found in a trunk under the staircase, which is an irregular burial but somewhat agrees with an account from 1513 of their burial in the Tower, and the 1933 examination of the exhumed remains produced appropriate age estimates and perhaps some evidence the deceased were related.
... Edward was born on November 2, 1470 and Richard on August 17, 1473 ... By many accounts, both of the princes were alive in the Tower of London at least until late summer of 1483 when the last sighting of them was reported ... http://georgielowery.hubpages.com/hub/The-Princes-In-The-Tower
... Edward was sent to Ludlow Castle, near the borders of Wales, for his education. On the death of his father on 9 April, 1483, the new King journeyed to his capital ... His progress was interrupted at Stony Stratford by his paternal uncle Richard, Duke of Gloucester ... King Edward V was lodged in the Tower of London ostensibly awaiting his coronation. There was nothing sinister detected in this at the time when the Tower was a royal residence as well as a prison. On the pretext that his brother required his company and the Queen was being foolish, the ten year old Richard, Duke of York, was removed from the safety of sanctuary at Westminster and taken to join him in the Tower. At a meeting of the council at the Tower on the thirteenth of June, ostensibly to discuss Edward V's coronation, Gloucester, the Lord Protector, had William, Lord Hastings suddenly and unexpectedly arrested on a charge of treason ... He was executed, without trial, the same day ... http://www.englishmonarchs.co.uk/plantagenet_13.htm
... Richard then had a tame priest, Dr. Shaw, preach a sermon at Paul's Cross, claiming that Edward IV had been precontracted in marriage to another woman before marrying Elizabeth Woodville. Based on this 'evidence' Richard called an assembly which in due course asked him to take the crown as the only legitimate heir of the House of York ... http://www.britainexpress.com/History/medieval/princes-tower.htm
... In July 1483, Richard, Duke of Gloucester was crowned Richard III ... http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/princes_in_tower.shtml
... After the coronation the two young princes in the Tower were never seen again. Mancini who left England a week after Richard's coronation said that before his departure the boys were no longer being seen by anyone. Croylands Chronicle claims the princes were still alive at this point. More, using his contacts at the Tower, wrote that the boys were kept in close confinement, and were only served by one man, named William Slaughter ... http://www.infobritain.co.uk/Edward_The_Fifth.htm
The yong kyng and his brother murthered
... Then al the other beeing remoued from them, thys Miles Forest and Iohn Dighton, about midnight (the sely children lying in their beddes) came into the chamber, and sodainly lapped them vp among the clothes so be wrapped them and entangled them keping down by force the fetherbed and pillowes hard vnto their mouthes, that within a while smored and stifled, theyr breath failing, thei gaue vp to god their innocent soules into the ioyes of heauen, leauing to the tormentors their bodyes dead in the bed.Whiche after that the wretches parceiued, first by the strugling with the paines of death, and after long lying styll, to be throughly dead: they laide their bodies naked out vppon the bed, and fetched sir Iames to see them. Which vpon the sight of them, caused those murtherers to burye them at the stayre foote, metely depe in the grounde vnder a great heape of stones ... http://www.r3.org/bookcase/more/moretext.html
... Henry Tudor, a descendent of the House of Lancaster, ... was the son of a commoner ... He justified the killing of Richard at Bosworth Field by declaring that he had been declared king the day before the battle, thereby classifying Richard as a traitor against the crown. He conveniently dispatched to the headsmans block Sir James Tyrell after extracting a confession from Tyrell that he and two others were the actual murderers of the princes ... One of Henrys first acts as king was to see that Parliament repealed Titulus Regius, the act by which Richard had used to declare Edward IVs children illegitimate. Now, his future queen, Elizabeth of York, sister of the princes, was legitimate and a proper wife for a king ... http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/notorious_murders/famous/the_princes/7.html
... A set of children’s bones was discovered in the tower between 1603 and 1614 while Sir Walter Raleigh and Lord Grey of Wilton were prisoners there ... The story says that bones were found in a walled up room, laid out on a table, and the finders assumed that these were the remains of the Princes in the Tower. The bones were "esteemed" to be from children 6 and 8 years of age, certainly too young to be the missing boys, if that estimate was correct. These bones were never medically examined and have never been seen since ... The Tower moat was drained between 1830 and 1840 and a great many bones were exposed ... http://medievalaccommodation.com/medieval-britain/LMB%20Pages/Pages-a-d/too_many_bones_in_the_tower.htm
In 1674, workmen ... demolishing a staircase ... leading to the chapel of the White Tower, made the discovery of the bones of two children in an elm chest, at around a depth of ten feet ... A number of accounts survive ..; the following ... was published in 1677:
"Upon Friday the ... day of July, An. 1674 ...in order to the rebuilding of the several Offices in the Tower, and to clear the White Tower of all contiguous buildings, digging down the stairs which led from the King's Lodgings, to the chapel in the said Tower, about ten foot in the ground were found the bones of two striplings in (as it seemed) a wooden chest, which upon the survey were found proportionable to ages of those two brothers viz. about thirteen and eleven years. The skull of one bring entire, the other broken, as were indeed many of the other bones, also the chest, by the violence of the labourers, who....cast the rubbish and them away together, wherefore they were caused to sift the rubbish and by that means preserved all the bones. The circumstances of the story being considered and the same often discoursed with Sir Thomas Chichley, Master of the Ordinance, by whose industry the new buildings were then in carrying on, and by whom the matter was reported to the King.''
... Charles II ... asked ... Sir Christopher Wren to design a white marble container and they were reverently placed ... at Westminster Abbey, close to the tomb of ... Elizabeth of York ...
http://historicallyobsessed.blogspot.com/2009/08/bloody-tower-and-lost-princes.html
... In 1933 the bones were exhumed and Lawrence Tanner and William Wright declared that as they belonged to children of the right ages, they must be those of the princes. Nowadays though, the study is rather doubtful and the results probably amount to little. In 1933 forensic science was very primitive, and could not determine the sex of the bones, the cause of death, the century of death, or even whether the owners of the bones were related. The method used to determine the age of the dead children was also unreliable ...
http://www.theinitialjourney.com/features/princesinthetower.html
... Professor Wright concluded that on the evidence of the ossification development of the bones of the vertebrae, he believed these were the bones of two children, the eldest aged twelve to thirteen and the younger nine to eleven ... They further stated that ... that congenital missing teeth and certain bilateral Wormian bones ... on both crania were evidence of consanguinity ...
http://www.englishmonarchs.co.uk/plantagenet_13.htm
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