# 04 — Modern scholarship (2017–September 2026) on the fate of the Princes in the Tower Research note. Scope: academic and serious journalistic work from 2017 to date on whether Edward V and Richard, Duke of York died in 1483; the Tim Thornton articles (2021–2026); the reception of Philippa Langley's *The Princes in the Tower* (Nov 2023; rev. May 2025) and the Channel 4 film *The Princes in the Tower: The New Evidence* (18 Nov 2023); the Westminster Abbey urn; and the state of the consensus. **Evidence tags used throughout.** *Verified* = I read the source itself (article text, abstract page, press release, blog post, PDF). *Verified (abstract only)* = only the publisher abstract/metadata was accessible. *Secondary* = the wording reached me through a reliable intermediary (e.g. a footnoted Wikipedia citation, a quoting blog); the original was not opened. *Unverified* = from memory or from a search-engine snippet; could not be checked. **Partisanship** is flagged where it bears on reliability: "Ricardian" = Richard III Society / revisionist camp; "traditionalist" = accepts Richard's responsibility. **A point to settle before anything else.** Thornton 2021 does not argue that "Sir James Tyrell's sons Thomas and James Tyrell were at Henry VIII's court in More's circle." Its subjects are (i) John Dighton, the murderer More says was still alive, and (ii) **Edward and Miles Forest, sons of the alleged murderer Miles Forest**, both royal servants in the 1510s–1520s. Tyrell's son Thomas appears only as arrested with his father in 1502 (Thornton 2021, p. 6: Thomas Lovell "arrested him, with his son and others"; Langley 2021 adds that Thomas's sentence was commuted to imprisonment and that the attainder of 25 Jan 1504 was reversed 19 Apr 1507). The Tyrell-family link to the More household is the **2024** chain article, and it runs through Tyrell's *in-laws* (the Capells) and More's *father*, John More, not through Tyrell's sons. Details under §1 and §2. [Verified: Thornton 2021 full text; Thornton 2024 full text; Langley, *Ricardian Bulletin* June 2021, pp. 44–53.] --- ## 1. Tim Thornton, "More on a Murder" (History, 2021) ### 1.1 Citation (Verified via CrossRef + open-access PDF) Tim Thornton, "More on a Murder: The Deaths of the 'Princes in the Tower', and Historiographical Implications for the Regimes of Henry VII and Henry VIII", *History* 106, no. 369 (January 2021), pp. 4–25. DOI 10.1111/1468-229X.13100. Published online 28 December 2020. Open access (CC BY-NC-ND). I read the full text from an archived copy of the Wiley PDF (Wayback Machine capture of 1 Aug 2021: https://web.archive.org/web/20210801182636id_/https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/1468-229X.13100). Wiley's own site returned 403 to every direct fetch. ### 1.2 The argument, in Thornton's own words (Verified) Abstract: "More's account of those deaths is all the more striking because central to it were several individuals who were still alive at the time of its writing, survivors of the episode and their immediate families. This article explores the identity and experience of those at the heart of the murder story in the context of its creation in the 1510s, especially the man who may well have been the surviving murderer, John Dighton, and Edward and Miles, the prominent royal servant sons of his alleged partner in crime, Miles Forest – and More's contacts with them. In doing so, it sheds some light, if not on the history's absolute veracity, then at least on the first decades of its development…" Thornton is explicit that the article is about the *development* and *credibility* of More's story, not a proof of the murder. ### 1.3 The exact evidence he cites (Verified from the article text and footnotes) **Earliest attributions to Tyrell (pp. 4–6).** Polydore Vergil's *Anglica Historia* (begun perhaps 1506, drafted 1512–13) names Tyrell but leaves the manner of death open: "what kinde of death these sely chyldren wer executyd yt is not certanely known" ("quo genere mortis miselli pueri affecti fuerint, non plane constat"). Robert Fabyan's *Great Chronicle of London* (a passage added after 1504, finalised 1512) says Sir James "was Reportid to be the doer", or alternatively "an old servant of Richard III whose name he left blank". Thornton's point: "That body of rumour cannot be evidenced to have been available before about 1504… nor was it explicitly associated with one or more confessions." **Tyrell's arrest and the "opportunity" for a confession (p. 6).** Tyrell was at Guînes in 1485, back as knight of the body by 1488, received Edmund de la Pole at Guînes in 1499; "in the spring of 1502 Thomas Lovell arrested him, with his son and others. Sir James was convicted at the Guildhall on 2 May, and executed on 6 May. This was the apparent opportunity for a confession of responsibility for the princes' deaths, although neither Vergil nor Fabyan specify as much, and the different emphases of their accounts weigh heavily against them having had any sort of direct or nearly direct access to one." Footnote 4 notes Henry VII's probable involvement in the questioning and explicitly flags "the emphasis placed on the king and queen's presence by David Starkey in the Channel 4 programme 'Richard III: the princes in the Tower' (broadcast 21 March 2015)"; the Chamber Book (TNA E 101/415/3, fos 92v–93v, April 1502) does not specify location, but Henry signed Great Seal warrants at the Tower from 27 April. **John Dighton (pp. 9–10).** The 1557 Rastell text says Dighton was "yet alive"; a later revision records him living, and dying, in Calais. Thornton: if More began c.1513 and continued to c.1518–19, "More was apparently writing initially during a period when he confidently believed Dighton was still alive, at least thirty years after the princes' deaths, but then during his process of continual revision became aware of Dighton's death apparently sometime between 1518–19 and the end of 1527. This level of detail, after thirty years of (at best) imprecision, invites consideration of the historicity of More's account." More's own embassies to Calais and the Low Countries placed him "in the location where he was writing that the other – surviving – murderer, John Dighton, may well have been living" (quoted by Medievalists.net, Feb 2021; Verified). **Miles Forest senior (pp. 12–13).** Following Gairdner (1879), Forest was keeper of the wardrobe at Barnard Castle, a Neville lordship Richard held by marriage. "Forest was, perhaps conveniently, dead by the September of 1484, because it was then that the king made a grant to his widow Joan and his son and heir Edward of an annuity of five marks" (fn 37: *CPR 1476–85*, p. 473; cf. *Harleian MS 433*, ed. Horrox and Hammond, I. 216, II. 160 (12 Sept 1484); TNA PSO 1/58/2963; C 81/900/710). More's phrase that Forest "at sainct Martens pecemele rotted away" is read as a death in the sanctuary of St Martin le Grand. Thornton adds that Brackenbury, the Tower constable, was from Denton near Gainford, a dozen miles from Barnard Castle. **Edward and Miles Forest, the sons (pp. 14–17).** The identification is probabilistic: "an Edward Forest and his brother Miles who were very probably Miles Forest's sons were still alive… the coincidence of the name Edward and, in spite of the increasingly prominent career they pursued at court, their particular interest in Barnard Castle and parts of the North Riding of Yorkshire suggests the identification, as does the given name Miles for Edward's brother, which is relatively unusual." Career evidence (all from *Letters and Papers Henry VIII* and TNA E 36 household books): Edward first appears as a Groom of the Chamber in February 1511 at the interment of the infant Prince Henry (*L&P* I. 707); he served Margaret, queen of Scots, on her 1516 visit; the brothers acquired the manor of Sherburn in the lordship of Sheriff Hutton and offices in the lordship of Middleham, including bailiff; Edward was listed as Groom of the Chamber at the Field of Cloth of Gold (1520) and TNA E 36/216, fo. 101v "shows Edward riding between king and cardinal in 1520"; Miles is named as Wolsey's servant when Wolsey's embassy came to Calais in 1521, was a Groom of Wolsey's Chamber in 1524 (*L&P* IV. 107), moved to the king's service at Wolsey's fall in Nov 1529, and carried messages between Henry and James V in autumn 1531; Edward was still a Groom of the King's Chamber in 1526 and was made bailiff of the town and lordship of Barnard Castle that year (*L&P* IV. 1939(8), 2540); Edward was involved in the Anne Boleyn/Wolsey intrigues of 1528 (TNA SP 1/47, fos 54–55v). **The More contact (p. 22).** "When More was writing, both Edward Forest and Miles his brother were active at court and in circles in which he was involved… In May 1515 he was commissioned, with others including Cuthbert Tunstall, to undertake an embassy to Bruges… in that trip the ambassadors maintained contacts with the court and Wolsey using a range of messengers – including Miles Forest himself" (fn 83: TNA SP 1/11, fo. 126; *L&P* II. 977). "Once More was fully engaged in the king's service, he was closely aligned with Thomas Wolsey, and in that capacity he could not but encounter the Forest brothers, who served both cardinal and king." Elsewhere in the article (quoted by Medievalists.net): "from 1513 to 1519, and beyond, when More was at work on Richard the Third, he was therefore in touch with the sons of one of the men whom he said killed the princes." **His public gloss (Verified via Smithsonian, 4 Feb 2021, Meilan Solly; and Huddersfield/History-journal blog, 3 Feb 2021).** "This has been the greatest murder mystery in British history, because we couldn't really rely on More as an account of what happened – until now." "He wasn't writing about imaginary people. We now have substantial grounds for believing that the detail of More's account of a murder is credible." Blog: "If I am correct, then two men Thomas More knew well, and with whom he worked, were clearly identifiable as the sons of the leading alleged murderer of the princes." Thornton also wrote his own summary for *The Conversation* (2021, "Princes in the Tower: how I established a direct link between Richard III and the two murders"), which states that "Miles Forest junior was a messenger between Henry VIII's court in England and the embassy on which More served" and that both brothers "were also the recipients of royal grants and leases of royal lands and offices" (Verified). ### 1.4 Published criticisms of the 2021 argument *Ricardian responses (partisan, but the substantive points are historical ones):* - **Richard III Society Research Committee blog, 11 Feb 2021, "Miles Forest and the Fate of the Missing Princes"** (Verified; Langley's 2021 footnote attributes the post to Joanna Laynesmith, who also published "Miles Forest and the Princes in the Tower" in the *Ricardian Bulletin*, June 2021 — the latter Secondary, listed on Laynesmith's publications page). Objections: the sons would have had to learn the "crime of the century" from their mother — "I am not convinced any mother would choose to burden her children with the knowledge that their father had committed the crime of the century"; disclosure would have been "a wildly risky step" for "one of Henry VIII's Grooms of the Chamber" and a Wolsey servant; the 1484 annuity looks like recognition of service, not the pension of a man who "found himself resourceless in the sanctuary at St Martin's just months later"; Dighton "confessed to such a murder but was simply allowed to walk free?"; no public statement of Tyrell's guilt at his execution "which was for an unrelated charge of treason. His alleged confession does not itself survive." Key line: "Was More really reporting what the Forest boys had told him, or was it just that his acquaintance with them had caused him to learn that their father had been a servant of Richard's who died in circumstances that might seem fitting for a villain?" - **Matthew Lewis, "The More I Read", Matt's History Blog, 7 Feb 2021** (Verified). The Forest brothers "must have been too young in 1484 to have known or understood what their father had done"; "it is hard to unravel a circumstance in which they would have volunteered such a dark family secret to a virtual stranger"; More's use of "real people sprinkled throughout his narrative" makes it "superficially plausible"; More's opening error on Edward IV's age (53 rather than 40) and John Rastell's silence on Tyrell in *The Pastime of People* (1529). - **Philippa Langley, "Tyrell's Confession: Fact or Fiction?", *Ricardian Bulletin*, June 2021, pp. 44–53** (Verified from the PDF on revealingrichardiii.com). Written as a reply to the 2015 Channel 4 programme (Starkey: "More is 99 per cent right. There is some sort of confession") and, in the notes, to Thornton. Substantive points: Tyrell's trial "had nothing to do with the sons of Edward IV; he was in fact arraigned for committing high treason with the Yorkist heir, Edmund de la Pole"; it "did not take place at the Tower of London, but was heard at the Guildhall in central London, so Henry and his queen were not present to witness proceedings"; "There is no record in Vergil of a confession by Tyrell, or of an individual named Dighton"; the *Great Chronicle* "does not record Tyrell's confession (or mention a Dighton)"; Bacon (1622) admits the king "made no use of them in any of his declarations"; the story "appeared at a time of genuine crisis for the early Tudor dynasty"; Tyrell's cousin Sir Thomas Tyrell of Essex told a Tudor spy that "Warbeck" was King Edward's son and was never tried; no Masses recorded for the boys' souls (crediting Annette Carson). Note this is a Ricardian, not a peer-reviewed, venue. - **Annette Carson** posted a response on her website according to the Worcestershire Branch page (Secondary; I could not open the response itself). - **Dan Moorhouse, "Conflicting 'Proof' and the Princes in the Tower", thewarsoftheroses.co.uk, 21 Jul 2024 (upd. 1 Sep 2025)** (Verified; non-partisan teacher-historian): Thornton shows only *possibility*; even if More had the Forests as sources, "their reliability remains questionable since they derive from hearsay and potentially motivated testimony." *Academic reception:* I found no journal review or rebuttal of the 2021 article. Gordon McKelvie (Winchester), *The Conversation*, 7 Jan 2022, treats it as a "recent archival discovery" and adds: "What is impossible is to prove beyond reasonable doubt what happened to the princes… the overwhelming consensus among historians is that Richard probably had some hand in the killing" (Verified). Thornton's later Historical Research article (below) is effectively his own reply to the Guildhall objection raised by Langley and others. *What the 2021 article does not claim:* it does not identify Dighton beyond a set of candidates; it describes the Forest identification as "very probably"; and it does not discuss Tyrell's sons at court. --- ## 2. Thornton's later work: the chain, the 1502 confession, and Miles Forest's legacy ### 2.1 The chain article (Verified: CrossRef; full text from Wayback capture of the Wiley PDF, 16 Jul 2025; TNA press release; Huddersfield press release) Tim Thornton, "Sir William Capell and A Royal Chain: The Afterlives (and Death) of King Edward V", *History* 109, no. 388 (December 2024), pp. 445–460. DOI 10.1111/1468-229X.13430. CC BY. Publication history: appeared in Early View on 7 Oct 2024 "in error", was taken down under embargo, and republished on 3 Dec 2024 (Semantic Scholar record "Note of Temporary Take Down": "This article published in Early View in error. The article is under embargo and will republish on 3 December 2024"), to coincide with the Channel 5 film *Princes in the Tower: A Damning Discovery* (Channel 5, 21:00 GMT, Tuesday 3 Dec 2024; presented by Tracy Borman and Jason Watkins) and a National Archives press release of the same day. **The will.** TNA **PROB 11/19** (Thornton's fn 34 gives the item as PROB 11/19/456, and — importantly — cites the 1826 printing: "*Testamenta Vetusta*, pp. 594–5"). Thornton: "In her will, proved in 1522 (in an element originally composed in 1516), Margaret, Lady Capell, widow of Sir William Capell, left her son Sir Giles Capell his 'faders Cheyne which was yonge kyng Edwarde the vth'." The National Archives press release (3 Dec 2024) gives the registered copy's wording as: **"I bequeath to my sonne Sir Giles his fadres Cheyne which was Yonge kynge Edward the Vth."** (The two quotations differ in spelling; both are said to be from the register copy. The press release is the fuller.) Sir William's own will (TNA PROB 11/18/292) does not mention the chain, "so it may have already been given to Lady Capell as a gift for her to dispose of as she wished." **Who the Capells were (Thornton, pp. 452–4).** Sir William Capell: born by 1448; warden of the Drapers' Company 1475–6 and 1484–5; mayor of London 1503–4 and 1510; died 1515; "a very successful and wealthy businessman" by the early 1480s (in May 1482 he intervened in a sale of Essex manors to Richard, duke of Gloucester); "fined heavily in 1494 and suffered further penalties later" under Henry VII. Margaret was a daughter of Sir John Arundell of Lanherne (Cornwall). Her full sisters married Giles, 1st Baron Daubeney (governor of Calais from 1486) and Henry, 1st Baron Marney. "Her half-sister (and Sir John's only child by his first wife, Elizabeth Morley) was Anne, wife of Sir James Tyrell" (fn 42: ODNB "Arundell family"). So the Tyrell in-law link holds in substance: Anne Arundell, Tyrell's wife, was Margaret Capell's *half*-sister. Tyrell "was a long-term lieutenant at Guisnes" while Daubeney governed Calais. Giles Capell's son Henry (b. 1505) had the 2nd Marquess of Dorset (Elizabeth Woodville's son, the princes' half-brother) as a godfather. **The argument (Verified).** Thornton frames the chain first as evidence of how little "memory" Edward V generated (no cult, no images, sparse texts), then: "while there is a clear possibility that the chain came to the Capell family in some neutral way, as property associated with the king was distributed or sold off in the aftermath of his disappearance, there is also the possibility that it came as a result of Edward's murder – and due to the Capells' connection with the alleged murderer, Sir James Tyrell." He suggests the mechanism could be commercial: "If one of his brothers-in-law had the opportunity to acquire the chain, it may then have been obtained by Capell as part of some bargaining or money-lending activity with them." Section V adds the More link: "Sir William Capell was one of the most important clients of the serjeant-at-law and later judge John More" (citing Caroline Barron), "And it was John's son Thomas More who during the later 1510s for the first time constructed a detailed account… of the murder." The Historical Association's page on the article quotes Thornton: "John More appears again and again in Capell's legal business in the 30 years after the disappearance of the princes" (Verified). **On "overlooked".** The abstract calls this "A previously overlooked reference to Edward's chain" and the text says the mention "has to date apparently been overlooked", yet the footnote cites Nicolas's *Testamenta Vetusta* (1826). Read in context, "overlooked" means overlooked *as evidence about Edward V's fate*, not that the will was unknown. Critics (below) nonetheless treated the claim as one of discovery, helped by press coverage that called it "the first reference found in more than 500 years to any physical item belonging to one of the Princes" (TNA press release wording; Verified). **Thornton's public statements (Verified: hud.ac.uk, Nov 2024; Medievalists.net, 6 Dec 2024).** "None of this is conclusive, it is not a 'smoking gun', but it adds considerably to the evidence." "Historians do not work to the principle of 'beyond reasonable doubt'… the balance is shifting towards his guilt." "when Sir Thomas More accused Sir James Tyrell of responsibility for their deaths of the princes he was in touch with people who were part of the story, including Tyrell's in-laws – and that they owned the young king's chain." "Their clothes, their belongings just seemed to disappear; no one ever seems to refer to them." "we now have a unique reference to the survival of an object that was very personal to Edward V to add into the mix." **Sean Cunningham (TNA, Head of Collections, Medieval & Early Modern), TNA press release 3 Dec 2024 (Verified):** "Margaret's reference to a chain once owned by the uncrowned teenage king Edward V is a new piece of evidence that raises more questions than it answers." (Cunningham is thanked in the acknowledgements of Thornton's HR article.) ### 2.2 Responses to the chain - **Richard III Society, "Society Statement on upcoming Princes programme"** (issued before the 3 Dec 2024 broadcast; Verified): the bequest "is of a chain belonging to her deceased husband Sir William Capell"; "Sir William Capell was prosecuted under Henry VII for usury and various other financial misdemeanours. He was an important money lender who acquired all sorts of metalwork as surety"; the chain "may simply have been given to Sir William as collateral for a loan"; "It is just as possible that Margaret named her eldest son in recognition of Sir Giles Daubeney and he gifted the chain to the Capells on the occasion of the birth of their first son"; "There is no evidence that the chain belonged to Sir James Tyrell"; "Professor Thornton's discovery cannot be deemed as evidence but conjecture" — adding that Thornton acknowledges as much in the article. The statement ends by promising further Missing Princes Project discoveries. (Ricardian.) - **Richard III Society Research Committee, "The Princes in the Tower: A Debatable 'Discovery'", 10 Dec 2024** (Verified; Ricardian but source-based): the will was "published in 1826 by N. Harris Nicolas… *Testamenta Vetusta*"; "In 1906, William Minet quoted Margaret's bequest of Edward V's chain"; Diana Scarisbrick (1994), Barbara Harris (2002) and Susan James (2015) all used it; "no previous scholar seems to have suggested that it provided any link with Sir James Tyrell"; "Noblemen typically owned various chains but the objects we might think of as chains of office were usually called collars"; "It is difficult to imagine how Tyrell managed to pass it on to his brother-in-law without also acknowledging how he had acquired it"; "There is no mention of the chain in the wills of Sir Giles (d. 1556) or his sons." - **Sylvia Barbara Soberton, "'New Evidence' in Princes in the Tower Case Isn't New", *The Tudors* Substack, 3 Dec 2024** (Verified; Tudor popular historian, not Ricardian): the will "has been in print since the nineteenth century" (1826; *Transactions of the Essex Archaeological Society* 1852; James 2015); "overlooking the contributions of other scholars is deeply disappointing." - **Matthew Lewis, *Ricardian Bulletin*, March 2025** (Secondary, quoted by sparkypus, 11 Apr 2025): "The will explicitly states the chain belong to Sir William Capel before his death not to his wife"; "There is not even a hint of who it came from to link it to Tyrell or how it came into Sir Williams possession… A further question that lingers is whether the chain ever did belong to Edward V." - **"A Medieval Potpourri" (sparkypus.com), 11 Apr 2025, reposted at murreyandblue 13 Apr 2025** (Verified; Ricardian blog): adds the Dorset godfather link as an alternative provenance; notes More himself wrote that "some remain in doubt whether they were in his day destroyed or no." - **Edward Watson (Clas Merdin blog), 31 Jan 2025** (Verified): the documentary called it a "chain of office" whereas the will says "simply a chain". - **Stephanie A. Mann (Supremacy and Survival), 19 Feb 2025** (Verified; Catholic/More-sympathetic): "we don't have the chain nor do we have any record of the chain to test its provenance; there's some evidence on paper, but nothing concrete." - Press: the Huddersfield release and TNA release were widely syndicated (BBC, Yahoo, *Who Do You Think You Are?* magazine, *Family Tree*), generally under "smoking gun" headlines that Thornton himself disclaimed. ### 2.3 The 1502 confession and Henry VII's itinerary (Verified: CrossRef + archived OUP page with full text) Tim Thornton, "Henry VII and the Tower of London: the context of the 'confession' of Sir James Tyrell in 1502", *Historical Research* 97, no. 276 (May 2024), pp. 218–225. DOI 10.1093/hisres/htad031. Published online 20 Nov 2023. Key statements: "It has long been recognized that there is no direct evidence for the confession, or even for the presence in the Tower of one of those accused and said by More to have confessed with Tyrell, John Dighton"; the process against Tyrell "refer[s] only to charges of treason in relation to Edmund de la Pole… there is, for example, no record for a process relating to the allegations about the princes in the Baga de Secretis". Using itinerary sources (household books, Heron's chamber accounts, privy-seal warrants), he shows Henry's visits to the Tower in his first fifteen years were "extremely unusual" and tied to coronations (28–30 Oct 1485; 23–7 Nov 1487), to the Stanley affair (Dec 1494–Jan 1495), and to diplomacy (Jan–Feb 1496). For 1502: "Privy seal records suggest the king was at Greenwich until 26 April, but that he then moved to the Tower from 27 April, staying until at least 2 May… This allows for him to be at the Tower, close to the location of Tyrell's trial at the London Guildhall on 2 May, and very close to the location of Tyrell's imprisonment. Tyrell was executed, with Sir John Wyndham, on 6 May 1502." Queen Elizabeth was also there: "If there was a confession from Tyrell about the death of the princes, both the king and the queen were present to hear it on these days leading up to the opening of his trial at the Guildhall on 2 May. Elizabeth then left the Tower almost immediately, heading back to Greenwich on 3 May, stopping en route to visit her aunt Elizabeth, sister of Edward IV, the dowager duchess of Suffolk… at Stepney." Conclusion: "Henry's likely choice to be present adds to the probability that Tyrell had something to confess… The possibility that Tyrell's imprisonment was the occasion for a shocking confession of guilt in the murders of the princes grows more likely." This directly answers the Langley/Ricardian objection that the Guildhall trial venue means the king and queen "were not present". Note the article's explicit concession that there is still "no direct evidence for the confession". No published response located. ### 2.4 Miles Forest's legacy (Verified: CrossRef; abstract via search snippet only) Tim Thornton, "Miles Forrest, Regicide, and His Legacy in Teesdale and Barnard Castle", *Northern History* 62, nos 1–2 (2025), pp. 45–61. DOI 10.1080/0078172X.2026.2623128 (CrossRef gives print issue date 3 Jul 2025 and online publication 19 Feb 2026; CC BY-NC-ND). Taylor & Francis blocked all fetches. The abstract (as indexed) argues that although More named Forrest as a murderer and Forrest held office at Barnard Castle under Richard III, "any association between Forrest, the murders, and Barnard Castle was rapidly lost", partly because nineteenth-century scholars confused Barnard Castle with Baynard's Castle, and the association was revived in the early twentieth century by the artist-entrepreneur Victor Mazzini Walton. (Unverified beyond the abstract.) ### 2.5 Other Thornton No other Thornton article on the princes was found for 2017–2026. His 2021 *Conversation* summary and the Channel 5 film are the public-facing versions of §1–§2. --- ## 3. Reception of Langley (Nov 2023) and Channel 4's *The New Evidence* ### 3.1 The objects being reviewed (Verified: Langley's sites; Richard III Society; Channel 4) - Philippa Langley, *The Princes in the Tower: Solving History's Greatest Cold Case* (The History Press, 17/19 Nov 2023; US: Pegasus, subtitled "The Truth Behind History's Greatest Cold Case"); contributors include Nathalie Nijman-Bliekendaal (Dutch Research Group). Revised edition: *The Princes in the Tower: How History's Greatest Cold Case Was Solved* (The History Press, 29 May 2025), with chapters 18–19 rewritten and a new ch. 21 of 2024 discoveries; Langley's site calls it the project's "final report" after ten years. - *The Princes in the Tower: The New Evidence*, Channel 4, Sat 18 Nov 2023, 8 pm, 90 min (Brinkworth Productions; dir. Janice Sutherland), co-presented by Langley and the barrister-broadcaster Rob Rinder; US version *Secrets of the Dead* (PBS, 22 Nov 2023). Won "Best Historical Documentary" at the AIB Awards, 22 Nov 2024. The production engaged Prof. Henrike Lähnemann (Oxford), Prof. Janina Ramirez and Dr Andrew Dunning (Bodleian) as independent specialists on the documents' authenticity, and Bart Lambert (VUB) checked the Gelderland transcription/translation ("minor corrections" incorporated in the 2025 edition) — all per Langley's own site (Verified as to the claim; the specialists' own views are not published beyond the film). - The four headline documents (archive references from Langley's site, Verified as citations): (i) **Lille receipt**, Archives départementales du Nord, B 3521/124564, dated 16 Dec 1487, for 400 pikes for Martin Schwartz's troops "to serve her nephew – son of King Edward, late her brother (may God save his soul), [who was] expelled from his dominion" (found May 2020 by Albert Jan de Rooij); (ii) **Gelderland manuscript**, Gelders Archief, Arnhem, 0510 "Diverse Charters en Aanwinsten", nr 1549, a four-page first-person narrative of Richard of York's escape and wanderings (found Nov 2020 by Nathalie Nijman-Bliekendaal); (iii) **Dresden pledge**, 4 Oct 1493, "Richard of England" promising 30,000 florins to Albert of Saxony, countersigned by Sir Robert Clifford and William Barley; (iv) **Maximilian's letter/instructions**, 27 Nov–12 Dec 1493 (Austrian archives; Zoë Maula), listing three bodily marks "that cannot be counterfeited" ("his mouth, one of his eyes and a mark he has on his thigh"). Supporting: Dendermonde letter to Isabella, 25 Aug 1493; Mechelen and Holland domain accounts 1494–5 naming "Richard, Duke of York, the son of Edward IV"/"the White Rose"; Irish letters patent of "13 August 1486 (or 1487)". ### 3.2 Academic historians **Michael Hicks (Winchester; traditionalist; the standard academic biographer of Richard III and of Edward V).** - "Historic doubts about the survival of the Princes in the Tower after 1485", *Historical Research* 97, no. 277 (2024), pp. 437–442, DOI 10.1093/hisres/htae009, online 21 Jun 2024 (Verified, abstract only — full text paywalled): "This note assesses Philippa Langley's four proofs for the survival of the two Princes in the Tower after 1485. Neither the Lille document nor supporting evidences prove that Lambert Simnel was really Edward V rather than Edward, earl of Warwick. The Gelderland manifesto recounting the escape of Richard, duke of York and the pretender's pledge to Duke Albert of Saxony were propaganda as necessary for the imposter Perkin Warbeck as for the real prince. The blemishes of Warbeck's body cannot be shown to identify him as the younger prince. While useful additions to the continental plots against Henry VII, these new evidences do not prove that either prince lived beyond the reign of Richard III." - "More proof needed on Princes", *Ricardian Bulletin*, June 2024, pp. 4–5 (Secondary via Wikipedia's footnoted quotation): the documents "do add to knowledge of the Tudor impostors, but they fall short of proof that either Edward V or Richard Duke of York survived beyond their disappearance in the autumn of 1483". **The Dutch Research Group split (Secondary via Wikipedia citation; quotation independently confirmed by Edward Watson's blog and by thewarsoftheroses.co.uk).** Zoë Maula, Jean Roefstra and William Wiss, "Dutch statement on The Missing Princes Project", *Ricardian Bulletin*, June 2024, p. 4: "Although we agree that the contemporary documents are genuine and valid, the finds made by the DRG are in our own opinion open to various interpretations and do not constitute irrefutable proof without other genuine and undoubted sources to back up what these documents are telling us." Langley's reply (same issue, p. 4): her conclusions rest on "the totality of evidence thus assembled and the outcomes of a modern police missing person investigation methodology … (and not through a traditional historical research method)". This is the single most damaging item for the project, because it comes from its own archival researchers. **Chris Phillips, "Who did 'Lambert Simnel' claim to be?", 27 April 2024, medievalgenealogy.org.uk (17 pp.)** (Verified from the PDF; independent genealogist-historian; written "partly in collaboration with Nathalie Nijman-Bliekendaal, Zoë Maula, Jean Roefstra and John Dike" — i.e. DRG members). Conclusion: "The overwhelming weight of contemporary and nearly contemporary evidence is that the pretender of 1487 claimed to be Edward, Earl of Warwick… even if the English evidence is excluded, the same conclusion follows from evidence from places where Henry's writ did not run at the time of the conspiracy, notably Ireland and Burgundian territory. The surviving records of the government in Ireland, carried on in the pretender's name, are not consistent with the theory that he claimed to be Edward V… the only contemporary exception, the receipt from Mechelen that identifies him as an unnamed son of Edward IV, can be seen as the result of a plausible error." Specific points: the Irish Exchequer memoranda roll dated the pretender's writ to his *first* regnal year — "If the document had been issued in August 1487 in the name of someone claiming to be Edward V, it would have been dated as of his fifth regnal year, not his first" (following Randolph Jones); Henry VII's letter to the Pope of 5 July 1487 complained the Irish prelates had crowned a boy "pretending that he was the son of the late Duke of Clarence"; the older edition of the York House Books "made the crucial mistake of mistranscribing Edward VI as Edward V"; Langley herself gives three incompatible explanations of the continental "son of Clarence" references (Henry "muddied the waters"; a Flemish cover-name "to protect Edward's identity"; "simply… a misnomer"). **Nathen Amin (independent Tudor historian; author of *Henry VII and the Tudor Pretenders*, 2020/21; traditionalist)**, Renaissance English History Podcast, 13 Apr 2025 (Verified): on the Lille receipt, "I believe this document is completely authentic… hugely compelling. If you take this document by itself, you're gonna go that's surely proof of life" — but it records what the Burgundian court *said* about the pretender; on the Gelderland/Richard documents: "It's just that we know that somebody who wanted us to believe they were, that person has signed that letter." On his Substack (undated) he concedes the Dublin problem: "we do not know if he was crowned Edward V (i.e., as the son of Edward IV…) or as Edward VI." **J. L. Laynesmith (Reading; academic; author of *Cecily Duchess of York*)**: review of Langley's book listed as "forthcoming in *Mortimer Matters*"; and a 2025 chapter, "The Sons of Edward IV: the evidence on their deaths updated", in *Loyalty Binds Me: Essays for Peter and Carolyn Hammond*, ed. Christian Steer and Richard Asquith (Yorkist History Trust / Shaun Tyas, 2025) (Secondary, from her publications page; not read). **Lucy Worsley (Historic Royal Palaces; traditionalist)**, Substack, 16 Jan 2025 (Verified): the "mystery" is not one; "if you're going to murder your political enemies, it's pretty poor practice to leave a paper trail"; belief in Richard's innocence "seems to me to shade into the realms of conspiracy theory"; on the Warbeck documents, supporters "would naturally refer to their figurehead as 'the son of King Edward' regardless of truth." **Dan Jones (popular historian; traditionalist)**, Substack "'New' evidence on the P*****s in the T***r", 17 Nov 2023 (Verified, partly paywalled): the claims are "a perfect confection of old hat and piping hot horse pucky"; subtitle "history as wish fulfilment"; quotes Jonathan Sumption that "it is impossible to say anything new about the Princes in the Tower unless you say something mad." **Tracy Borman (Historic Royal Palaces)**: no review of Langley found; she instead fronted the rival Channel 5 film with Thornton (Dec 2024). Her 2022 remarks concern the urn (see §4). **Sean Cunningham (TNA)**: no review of Langley found; his only public comment is the chain quotation above. **Not found** (no review, article or quoted comment on Langley 2023 located despite targeted searches): A. J. Pollard, Rosemary Horrox, Steven Gunn, John Guy, Helen Castor, Chris Skidmore, David Horspool (the TLS blurbs "compelling reading" / "reads like an up-all-night thriller" appear only in publisher marketing; I could not find or attribute a TLS review), Alison Weir, Michael K. Jones, Jonathan Foyle, Suzannah Lipscomb, Joanne Paul. Dutch/Belgian *academic* reaction: none found; Bart Lambert's involvement is limited to checking the transcription for the film. ### 3.3 Serious non-academic reviewers - **Gareth Streeter, Royal History Geeks** (traditionalist popular history), "Leaps of logic and forced conclusions" (Dec 2023) and "Sourcing the truth: the fatal flaws of Langley's quest" (21 Dec 2023) (both Verified). The "Lord Bastard" payments of 1484–5 more likely refer to John of Gloucester ("in 1472, an illegitimate son of Edward IV was described in the household accounts as 'my Lord the Bastard'"); on the Lille receipt, "details peripheral to the document's core purpose… are often incorrect" and it "most certainly does not 'confirm that at least one of the sons of Edward IV was alive in 1487'"; on André's stray reference to a son of Edward IV, André was "a blind man dictating to a scribe" and "isn't it more likely that his reference… represents a confusion of the mind rather than a casual betrayal of a closely-guarded secret?"; on method, Langley elevates fragments to facts: "It is not presented as a question, a possibility or even a likelihood. For Langley it is a fact"; "having seen the unsatisfactory treatment of the sources that I do know well, I find it difficult to put my faith in her handling of the remainder." - **David Pilling, Aspects of History** (Verified; c. Nov 2023): "It is absurd to wheel them out as evidence of Richard's survival – no pretender… was going to sign documents with his real name"; on the body marks, "The story of the marks could have been sheer invention"; on Gelderland, "It proves nothing, beyond the fact that someone thought it worthwhile to sit down and draft a version of Richard's life"; the film was "entertaining, but manipulative and dishonest." - **James Delingpole, *The Spectator*, 22 Nov 2023** (Verified): "a calculated insult to the viewer" — a complaint about format (Rinder's staged reactions: "Wow! No, double wow!") while crediting Langley's discoveries. - ***The Times***, Review, 18 Nov 2023, p. 20: "Critics' Choice", "compelling" (Secondary via Wikipedia). *The Times* leader, 23 May 2025, on the revised edition: "there's a chance that, in the court of public opinion, the last Plantagenet king may have been subjected to one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in history" (Unverified — quoted on Langley's own site; paywalled). - **Inside History (Substack), 28 Nov 2023** (Verified): "we are being told one side"; no "conclusive evidence". - **Gemma Craven, Herstory Project, 31 Mar 2024** (Verified): the Dublin coronation is "their weakest argument"; the Gelderland document has "too many possible explanations… that its credibility is limited"; the Dresden pledge lacks handwriting comparison; the birthmark letter is "probably the most compelling" but open to fabrication; the project "could have benefited from being presented and run by an impartial expert". - **Yvette Hoitink (professional Dutch genealogist), dutchgenealogy.nl, 24 Nov 2023** (Verified; the only Dutch specialist assessment found): does not dispute the documents but found citation errors — page numbers of scans instead of folio numbers, non-permanent archive links, the Gelderland spelling "Buckgegem" mis-given as "Buckgegen", mis-attached footnotes in the Bergen op Zoom aldermen's records and County accounts; "the references were not (all) verified before publication", though this "does not undermine the conclusions in the book". - **Jo Romero, Love British History, 16 Feb 2024** (Verified): Langley "criticised for tailoring evidence to fit a pre-conceived mission"; "We cannot construct a historical argument tailored only to our views and mission." - **Ann Chamberlin, Historical Novel Society, HNR 107, Feb 2024** (Verified): broadly favourable but notes "confusing repetitions". - **Amy Rodriguez (Fairtheewell Substack), 4 Dec 2023** (Verified): Maximilian's record of self-interest (Treaty of Frankfurt 1489) makes his patronage of pretenders weak evidence of their identity. - **Richard III Society (Ricardian)**, press statements 16–18 Nov 2023 and FAQ (Verified): "No longer can anyone confidently claim the princes were killed by Richard III"; "The above documentation cannot be ignored by serious historians. It means that never again can it be stated with confidence that the 'Princes in the Tower' were killed by Richard III." The Society's own FAQ on the "King from Dublin" concedes "This conclusion is only a possibility, of course." - **Dan Moorhouse, 21 Jul 2024** (Verified): "signatures cannot be authenticated, no travel documentation exists, and interpretations involve speculative leaps." - Janina Ramirez, who appears in the film, is reported as saying "Richard"'s testimony seemed "a bit too good to be true – as you would expect from a forgery", while confirming the parchment is fifteenth-century (Unverified: search snippet from historymedieval.com; page would not load). ### 3.4 What reviewers said on the four specific questions (a) **Lille receipt, 16 Dec 1487, "son of King Edward".** Nobody disputes authenticity. The objections are (i) it records the Burgundian court's belief or propaganda, not fact (Hicks; Worsley; Amin; Pilling; Moorhouse); (ii) it is the *only* contemporary text calling the 1487 pretender a son of Edward IV, against Irish, English, papal and other Burgundian evidence for Clarence's son (Phillips 2024, with DRG collaborators; Hicks); (iii) administrative documents are unreliable on peripheral detail (Streeter). Ricardians and the Society's FAQ read it, with André and the Irish letters patent, as showing the Dublin king was Edward V. (b) **Gelderland manuscript.** Authenticated as a fifteenth-century document (Lähnemann, Ramirez, Dunning per Langley); Lambert checked the transcription. Critics: it is a first-person claimant's narrative — "propaganda as necessary for the imposter Perkin Warbeck as for the real prince" (Hicks); unsigned, undated, a copy (acknowledged even by the Ricardian blog sparkypus, 6 Mar 2024); it tracks Warbeck's later "confession" in outline (the Society's page treats this as corroboration; critics as circularity). The DRG members themselves called such finds "open to various interpretations". (c) **Dendermonde/Mechelen/Lille/Holland records naming "the Duke of York" 1493–5, the Dresden pledge, the Nuremberg charters.** Reviewers accept that Maximilian, Margaret, Albert of Saxony and others *styled* the claimant Richard of York, and that he sealed and signed as such; "All it shows is that 'Richard' had some very wealthy supporters… We knew that already" (Pilling); "no pretender… was going to sign documents with his real name" (Pilling; Worsley similarly). Hicks: "useful additions to the continental plots against Henry VII". The Papal Penitentiary grant to "Richard, duke of York" of 21 May 1494 (Barnfield, 7 Feb 2025, from Clarke & Zutshi's calendar) is the same kind of evidence: recognition of a style, not proof of identity. (d) **Method ("cold case", "witness statements", "proof of life").** Streeter: police frameworks are unsuited when "insufficient biographical knowledge exists to construct meaningful profiles of the boys" and Langley applies asymmetrical scepticism to hostile and friendly sources. Craven and Inside History: one-sided presentation and lack of an impartial expert. Hoitink: unverified references. Langley's own defence (June 2024) is that the conclusions come from "a modern police missing person investigation methodology … (and not through a traditional historical research method)", which critics regard as conceding the point. Worsley locates the whole enterprise in the tradition of Josephine Tey's *The Daughter of Time* (1951). --- ## 4. The bones in the Westminster Abbey urn ### 4.1 Discovery and interment (Verified: Westminster Abbey page; Richard III Society "The Bones in the Urn"; Hammond 1976) Bones of two children were found on 17 July 1674 about ten feet down, under the foundations of a staircase against the south face of the White Tower, during demolition; John Knight, Charles II's principal surgeon, recorded that they were placed in an urn "on the presumption" they were Edward V and Richard of York. They were thrown on a rubbish heap before being retrieved, and some were "purloined". A warrant of 18 Feb 1675 ordered a marble urn (designed by Wren) to be "intered in Henry ye 7th chappell in such convenient place as the Deane of Westminster shall appoynt"; it was erected in 1678 in the north aisle of Henry VII's chapel, with a Latin inscription stating the boys were "stifled with pillows" and "privately and meanly buried" and found "after 191 years in the rubbish of the stairs". Earlier finds of children's bones at the Tower (c.1603–13, in a walled-up room) had also been proclaimed the princes (Hammond; Hughes). ### 4.2 Tanner and Wright, 1933 (Verified via Hammond 1976 and the Abbey/Society pages) The urn was opened 6 July 1933 and re-sealed 11 July. L. E. Tanner and W. Wright, "Recent investigations regarding the fate of the Princes in the Tower", *Archaeologia* 84 (1935), pp. 1–26 (with dental input from George Northcroft). They found partial skeletons of two children, two skulls (the smaller damaged), mixed with animal bones and rusty nails; estimated the elder at 12–13 and the younger at 9–11 from epiphyses and tooth eruption; asserted consanguinity (Wormian bones, hypodontia); read a red stain on the elder skull as suffusion from suffocation; and identified "extensive, chronic" osteomyelitis of the elder's lower jaw spreading to the temporo-mandibular joints. Tanner later admitted an "over-riding presumption throughout" that these were the princes; the report calls them "Edward" and "Richard" from its seventh paragraph and never attempts sex determination. ### 4.3 The critiques (Verified: P. W. Hammond, "The Bones of the Princes in Westminster Abbey", *The Ricardian* 4, no. 52 (March 1976), pp. 22–25 — read from the Society's PDF; Society page; LAMAS/ADS records) - Dr R. H. G. Lyne-Pirkis (talk to the Society, 1963) and P. M. Kendall's medical consultants (*Richard III*, 1955, appendix, pp. 497–8): growth rates vary far more than Wright allowed; the unfused axis/odontoid might indicate a much younger child; the dental evidence "is now thought to show that the elder child was probably not even 12… and could well have been only 9"; conversely osteomyelitis and a vitamin-poor diet could retard growth so that "even accepting Professor Wright's original estimate this would make him between 14 and 16". Hammond's verdict: "it is really impossible to tell the age of either child to within less than 5 years or so." - Sex: "Professor Wright admits that the skeletons are of pre-pubertal age, but omits to say that it is virtually impossible to prove the sex of such skeletons." (Hammond 1976; repeated by the Society and by Pollard.) - The stain: "almost certainly not due to suffocation since the suffusion would not register on the bone"; Philip Lindsay (*On Some Bones in Westminster Abbey*, 1934) suggested rust from the nails. - Dating: no method in 1933; even radiocarbon would give ±100 years; the bones "could in reality date from any time between the foundation of the Tower in the eleventh century up to about 1600". The ten-foot depth is itself an argument against a hasty 1483 burial (Society page; Olga Hughes, Nerdalicious, 23 Mar 2015). - P. W. Hammond and W. J. White, "The Sons of Edward IV: a re-examination of the evidence on their deaths and on the bones in Westminster Abbey", in *Richard III: Loyalty, Lordship and Law*, ed. P. W. Hammond (1986) — the fullest critique (Secondary; cited on the Society page; title from memory, Unverified). - Theya Molleson, "Anne Mowbray and the Princes in the Tower: a study in identity", *London Archaeologist* 5, no. 10 (1987), pp. 258–262 (Verified as a citation via ADS/LAMAS): re-examined the 1933 data after the 1964–5 study of Anne Mowbray (Richard of York's child-bride, d. 1481; coffin found at Stepney Dec 1964, reburied in Westminster Abbey 1965) and found the two Tower juveniles "about the right age to be the two princes", sharing with Anne Mowbray a congenital absence of second molars — a trait Ricardian critics note is too common to prove kinship. No DNA work has been done on Anne Mowbray. - Helen Maurer, two-part discussion, *The Ricardian*, Dec 1990 and Mar 1991 (Secondary). - Hammond's conclusion (1976), still the Society's line: identification "non-proven". - Michael Hicks, in the Society's page's summary and in his own work, has repeatedly stated that the 1933 examination proves nothing either way (Unverified as to exact wording). ### 4.4 Positions of the Abbey and the Crown (all Verified unless stated) - 1993 (BBC and the Society) and 1995 (Channel 4) requests for radiocarbon and DNA testing were refused by Dean Michael Mayne, who was "pressed very hard to agree"; Buckingham Palace and the Home Secretary (Michael Howard) were consulted and were "in full agreement" that the matter should not be reopened (Elizabeth St John, Substack 8 Mar 2026, and her website; the primary for this — apparently the Dean's own later account — was not opened: Secondary). - 2012–13: the Dean of Westminster (John Hall) to *The Guardian*, 6 Feb 2013: "If the result is positive, the remains of the two princes are placed back in Sir Christopher Wren's urn. But what if they are negative: what do we do with the remains? Keep them in the urn in the royal chapels, knowing they are bogus, or re-bury them elsewhere?" (Secondary via Olga Hughes, Nerdalicious, 23 Mar 2015). A 2013 UK e-petition for DNA testing was closed early (Wikipedia, citing the petition page). The Abbey's stated grounds have included precedent (a flood of royal disinterment requests) and that a positive result "could not… differentiate between Richard III or Henry VII – or another – being the guilty party" (thewarsoftheroses.co.uk; Secondary). - 2018: after the identification of the mtDNA line, a spokesperson said there would be "no change in policy on the remains: for the foreseeable future" (thewarsoftheroses.co.uk; the genealogist Anthony Adolph likewise: "the Westminster Abbey authorities are not planning to allow such a DNA test in the foreseeable future"). Elizabeth II "never granted the approval required" (Wikipedia, citing *The Guardian* 15 Sep 2012). - Charles III: *The Telegraph*, 14 Oct 2022 (Victoria Ward), reported Tracy Borman saying the King held "a very different view"; the Isle of Wight *County Press* (Oct 2022) quoted her that the King "is on record saying he would be interested in solving the royal mystery". Borman then told *Retrospect* (Edinburgh student journal, 6 Nov 2022) she had been misquoted: "it had been rumoured that when Charles was Prince of Wales, he had indicated that he may give permission", and there was no formal campaign. A later report has her saying the remains are "probably… best left to rest in peace. But I can't help being intrigued" (Unverified snippet). **No statement by Charles III, by the present Dean (David Hoyle), by the Dean and Chapter, or by the Church of England changing the policy was found for 2022–2026.** A syndicated piece of 5 Sep 2026 still says "no permission has been granted by the reigning monarch or Westminster Abbey" (britbrief.co.uk; low-quality source but consistent with everything else), and Elizabeth St John's 8 Mar 2026 essay is titled "The Urn in Westminster Abbey Nobody Will Open". The Abbey's own web page describes the 1933 opening and offers no policy statement. - Langley's project has repeatedly called for testing; the Richard III Society is ambivalent (its "Bones in the Urn" author warns that identifying Richard III by DNA "was problematic enough, even with his grave being pristine and undisturbed"). ### 4.5 DNA reference samples (Verified: University of Essex press release, 11 Jul 2018) John Ashdown-Hill (d. May 2018) and Glen Moran (Newman University) traced an all-female-line descendant of the princes' maternal grandmother Jacquetta of Luxembourg, through their aunt Margaret Woodville: the opera singer Elizabeth Roberts, "first cousin 16 times removed", published in Ashdown-Hill, *The Mythology of the 'Princes in the Tower'* (Amberley, July 2018). The haplogroup has not been published in the sources I saw. Turi King has spoken about the case (podcast; documentary appearance) but I found no quotation from her on testing the urn. There is no radiocarbon date, no sex determination and no DNA result for the urn bones as of September 2026. --- ## 5. Genuinely new evidence and arguments, 2023–2026 **Traditionalist side.** - Thornton 2024 (chain), 2023/24 (itinerary), 2025/26 (Forrest legacy) — §2. Also Thornton's earlier 2021 article, which set the agenda. - Hicks 2024, *Historical Research* — §3. - Chris Phillips 2024 on Simnel's claimed identity — §3 (the most thorough source-by-source rebuttal of the Edward V = Simnel thesis; unpublished paper, but co-written with DRG members). - J. L. Laynesmith, "The Sons of Edward IV: the evidence on their deaths updated" (2025 chapter, *Loyalty Binds Me*) — not read. - Joanne Paul, *Thomas More: A Life* (Penguin, May 2025) — a major new More biography; I could not verify how it treats the *History* or Thornton's thesis (reviews I read do not mention it). Unverified. - Channel 5, *Princes in the Tower: A Damning Discovery* (3 Dec 2024). **Revisionist / Ricardian side.** - The Missing Princes Project's 2024 finds (announced in the June 2025 *Ricardian Bulletin*, pp. 44–49, and ch. 21 of the 2025 edition; Verified via Langley's site): at Nuremberg (Staatsarchiv; Germanisches Nationalmuseum; Wolkenstein-Rodenegg archive) three charters and four letters — Richard of England's charters to Veit von Wolkenstein (4 Apr 1494) and Michael von Wolkenstein (5 Apr 1494), his letter and charter to Ludwig Wolfgang Tetzel (15 and 20 Nov 1496) with a seal bearing the Prince of Wales's ostrich feathers, James IV's letters to Tetzel (31 Jul and 20 Oct 1496) and Henry VII's letter to Tetzel (16 Nov 1501). Researchers: Nathalie Nijman-Bliekendaal with Erik Verroken. - August 2025: a household/attendance record of the Feast of the Ascension at Windsor, 20 May 1479, placing Irish lords and clergy (Kildare, Keating, Walton, FitzSimons, etc.) with the young Edward V — used to argue that the Irish who crowned the Dublin king in May 1487 had personally known Edward (Denise M. Testa; Langley site). - Marie Barnfield (Society Research Committee), "A Papal Grant to 'Richard, Duke of York' in 1494", 7 Feb 2025: Papal Penitentiary register, 21 May 1494, licence for a portable altar and *littere confessionales* to "the nobleman Richard, duke of York" (from Clarke & Zutshi's calendar). - Annette Carson, *Domenico Mancini: de occupatione regni Anglie* (Troubador, 2021, £10) — a new translation replacing Armstrong's 1936 *Usurpation*, with a commentary arguing Mancini was "sadly inaccurate and ill-informed" on the protectorate (Verified from the Worcestershire Branch media release). Ricardian. - No reissue of Pronay & Cox, *The Crowland Chronicle Continuations 1459–1486* (1986; Sutton reprint 1993) was found. - Project status: Langley's site says the project "is now concluded" after ten years and the 2025 edition is its final report; the Society's Dec 2024 statement promised "more archival discoveries"; I found **no** formal "Phase 2" announcement, no new find dated 2026, and no new broadcast — only a lecture, "The Princes in the Tower: the New Evidence", 30 Apr 2026, and Langley's 8 Sep 2026 news item on a plaque to Edward of Middleham. A 2025 documentary is *not* in evidence beyond the PBS re-version. **Neutral/other.** Gordon McKelvie (2022) on rumour; the Society's "Bones in the Urn" page (undated, post-2015); Jo Romero (2024); the Society's *Ricardian* 34 (2024) and 35 (2025) contents are members-only and could not be checked for articles on the finds. --- ## 6. The scholarly consensus, and the alternatives **Standard academic accounts (Unverified as to exact wording unless stated; positions are well known).** - Charles Ross, *Richard III* (Yale English Monarchs, 1981): Richard "remains the most likely candidate by far" to have ordered the deaths (a widely repeated formulation; Unverified quotation); he treats Elizabeth Woodville's 1484 reconciliation as "a practical acceptance of her own situation" (Ross, pp. 100–101, as summarised by Helen Maurer — Secondary). - Rosemary Horrox, *Richard III: A Study of Service* (1989): works from the premise that the princes were dead by the autumn of 1483 and that belief in their deaths drove the October rebellion; treats Richard as responsible (Unverified wording). - Michael Hicks, *Richard III* (2000; rev. 2003; *Richard III: The Self-Made King*, Yale 2019), and *Edward V: The Prince in the Tower* (2003): Richard the most likely culprit; the rescue attempt of summer 1483 and Richard's failure to produce the boys are decisive (Wikipedia cites Hicks 2003, pp. 209–10, 223–4; Hicks 2003 pp. 186–9 on Vergil/More possibly sharing a confession text is cited by Thornton). - A. J. Pollard, *Richard III and the Princes in the Tower* (1991): on "the balance of probabilities" Richard is guilty (p. 135 cited by Wikipedia); Henry VII is "the only plausible alternative", but Markham's 1486 scenario is "highly speculative" and Henry's silence reflects "political calculation rather than personal guilt"; other suspects: "None deserve serious consideration" (Secondary via Wikipedia's footnotes). - Sean Cunningham, *Richard III: A Royal Enigma* (TNA, 2003): Richard's responsibility the most probable reading, while stressing the absence of proof (Unverified). - David Horspool, *Richard III: A Ruler and his Reputation* (2015) and Chris Skidmore, *Richard III: Brother, Protector, King* (2017): both conclude Richard was most probably responsible, Skidmore emphasising that the boys were last seen in his custody and that he never produced them (Unverified wording; Wikipedia's summary agrees for Horspool and Hicks). - Also on record for Richard's guilt: David Starkey; Helen Castor (*She-Wolves*, 2010, p. 402, via Wikipedia); Alison Weir (*The Princes in the Tower*, 1992); Thomas Penn (*The Brothers York*, 2019, Unverified); Lucy Worsley (2025, Verified); Dan Jones (2022: "the person who benefited most from their disappearance was Richard III", Verified). McKelvie (2022): "the overwhelming consensus among historians is that Richard probably had some hand in the killing." **Alternative theories at scholarly or semi-scholarly level.** - *Buckingham*: Paul Murray Kendall, *Richard III* (1955), thought Buckingham "the likeliest suspect" among the alternatives; Kendall's working hypothesis, quoted by Maurer: "It is very possible that King Richard is guilty of the crime. If he is innocent, then it is well-nigh inevitable that either King Henry VII or Henry Stafford, second Duke of Buckingham, is guilty." Standard objections: Buckingham would have needed Richard's authority for Tower access, and Richard never blamed him after his execution (Cheetham 1972; Wikipedia summary). - *Henry VII*: Clements Markham (*Richard III: His Life and Character*, 1906) placed the murders in June–July 1486; Bertram Fields, *Royal Blood* (1998/2000), a lawyer's brief for reasonable doubt; Pollard and Jeremy Potter (*Good King Richard?*, 1983) both note there is "no real evidence" against Henry. Langley's 2023 book "points to another suspect for their eventual deaths" (Henry VII) for the boys' later fates. - *Margaret Beaufort*: Maurer's "fourth suspect" (1983/2022), now mainly in fiction; no academic support. - *Natural death/illness*: the osteomyelitis of the elder skull (if the bones are Edward's) and Mancini's report of Dr Argentine's account of Edward's melancholy have been used, chiefly by Ricardians, to argue Edward V may have died naturally; no academic proponent found. - *Survival*: David Baldwin, *The Lost Prince* (2007); Matthew Lewis, *The Survival of the Princes in the Tower* (2017); John Ashdown-Hill, *The Mythology of the 'Princes in the Tower'* (2018) and *The Dublin King* (2015: the Dublin king was Warwick, not Edward V — note the disagreement within the Ricardian camp); Langley 2023/2025. - *Elizabeth Woodville's 1484 reconciliation* (her 1 March 1484 agreement to leave sanctuary with her daughters under Richard's sworn guarantee) is the standard Ricardian counter-argument (she would not have entrusted her daughters to her sons' murderer); the traditional reply (Ross; Pollard) is that she had no alternative and that the deal itself implies she believed her sons were beyond rescue. *Her 1487 retirement to Bermondsey* is read by Ricardians (following Vergil's hint) as punishment for complicity in the Simnel rising — implying she knew a son was alive — and by traditionalists as a financial settlement/retirement with no such implication (Pollard 1991; Laynesmith 2023 chapter on Elizabeth Woodville, Secondary). Neither reading has changed since 2017. --- ## (a) Where the academic debate stands, September 2026 — ten lines 1. The academic consensus is unchanged: Richard III is judged the most probable author of his nephews' deaths in 1483, on circumstantial grounds (custody, motive, failure to produce them, contemporary rumour), with an explicit admission that proof "beyond reasonable doubt" is impossible (McKelvie 2022; Thornton 2024). 2. Thornton's three articles (2021, 2023/24, 2024) have shifted the argument from *whether* More can be trusted to *how* More got his detail: Forest's sons and Dighton were alive and in More's orbit; Henry VII and his queen were at the Tower on 27 Apr–2 May 1502; the Capells (Tyrell's in-laws and John More's clients) owned "yonge kyng Edwarde the vth's" chain by 1516. 3. Every one of Thornton's findings is, by his own account, probabilistic ("not a 'smoking gun'"); the strongest criticism (Society Research Committee; Soberton) is that the chain reference was in print since 1826 and that no source links it to Tyrell, so the link is "conjecture". 4. Langley's project produced authentic, previously unexploited continental documents; no academic reviewer disputes their authenticity, and all dispute their meaning. 5. The only peer-reviewed assessment (Hicks, *Historical Research* 2024) finds they "do not prove that either prince lived beyond the reign of Richard III"; three of Langley's own Dutch researchers said in June 2024 that the finds "do not constitute irrefutable proof". 6. The Simnel = Edward V thesis has been most thoroughly examined by Chris Phillips (2024, with DRG members) and found contrary to "the overwhelming weight of contemporary and nearly contemporary evidence"; the Lille receipt is explained as a plausible clerical error. 7. The Warbeck = Richard of York thesis rests on documents that show what the claimant and his patrons asserted; critics regard that as circular, Ricardians as cumulative "proof of life". No scholar has produced a document that settles it either way. 8. Langley's method — police "cold case" analysis, "witness statements", "proof of life" — is itself the main target of academic and serious-press criticism; Langley has conceded the method is "not… a traditional historical research method". 9. The Westminster Abbey urn remains unopened: the 1933 examination is agreed to be inconclusive on age, sex, date and kinship; a maternal-line mtDNA comparator (Elizabeth Roberts) has existed since 2018; Elizabeth II refused, Charles III's rumoured sympathy has produced no decision, and neither the Dean and Chapter nor the Church of England has changed policy as of 2026. 10. Net effect since 2017: the traditionalist case has gained circumstantial texture (Thornton) and the survivalist case has gained documents but not proof (Langley); the professional consensus has, if anything, hardened, while public opinion — helped by Channel 4, the AIB award and *The Times* leader of May 2025 — has moved the other way. ## (b) What I could not find or verify - Thornton's 2021 article does **not** contain a "Tyrell's sons at court" argument; if that claim exists in print, it is not in Thornton 2021, 2023/24 or 2024 (all read in full). The "Tyrell in-law" link is the 2024 chain article via the Capells and John More. - Full text of Hicks 2024 (*Historical Research*) — paywalled; abstract only. Full text of Thornton's *Northern History* 2025/26 article — Taylor & Francis blocked; abstract via index only. - Annette Carson's own written response to Thornton 2021; the June 2021 Laynesmith *Bulletin* article; the June 2024 and March 2025 *Ricardian Bulletin* items (Hicks, DRG statement, Langley's reply, Lewis on the chain) — all reached only through quoting intermediaries. *The Ricardian* vols 31–36 (2021–26) contents — members-only. - Any review of Langley 2023 by Pollard, Horrox, Gunn, Guy, Castor, Skidmore, Horspool, Weir, M. K. Jones, Foyle, Lipscomb, Cunningham or Joanne Paul; any Dutch or Belgian academic review of the Gelderland/Lille/Dendermonde interpretations (only the genealogist Hoitink); Bart Lambert's, Lähnemann's, Ramirez's or Dunning's own published views (Ramirez's "too good to be true" is an unverified snippet). - The full TLS, *Literary Review*, *Guardian*, *Times* (18 Nov 2023 review; 23 May 2025 leader) and *History Today* / *History Extra* treatments — those domains are blocked and paywalled; the *Guardian* 6 Feb 2013 Dean Hall article is cited only through Nerdalicious/Hughes. - The primary source for the 1993–95 refusals (Dean Mayne; Palace; Howard) and for the 2018 "no change in policy" statement; any statement by Dean David Hoyle or by Charles III; Turi King's own words on the urn; the Elizabeth Roberts haplogroup. - Exact wording of the conclusions of Ross 1981, Horrox 1989, Cunningham 2003, Horspool 2015 and Skidmore 2017 (books not accessible; the Society's scanned reviews of Ross and Pollard are image-only PDFs). - The alleged Richard III Society "Research Officer" quotation about "a certain rashness of interpretation" in the project's document analysis appeared only in a search-engine summary and could not be traced to any page I read; treat as unattributed. - A "Phase 2" of the Missing Princes Project, or any archival find or broadcast dated 2026. --- ## Principal sources consulted (URLs as opened; all accessed 14 Sep 2026) - Thornton 2021 PDF (archived): https://web.archive.org/web/20210801182636id_/https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/1468-229X.13100 ; CrossRef: https://api.crossref.org/works/10.1111/1468-229X.13100 - Thornton 2024 PDF (archived): https://web.archive.org/web/20250716223009id_/https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/1468-229X.13430 ; HA page: https://www.history.org.uk/higher-ed/resource/11027/sir-william-capell-and-a-royal-chain-the-afterliv - Thornton, Historical Research 2023/24: https://academic.oup.com/histres/article/97/276/218/7429360 (archived copy read) - Thornton, Northern History 2025/26: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0078172X.2026.2623128 (blocked; CrossRef metadata) - Hicks 2024: https://academic.oup.com/histres/article/97/277/437/7696861 (abstract) - TNA press release 3 Dec 2024 (via wired-gov): https://www.wired-gov.net/wg/news.nsf/articles/Extraordinary+new+clue+about+the+Princes+in+the+Tower+found+at+The+National+Archives+03122024121500 - Huddersfield press release Nov 2024: https://www.hud.ac.uk/news/2024/november/richard-iii-princes-in-the-tower-documentary/ - Medievalists.net 6 Dec 2024: https://www.medievalists.net/2024/12/chain-linked-to-prince-edward-v-found-in-16th-century-will/ ; Feb 2021: https://www.medievalists.net/2021/02/new-study-strengthens-claims-richard-iii-murdered-the-princes-in-the-tower/ - Smithsonian 4 Feb 2021: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/did-richard-iii-order-deaths-his-nephews-they-slept-tower-london-180976930/ - History journal blog 3 Feb 2021: https://historyjournal.org.uk/2021/02/03/richard-iii-the-princes-in-the-tower-and-thomas-more-answers-to-the-mystery/ - The Conversation (Thornton 2021): https://theconversation.com/princes-in-the-tower-how-i-established-a-direct-link-between-richard-iii-and-the-two-murders-159836 ; (McKelvie 2022): https://theconversation.com/richard-iiis-reign-was-dogged-by-more-rumours-than-just-the-princes-in-the-tower-174502 - Richard III Society: statement Dec 2024 https://richardiii.net/society-statement-on-upcoming-princes-programme/ ; Research Committee 10 Dec 2024 https://riiiresearch.blogspot.com/2024/12/the-princes-in-tower-debatable-discovery.html ; 11 Feb 2021 https://riiiresearch.blogspot.com/2021/02/miles-forest-and-fate-of-missing-princes.html ; papal grant 7 Feb 2025 https://riiiresearch.blogspot.com/2025/01/a-papal-grant-to-richard-duke-of-york.html ; bones page https://richardiii.net/richard-iii-his-world/reputation/the-bones-in-the-urn-from-the-tower-to-the-abbey/ ; Hammond 1976 PDF https://richardiii.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/04-52-The-Bones-of-the-Princes-in-Westminster-Abbey.pdf ; FAQ https://richardiii.net/faqs/the-princes-in-the-tower/ ; news archives 2023/2024 - Langley: https://revealingrichardiii.com/pdfs/TYRELL'S_CONFESSION-FACT_OR_FICTION_Bulletin_June_2021,pp_44-53_LANGLEY.pdf ; https://www.revealingrichardiii.com/solved.html ; https://philippalangley.co.uk/news.html ; https://thehistorypress.co.uk/article/solving-the-mystery-of-the-princes-in-the-tower/ - Phillips 2024: http://www.medievalgenealogy.org.uk/families/LambertSimnel.pdf - Reviews: Royal History Geeks (Dec 2023; 21 Dec 2023); Spectator 22 Nov 2023; Dan Jones Substack 17 Nov 2023 and 14 Mar 2022; Lucy Worsley Substack 16 Jan 2025; Aspects of History (Pilling); Inside History 28 Nov 2023; Herstory Project 31 Mar 2024; dutchgenealogy.nl 24 Nov 2023; Love British History 16 Feb 2024; Historical Novel Society Feb 2024; Fairtheewell 4 Dec 2023; Clas Merdin 31 Jan 2025; The Tudors Substack (Soberton) 3 Dec 2024; sparkypus 6 Mar 2024 and 11 Apr 2025; Supremacy and Survival 19 Feb 2025; thewarsoftheroses.co.uk (Moorhouse) and its DNA page; Renaissance English History Podcast (Amin) 13 Apr 2025; Nathen Amin Substack - Bones/DNA: Westminster Abbey https://www.westminster-abbey.org/abbey-commemorations/royals/edward-v-richard-duke-of-york ; University of Essex 11 Jul 2018 ; LAMAS Anne Mowbray page ; Retrospect Journal 6 Nov 2022 ; Isle of Wight County Press (Oct 2022) ; Nerdalicious 23 Mar 2015 ; Elizabeth St John Substack 8 Mar 2026 ; anthonyadolph.co.uk ; britbrief.co.uk 5 Sep 2026 ; Wikipedia wikitext for "Princes in the Tower" and "Philippa Langley" (for footnoted citations only) - Carson Mancini media release: https://www.richardiiiworcs.co.uk/mancinimediarelease.pdf ; Worcestershire Branch Q&A: https://www.richardiiiworcs.co.uk/questionanswers.html - Laynesmith publications: https://sites.google.com/site/jlaynesmith/publications