Edward And Richard Plantagenet, The Boys Who Were Murdered In The Tower

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Title:     Edward And Richard Plantagenet, The Boys Who Were Murdered In The Tower
Author: Talbot Baines Reed [More Titles by Reed]

A horseman stood at the gate of the Tower of London, and demanded entrance in the name of the king, Richard III.

On hearing the summons, and the authority claimed by the stranger, the governor, Sir Thomas Brackenbury, directed that he should be admitted, and deliver his message.

"Read this," said the man, handing a missive sealed with the royal seal.

Sir Thomas read the document hastily, and as he read his face grew troubled. For a long time he was silent; then addressing the king's messenger, he said--

"Know you the contents of this letter?"

"How should I know?" replied the other evasively.

"The king directs me here," said Sir Thomas, "to do a deed horrible and unworthy of a man. He demands that I should rid him of the two lads now lying in this Tower in my custody."

"And what of that?" said the king's messenger. "Is it not necessary to the country's peace? And will _you_, Sir Thomas, render so base an ingratitude for the favours you have received at the king's hands by refusing him this service?"

"Not even with the sanction of a king will Thomas Brackenbury hire himself out as a butcher. My office and all I have," he added, "I hold at His Majesty's pleasure. He may take them from me if he will, but my hands shall at least stay free from innocent blood!"

With that he bade the messenger return to his master and deliver his reply.

When Richard, away in Gloucestershire, heard of the refusal of the Governor of the Tower to execute his commands, he was very wroth, and vowed he would yet carry out his cruel purpose with regard to his two helpless nephews.

These two boys, the sons of Edward the Fourth, were the principal obstacles to Richard's undisturbed possession of the throne he had usurped. The elder of them, a boy of thirteen, had already been crowned as Edward the Fifth, but he was a king in name only. Scarcely had the coronation taken place when his bad uncle, under the pretence of offering his protection, got him into his power, and shut him up, with his young brother Richard, in the Tower, while he himself plotted for the crown to which he had neither right nor title.

How he succeeded in his evil schemes history has recorded.

By dint of falsehood and cunning he contrived to make himself acknowledged king by an unwilling people; and then, when the height of his ambition had been attained, he could not rest till those whom he had so shamefully robbed of their inheritance were out of his path.

Therefore it was he sent his messenger to Sir Robert Brackenbury.

Foiled in his design of making this officer the instrument of his base scheme, he summoned to his presence Sir James Tyrrel, a man of reckless character, ready for whatever might bring him profit or preferment; and to him he confided his wishes.

That same day Tyrrel started for London, armed with a warrant entrusting him with the Governorship of the Tower for one day, during which Sir Robert Brackenbury was to hand over the fortress and all it contained to his keeping.

The brave knight had nothing for it but to obey this order, though he well knew its meaning, and could foretell only too readily its result.

In a lofty room of that gloomy fortress, that same summer evening, the two hapless brothers were sitting, little dreaming of the fate so nearly approaching.

The young king had indeed for some time past seemed to entertain a vague foreboding that he would never again breathe the free air outside his prison. He had grown melancholy, and the buoyant spirits of youth had given place to a listlessness and heaviness strangely out of keeping with his tender years. He cared neither for talk nor exercise, and neglected both food and dress. His brother, two years younger than himself, was of a more hopeful demeanour, perhaps realising less fully the hardships and dangers of their present imprisonment. As they sat this evening in their lonely chamber, he tried to rally his elder brother from his melancholy.

"Look not so black, brother; we shall soon be free. Why should we give up hope?"

The young king answered nothing, and apparently did not heed his brother's words.

"Nay," persisted the latter, "should we not be glad our lives are spared us, and that our imprisonment is made easy by the care of good Sir Robert, our governor?"

Still Edward remained absorbed in his own gloomy reflections, and the younger lad, thus foiled in his efforts at cheerfulness, became silent too, and sad, and so continued till a warder entered their chamber with food, and remained to attend them to bed.

They tasted little that evening, for the shadow of what was to come seemed already to have crept over their spirits.

"Will Sir Robert come to see us, as is his wont, before we retire to rest?" inquired Richard of the warder.

"Sir Robert is not now Governor of the Tower," curtly replied the man.

Now indeed they felt themselves utterly friendless, and as they crept to their bed they clung one to the other, in all the loneliness of despair.

Then the warder took his leave, and they heard the key turn in the lock behind him, and counted his footsteps as he descended the stairs.

Presently sleep mercifully fell upon their weary spirits, and closed their weeping eyes with her gentle touch.

At dead of night three men stole up the winding staircase that led to their chamber, armed, and carrying a light. The leader of these was Sir James Tyrrel, and his evil-looking companions were the men he had hired to carry out the cruel order of the king. The key turned in the door, and they entered the apartment.

It was a sight to touch any heart less hard than those of the three villains who now witnessed it, to see those two innocent boys sleeping peacefully in each other's arms, dreaming perhaps of liberty, and forgetting the sorrow which had left its traces even yet on their closed eyes. But to Tyrrel and his two assassins, Forest and Deighton, the spectacle suggested neither pity nor remorse.

At a signal from Tyrrel, who remained outside the room while the deed was being done, the ruffians snatched the pillows from under the heads of the sleepers, and ere they could either resist or cry out the poor lads were stifled beneath their own bedclothes, and so perished.

Then these two murderers called to Tyrrel to enter and look on their work, and bear witness that the king's command had been faithfully executed.

The cup of Richard's wickedness was now full. He concealed for some time the fate of his two victims, and few people knew what had become of their rightful king and his brother. But the vengeance of Heaven fell on the cruel uncle speedily and terribly. His own favourite son died, his family turned against him, his people rebelled: the kingdom so evilly gained was taken from him, and he himself, after months of remorse, and fear, and gathering misfortunes, was slain in battle, lamented by none, and hated by all.

Two centuries later, in the reign of King Charles the Second, some workmen, digging in the Tower, discovered under the stairs leading to the chapel of the White Tower a box containing the bones of two children, corresponding to the ages of the murdered princes. These were found to be without doubt their remains, and in a quiet comer of Westminster Abbey, whither they were removed, a simple memorial now marks their last resting-place, and records the fact of their cruel murder by perhaps the worst king who ever sat upon the throne of England.

[The end]
Talbot Baines Reed's short story: Edward And Richard Plantagenet, The Boys Who Were Murdered In The Tower

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