Skeletons in the Tower

In 1674 workmen engaged by Charles II dismantling a staircase in the Tower of London discovered a wooden chest. Inside this chest were the skeletons of two children. These bones were thrown aside until it was realised they could potentially solve a great mystery. After an interval of about four years, during which some of the bones apparently went to the Ashmolean museum, the bones were interred at Westminster Abbey, in an urn stating that they were the remains of the sons of Edward IV.

In 1933 George V gave permission for the urn to be opened and the skeletons to be examined, to try to determine if the bones did indeed belong to the two missing princes. The examination was undertaken by Dr Lawrence Tanner, archivist at Westminster Abbey, and Professor W. Wright, a dental surgeon. The examination was carried out in the precincts of the Abbey, and their findings were published in Archaeologia in 1934. After the human bones were extracted from animal bones found in the urn, the doctors declared the skeletons to be of children aged twelve to thirteen and nine to eleven. This would correspond to the princes, as Edward would have been nearly twelve and Richard ten in 1483. However, neither the sex of the skeletons, the age of the bones, nor the cause of death could be determined. Through the dental remains there appeared to be some kind of blood relation between the two skeletons, but this could not be proved

Tanner and Wright declared the bones to be the remains of the princes. Sir Thomas More's account of their deaths had stated that the princes had been buried "at the stair foot, meetly deep under the ground." The doctors thought the find in this location was far too much a coincidence for the bones to be of any other children. This was a blow to the revisionists, as if these bones were the remains of the princes, they were certainly dead before August 1485, and therefore were probably murdered on Richard's order.

The find of the bones in the positions where More said they would be buried gives credence to his entire story. However, the information surrounding these bones is inconclusive. The Tower of London was founded by William the Conqueror, but the fortifications go back earlier. The Tower had been witness to many deaths and these bones could date from Roman times. Also, More states that the bodies were originally buried under the stairs, but were later removed by a priest and reburied in a more appropriate place, thus explaining how no one knew where they were buried. The chance find of two bodies under the stair, therefore would seem to prove More wrong rather than right. The burial of two bodies ten feet under a staircase seems a hard job for a priest to have accomplished on his own, without being seen by anyone.

It appears the only conclusive evidence the bones seem to provide is that two young children were murdered and buried under some stairs in the Tower at some time before 1674.


Princes in the Tower	Suspects