The Princes in the Tower

The spectacle of the cruel, hunchbacked king, Richard III, ending once and for all the menacing existence of his brother's two sons by committing an abhorrent crime is one of the most fearful and enduring moments in English history. Elizabeth Jenkins does not pretend that Richard was innocent of the murder of the two young princes but she presents the crime more as a serious blunder than the action of a thorough-paced criminal, and thus all the more alarming. Paying scrupulous attention to the period, Elizabeth Jenkins assesses the influence of the savage struggle of York and Lancaster for the crown, the fatal breach in the family bond caused by Edward IV's execution of his brother, the Duke of Clarence, and the wide-spread unpopularity of his Queen, Elizabeth Woodville. In 1674 Charles II gave orders that workmen at the Tower of London should clear the White Tower of "all contiguous buildings". When they demolished the external staircase they found, under the bottom stair, at a depth of ten feet, a wooden chest. In it were the skeletons of two children, aged 12 and 10.