Richard Duke of Gloucester's policy had been developing fast since the day he took possession of the young king at Stony Stratford. The Queen's party were all in prison--many of them awaiting execution. Shakespeare has vividly described how Richard ridded himself of Lord Hastings,[41] the late king's favorite adviser, who was the only remaining check on his plans. After Hastings' execution the Protector declared that Edward the Fourth's marriage was invalid, and that his children could not therefore succeed to the crown. After a faint show of reluctance he allowed himself to be proclaimed king, under the title of Richard the Third, and was crowned at Westminster on the sixth of July.
Every one knows the tragic end to the story. While the little boys lived their uncle's throne was insecure. They were still in the Tower. Rivers their uncle was beheaded; so were their half-brother Grey and many more of their mother's kinsmen and friends. A mystery must always hang over this dreadful deed. Whether by Richard's direct order, or simply in accordance with his known but half-expressed wishes, the two children suddenly disappeared--murdered, as it was alleged, by their uncle. Sir James Tyrell, when tried for high treason in Henry the Seventh's reign, only eight years after, confessed to the murder. And it was commonly supposed that the boys were "buried in a great heap of rubbish near the footstairs of their lodging; where is now the raised terrace."[42] But the priest of the Tower having died shortly after, "left the world in dark as to the place."
For nearly two hundred years nothing more was known. In Charles the Second's reign, however, orders were given to rebuild some offices in the Tower. In taking away the stairs going from the King's Lodging into the Chapel of the White Tower, the workmen found a wooden chest buried ten feet deep in the ground, which contained the bones of two boys, about eleven and thirteen years of age. Charles the Second hearing of this discovery ordered the bones to be carefully collected and put in a marble urn, which he placed in Westminster Abbey, with an inscription in Latin of which the following is a translation:
Here lie The Reliques of Edward the Fifth King of _England_, and Richard, Duke of York. These brothers being confined in the Tower, and there stifled with Pillows, Were privately and meanly buried, By order of Their perfidious Uncle _Richard_ the usurper; Whose bones, long enquired after and wished for, After two hundred and one years In the Rubbish of the Stairs (i. e. those lately leading to the Chapel of the _White Tower_) Were on the 17th day of _July_, 1674, by undoubted Proofs discovered, Being buried deep in that Place. Charles the Second, a most compassionate Prince, pitying their severe fate, Ordered these unhappy Princes to be laid Amongst the monuments of their Predecessors, _Anno Dom_ 1678, in the 30th year of his Reign.