Author’s Note

The mystery of the disappearance of the Princes in the Tower has still not been solved. Historians are divided into those who are certain that Richard III murdered them, those who are certain that someone else murdered them, and those who think that neither of them was killed. Most historical novelists, on the other hand, indicate that Richard III did not murder the princes.

I think the reason for this very sharp difference of opinion is that novelists concentrate on character and have concluded that it was not in the character, nor in the interest, of Richard III to have his nephews murdered. However, it was very much in the interest of Henry VII, and later of Henry VIII, to have all Yorkist descendants murdered. Very many of them were killed by order of those two kings.

All historians have to examine archives painstakingly and analyse the relevant documents. Most of the archives relating to Richard III were destroyed, probably not accidentally. One of the few remaining documents about the way in which he became king is The History of King Richard the Third, a bilingual, unfinished description of the event drafted between 1515 and 1527 by the famous and highly respected Sir Thomas More and published in 1543, eight years after his death. Several historians quote extensively from this document and treat it as fact. Shakespeare used it too.

However, More’s ‘history’ seems to be a satire. There is a statement in it that Richard III had a withered arm. But he cannot have had such a disability because he fought successfully in battles from an early age and died fighting. Moreover, examination of his skeleton in Leicester in autumn 2012 by Dr Piers Mitchell and Dr Jo Appleby showed that his arm had not been withered.

Another peculiarity mentioned by More was that Richard III said to Bishop Morton on 13 June 1483 (the day he arrested Lord Hastings) “My Lord, you have very good strawberries at your garden in Holborn, I require you to let us have a mess of them.” This apparently innocuous remark is frequently quoted as an important fact. However, garden strawberries were not grown in England until the end of the eighteenth century and the wild strawberries which medieval people used as herbs and cosmetics had to be picked in woods. In the sixteenth century, when Sir Thomas More was writing his satire, strawberries were considered symbols of hypocrisy and deceit.

The Luxembourg connection of the Princes in the Tower is as follows: their mother’s mother was Jacquetta of Luxembourg, young widow of the Duke of Bedford. Soon after his death in 1435 she secretly married his squire, Richard Woodville, and had fourteen children. She would have brought servants from Luxembourg with her to England and they in turn would have worked for her eldest daughter Elizabeth Woodville who became Queen and was the mother of the two princes. Possibly, they all used the Luxembourgish language in private.

It is not clear whether or not Perkin Warbeck was the younger prince or whether he was an impostor. However, it is known that he was looked after in Lisbon by Duarte Brandão alias Sir Edward Brampton. It is therefore possible that the princes could have travelled from Luxembourg to Lisbon along the route which goes through Condom. Their escape from more attempts to murder them is told in the next book about Belina and Guillaume Lansac.