegitimate and ineligible for the throne. Historians widely agree that Richard took the two princes into custody by force and orchestrated their illegitimacy for his own political gain. On the 25 June, an assembly of Lords and commoners endorsed the claims. The following day, Richard III began his reign, and he was crowned on the 6 July 1483. The young princes were not seen in public after August, and accusations circulated that the boys had been murdered on Richard's orders, giving rise to the legend of the
Princes in the Tower. In late September 1483 a
conspiracy arose among a number of disaffected gentry, many of whom had been supporters of Edward IV and the "whole Yorkist establishment". The conspiracy was nominally led by Richard's former ally and first cousin once removed
Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham, although it had begun as a Woodville-Beaufort conspiracy (being "well under way" by the time of the duke's involvement). Indeed, Davies has suggested that it was "only the subsequent parliamentary attainder that placed Buckingham at the centre of events", in order to blame a single disaffected magnate motivated by greed, rather than "the embarrassing truth" that those opposing Richard were actually "overwhelmingly Edwardian loyalists". It is possible that they planned to depose Richard III and place Edward V back on the throne, and that when rumours arose that Edward and his brother were dead, Buckingham proposed that
Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond should return from exile, take the throne and marry
Elizabeth of York, elder sister of the Tower Princes. The Lancastrian claim to the throne had descended to Henry Tudor on the death of
Henry VI and his son
Edward of Westminster in 1471, thus ending the line of
Henry IV. Henry's father,
Edmund Tudor, 1st Earl of Richmond, had been a half-brother of Henry VI on their mother’s side, but Henry's claim to royalty was through his own mother,
Margaret Beaufort. She was a granddaughter of
John Beaufort, who was the second oldest son of
John of Gaunt, the third son of Edward III. John Beaufort had been illegitimate at birth, though later legitimised by the marriage of his parents. Henry had spent much of his childhood under siege in
Harlech Castle or in exile in
Brittany. After 1471, Edward IV had preferred to belittle Henry's pretensions to the crown, and made only sporadic attempts to secure him. However, his mother, Margaret Beaufort, had been twice remarried, first to Buckingham's uncle, and then to
Thomas, Lord Stanley, one of Edward's principal officers, and continually promoted her son's rights. Buckingham's precise motivation has been called "obscure"; he had been treated well by Richard. The traditional naming of the rebellion after him has been labelled a misnomer, with
John Morton and
Reginald Bray more plausible leaders. == Conspiracy ==