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Richard's Guilt: Arguments and Counter-Arguments

Richard had shown extreme family loyalty in the past, especially given the ethics of the era. Murderering his own nephews would have been strongly out of character.  Richard's loyalty was a clever disguise; he was simply waiting for the right moment to drop his facade and strike. 

 It was not by any means necessary for him to kill the Princes: by act of Parliament, he had declared them illegitimate, and ineligible to claim the throne.  As long as the Princes lived, they would be the focus for potential rebellions which could unseat Richard. Certainly they were the focus for rebellions against Henry in later years. 

Murdering the Princes would be difficult to cover up: if Richard had retained the throne, he might have reigned for another fifty years. (He was only 32 at his death) How could he expect to rule so long without explaining to the populace what had happened to the children? Richard, for all his scheming qualities, was prone to panic. Worried that his position was unstable, he blundered and hastily ordered their execution. Perhaps also, he believed his power might become sufficiently strong that eventually he would not need to justify anything to anyone. 

Upon ascending the throne, Henry VII's proclamation of Richard's crimes did not include any mention of the murder of the two boys!  Henry was attempting to lay the issue to rest, perhaps seeking to avoid embarassment to his wife's family. Also, since he did not know where the boys were, he wished to keep the issue quiet until he could discover more.  

Henry VII would have had both motive and opportunity to kill the Princes, and no moral qualms about executing potential heirs, as his later actions would show.  Certainly he could not have killed them if they were already dead, and most of Henry's later actions can be justified in context. 

The man who was supposedly hired by Richard to murder the boys, Sir James Tyrrel, was greatly favored by Henry during much of his reign. He was not executed until twenty years after the Princes' deaths. More poignantly, Henry issued a general criminal pardon in Tyrrel's behalf, twice!  Henry was unaware of Tyrrel's involvement in the murder, so there is no need to explain his favour towards him. The execution was performed because of his treacherous alliance with a Yorkist heir, the Earl of Lincoln. The pardons were given on an unrelated charge, before his confession. 

Soon after his coronation, Henry sent the Princes' mother, Queen Elizabeth, to a nunnery. This was certainly an unusual way to repay the woman who had backed his claim to the throne by offering her daughter Elizabeth in marriage. On the other hand, this would have been an effective way of silencing the Queen had she discovered the truth. During Richard's reign, however, the Queen showed no apparent fear of the King and even placed her daughters into his hands--odd behavior if she had suspected that Richard had murdered her sons.  Queen Elizabeth was quite reasonably wearied of the world after the deaths of her husbands, brother, and three sons, and wished to retire from it. She was actually free to leave at any time. Her motives for allowing Richard to have contact with her daughters was in the hope that the King would marry Elizabeth, thus putting her at the head of a powerful faction once more. She encouraged this marriage because she was unaware at this time that Richard had ordered the murder of the Princes. 

It is quite possible that neither Richard nor Henry performed the murder, but it was in fact done by Buckingham; who then wished to accuse Richard of it and unseat him. He would then be the next in line to the throne.

The Hard Evidence

 

Frustratingly enough for the Ricardian supporter who believes he has a good argument against Henry, there is a piece of hard evidence to grapple with. Nearly two hundred years after the Wars of the Roses, during the reign of Charles II, the bodies of two young boys were discovered in a chest buried ten feet under a stairway, where the Princes had been rumored to be buried by Thomas More. Later research performed on the bodies in 1933 indicated through dental examination that the boys were approximately twelve and ten when they died: placing their deaths squarely in late 1483, under the reign of King Richard III, and well out of the reach of Henry VII's hands.

This is difficult to argue with--the theories that the bodies are not those of the Princes or that the tests were done imperfectly are weak at best. The Richard III Society has attempted to have the bodies exhumed again for carbon dating tests, but they have been denied permission. (The bodies are currently in a generous tomb donated by Charles II) So as it stands, the hard evidence points directly to Richard as the murderer, with a nod at the Buckingham theory.

Still, some Ricardians believe that there is more to the story. The evidence against Henry is so overwhelming in and of itself, that they argue that there must be some complexity, some major quirk, that has escaped history's notice. It is likely that the mystery will never be satisfactorily resolved. But Richard, murderer or not, has inspired much loyalty and support. I recall most vividly opening a random biography on Richard in my local library, and seeing under the paragraph in which the author accused Richard of ordering the Prince's deaths, the words "This is a damned, blasphemous lie!" in dark red pen.

One certainly wonders if a man who could kindle such faith could be wholly evil.

http://www.richard111.com/The%20Great%20Debate.htm