IT is a mystery that has confounded historians for centuries – what happened to the young “Princes in the Tower”, heirs to the throne of King Edward IV?
The long-held narrative about Princes Edward and Richard is that they were murdered on the orders of their uncle, soon to be crowned Richard III. Yet their bodies have never been found.
Channel 4Philippa Langley and Judge Rinder have teamed up for a bombshell new Channel 4 documentary, The Princes In The Tower: The New Evidence[/caption]
Royal Holloway Picture GalleryAn 1878 painting of the princes by John Millais[/caption]
Now Philippa Langley — who was behind the discovery of King Richard’s remains beneath a Leicester car park in 2012 — believes she has cracked the case, with the help of barrister and broadcaster Rob Rinder.
The pair have teamed up for a bombshell new Channel 4 documentary, The Princes In The Tower: The New Evidence, to examine one of the greatest cold cases of English history, travelling across Europe to delve into medieval archives.
Ahead of his forensic examination, Rob — known as Judge Rinder for his courtroom reality TV show — said he was initially sceptical the duo would make any headway, saying: “I was cynical and critical, let’s be clear.”
But surprisingly the one-off special, which airs tomorrow night, ends with him declaring that he believes documents found by Philippa and her team are genuine — vindicating her belief that the princes were not killed in the Tower of London.
She proudly told The Sun: “Put simply, 540-year-old mystery solved.”
In April 1483, King Edward IV of England died unexpectedly after a short illness.
His sons — Edward, the 12-year-old heir to the English throne, and Richard, nine — were locked in the Tower of London by their uncle who claimed the crown for himself.
Smoking gun
They were last seen alive in the autumn of 1483. The Channel 4 film looks at a series of discoveries that suggest that they could have been alive after this date.
The most startling pieces of evidence are two documents that appear to show the princes were alive a decade after they were presumed to have been murdered.
One, found in an archive in Dresden, Germany, is said to be a pledge from Richard, Duke of York, the younger prince, to pay 30,000 florins — more than £2million in today’s money — to Duke Albert of Saxony.
It includes what appears to be his signature and an intact royal seal.
Another document, also dated 1493 and uncovered in Holland, is written like a first-hand account from the younger prince.
It details how he apparently had his head shaved and was put in a “drab shirt” before being taken to Europe and then Ireland, where he was anointed.
In the film, Rob calls the evidence “a smoking gun” and says it “may be proof of life” but that the vivid description almost seemed too good to be true.
He is convinced it is fake and tells Philippa that in 20 years of legal practice he has never been wrong about a piece of paper.
He is then amazed when he gets two independent experts to analyse the document — and they insist it is authentic.
These new findings may now help historians find the bodies. Some experts have suggested the remains of four children — two found in the 1600s in the Tower of London and another two in the grounds of Windsor Castle in the 1700s — could include the princes.
The bodies are now interred in royal crypts, so permission from the monarch is needed before tests can be carried out — which the late Queen blocked. However, it has been reported that King Charles “takes a different view”.
Philippa, 61, whose book The Princes In The Tower: Solving History’s Greatest Cold Case, is also published tomorrow, says they are continuing to make new discoveries, but she is not revealing what they are.
She said: “We are into phase two. There are so many pieces of the jigsaw puzzle.” She has spent the past seven years working on the missing princes project, and unlike the methods used by most historians, she has recruited a 300-strong team which she calls her “people’s army” whose expertise she sought before presenting her evidence to Rob.
Channel 4The pair travel across Europe to delve into medieval archives[/caption]
AFPPhilippa Langley was behind the discovery of King Richard’s remains beneath a Leicester car park in 2012[/caption]
She said: “I’ve got police, barristers, lawyers, a magistrate and I’ve got a couple of spooks as well.
“When I was putting the project together, a number of investigation specialists joined. They said, ‘Look, there are no identifying bodies, there’s no evidence that they died that we can see, so what you are looking at is a missing persons investigation and it’s a very cold case, so do it that way’.
“And that made absolute sense to me because I needed to have a project that had a very strong grounding in methodology.
“They said, ‘You have to look at everything, even if there is a potential line of investigation that looks like a complete red herring, investigate it. You can’t judge. Don’t judge anything’.
“With this story, there are so many apparent red herrings that everything was investigated.”
Huge moment
Philippa’s fascination with Richard III started in the 1990s after she read a biography about him. Around the same time, she fell ill with ME and gave up her advertising job to try to write a script about Richard, one of history’s most maligned villains.
She spent years trying to find his burial site, and through meticulous research and a hunch, she found the exact spot under a council-owned city car park in 2012.
Before the discovery, she had faced scepticism about her claims.
Mum-of-two Philippa said: “I’m not a doctor or a professor. There was academic snobbery. Being a woman probably didn’t help either. It was a different world then.”
But she added: “My goal was to get the Tarmac cut.”
Her discovery led to an MBE, and she also took centre stage in last year’s film dramatisation, The Lost King, by Steve Coogan, based on Philippa’s 2013 book The King’s Grave: The Search For Richard III.
In the film Philippa was played by Golden Globe winner Sally Hawkins, and she said: “That was a huge moment, having someone of her calibre.”
Rob, 45, said working on the new case opened his eyes and made him question his views of Richard III.
Philippa with a facial reconstruction of Richard based on the skull she discoveredRex
AlamyKing Richard III’s funeral in 2015[/caption]
He added: “I applied my mind completely openly but I said I was cynical, like lots of people, because the traditional narrative of history has imbibed that for centuries.
“How did that come about? I’d never, like most people thought of it, that Shakespearean vision of Richard III, evil king, the quintessence of it that’s come to be part of the very grammar of how we think of that period of history. Like anyone else it forms subconscious and conscious bias about what took place.
“What I don’t think you see, perhaps, is the real journey I went on because I started sceptically and what it took wasn’t just the documents but all of the other corroborating elements of that story.” Philippa described her nerves ahead of his verdict, saying: “When Rob goes into work mode, he’s in work mode and he’s a different animal.
“He’s totally focused, so you can see if he’s in court that he’s going to be quite an adversary, for sure.
“I felt that the evidence was compelling but I didn’t know which way he was going to go because I knew he probably, like most people in the country, had known the traditional view.
“This is what he had grown up with, it’s what he knew and believed.
“So it’s quite a big ask to ask someone to start thinking in a new way. So it really was for me an unknown as I went into that room.”
The Princes In The Tower: The New Evidence is on Channel 4 tomorrow at 8pm and is available on C4 Streaming.
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