TRANSCRIPT
-In 2015, King Richard III of England was reburied with a royal ceremony in Leicester Cathedral.
Amateur historian Philippa Langley led the search that, against all odds, found the remains of the medieval king in a nearby parking lot... and rewrote history books.
Now, with the help of criminal barrister Rob Rinder... -This is too intriguing to ignore.
-...she believes she can finally crack one of the greatest unsolved mysteries in history.
-So dear of us being like Mulder and Scully of the medieval world.
-It's 1483.
Two young princes are murdered at the Tower of London on the orders of their uncle, King Richard III, later immortalized as one of Shakespeare's worst villains.
And this story has been established history for the last 500 years.
-Well, that is probably the darkest chapter in the tower's long history.
-But Philippa doesn't believe that's what actually happened.
-So, Rob, we're in the tower.
-It was only a matter of time for you, Philippa, let's face it.
-For years, Philippa has been trying to piece together what really happened to the princes in the tower.
Now she's taking Rob on a journey across Europe... -Wow!
-The elder of the princes in the tower, Edward, came here in 1487.
-...to look at astonishing new evidence... -Now comes the real treasure.
-Wow, wow, wow.
-This is a forgery.
It's a fake.
-...discovered by a team of helpers.
-I mean, this is history right here.
-What they found could change history forever.
-It is truly something.
This is a smoking-gun document.
♪♪ O0 C1 ♪♪ -For the last seven years, I've been investigating the story of the two princes.
Working with an army of researchers, we've made the most startling discoveries, which I believe prove what happened to the missing princes.
And it's a very different story to the one in most history books.
So, I'm going to see the criminal barrister Rob Rinder.
He's been very successfully involved in a number of high-profile murder cases.
He's spent decades assessing evidence in his professional life and he's also studied history at university.
I want to take him to see our findings firsthand so he can challenge them for himself.
I want to find out if I can convince a professional skeptic that I'm right.
-So, Philippa, as I understand it, your view is that we need to relook at the murder of the princes in the tower.
Is that the point?
-Yeah.
That is absolutely the point, and I've spent a number of years doing this.
I think very strongly that truth matters.
The project is called the Missing Princes Project.
-Right.
-In 2016, Philippa put out a call for volunteers willing to search local archives for evidence of the missing princes.
-I was inundated.
The finds that they've made have been extraordinary.
And if these finds are real, then they have the potential to rewrite history.
-That's quite a significant claim.
-I think the princes weren't murdered.
I think they actually survived King Richard's reign.
However, I haven't seen these discoveries.
I've been told what's in them.
I need a criminal forensic mind who can look at this material that I've got and evaluate it.
This is why I'm here.
I'd like you to come with me.
You would be seeing them fresh with me for the very first time.
-When you came in here... [ Laughs ] ...I thought you might be a bit of an activist, perhaps a crank, you know?
-Yeah.
-And forgive me if that sounds harsh.
I'm now sitting here listening to you and I'm thinking this is too intriguing to ignore.
[ Sighs ] So let's do it.
I think we should do it.
-Yes!
[ Both laugh ] When Philippa arrived, I had a strong sense of who killed the princes in the tower -- Richard III.
My next step is to start from the beginning.
I want to forget everything Philippa's told me and meet a serious historian that's going to tell me the established version of events.
-Rob is on his way to the Tower of London to speak with a medieval historian about the princes' story.
-So, I'm here to learn a little bit about the princes in the tower.
-Well, that is probably the darkest chapter in the tower's long history, and it's still, of course, the subject of intense debate today.
So, should we go and find out more?
The princes were the sons of King Edward IV, a very popular king.
But he died quite suddenly of a fever in 1483, and that plunged the country into uncertainty, because his sons were only aged 12 and 9, so the eldest of them still too young to rule.
So, on his deathbed, Edward IV appointed his brother, Richard of Gloucester, to be Lord Protector until his eldest son had come of age.
-So, their uncle brings the princes here for their protection.
What's going on that they will need to be protected?
-England has only just come out of what was known as the Wars of the Roses.
And, now, this was between two warring houses, the House of York and Lancaster.
And so the crown keeps changing hands.
And it has only recently become more stable under Edward IV, and now all of that is thrown into doubt.
-After 30 years of war between England's two most powerful families, the country needed stability.
-So, we're in what's known today as the "Bloody Tower."
Not long after being bought here, things took a dramatic turn, because those boys were declared illegitimate.
It was said that their father, Edward IV, was already married at the time that he married their mother, Elizabeth Woodville, which basically invalidated that marriage.
So now they're illegitimate and they have no right to the throne.
And shortly afterwards, on the 6th of July, their Uncle Richard is declared King Richard III.
-So, where did they go next?
-So, they went over there towards the White Tower, the oldest part of the tower, and it was also the most closely guarded.
So, we're here in the White Tower.
When they first arrived in the Tower of London, they were treated honorably.
They were seen playing in the gardens, shooting arrows.
Then, by the autumn of 1483, those boys were never seen again, and it was widely assumed at the time -- and has been ever since -- that they had been quietly murdered.
-So, what evidence do you have that they were murdered?
-So, this is an account written at the time by an Italian monk visiting London.
He was called Dominic Mancini.
So, he talks about those two princes "conducted into the more inward apartments of the tower itself and, day by day, came to be observed more rarely through lattices and windows."
-So, who else speaks about this?
-Well, somebody rather famous from the Tudor period is Thomas Moore, of course, a lawyer, statesman.
And we think about 50 years after the disappearance of the princes, Moore wrote his account.
-What does he actually say?
-So, Moore claims that Richard III ordered the murder of his nephews, and he names names.
James Tyrrell was a servant of Richard's.
He was the one who organized it and employed two henchmen really to carry out his dirty work.
Here, he describes in detail how the two murderers sort of crept in at midnight and smothered the boys with pillows hard into their mouths.
-What other evidence is there?
Any physical evidence, for instance, that the boys were murdered here?
-Well, there is, and it's very important.
It's a discovery that was made almost 200 years after the princes' disappearance.
-What was this discovery?
-Well, in 1674, King Charles II was on the throne, and he ordered the demolition of what was left of the old royal palace here.
The builders discovered, underneath a staircase, two skeletons.
And they were clearly skeletons of children, and the king was in no doubt he had found the missing princes.
And so those bones, those remains, were buried in Westminster Abbey and they remain there to this day.
-Scientists examined the bones in 1933 and concluded they were the remains of two children.
But their DNA has never been tested.
-So, you think those bones found in that box during the reign of Charles II are the princes in the tower?
-I think there's a very strong likelihood.
-Beyond reasonable doubt?
-[ Chuckles ] I think when it comes to the princes in the tower, there's always going to be doubt.
-Philippa believes the existing evidence of the princes' murders is unreliable.
In 1485, Henry VII defeated Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth.
Henry then went looking for the princes, because, if they were alive, they would be a threat to his crown.
But he was unable to find them.
Henry destroyed documents related to Richard's reign, but Philippa's team believes they have found new sources in Europe, where the princes had family.
Philippa and Rob are in France to look at the first big discovery.
-I love when you land in France.
It immediately looks French.
-Yeah, I totally get that.
-So dear of us being like Mulder and Scully of the medieval world.
[ Both laugh ] "Medieval X-Files," only without the aliens.
♪♪ So, you've bought me to Lille.
It's beautiful.
What's this got to do with the princes in the tower, Philippa?
-Well, I'm taking you to show you something very special.
-Philippa's team believes they've found some key evidence from 1487.
The princes had disappeared four years earlier, and it's the last year of the Wars of the Roses, when a huge force invades England.
The team has found documents that suggest who is behind the attack.
-I know a bit about what's coming, but I've not seen the real thing and I've been waiting for this for a long time, so... -Yeah.
-Yeah.
-When we found these documents, we can't believe what we read.
It was a completely shocking moment.
-Here it is.
-Wow.
-You seem to be very excited.
-Very excited to begin.
Wow.
Here it is.
-Gosh.
-Have a look, Rob.
Have a look, Philippa.
-This is incredible to see it for real, in li-- You know, I mean, this is history right here.
-It is.
-It's remarkable.
-It's more than 500 years old.
-I can obviously feel your excitement, both of you, but what am I looking at, Nathalie?
-Well, you're looking at a receipt from the year 1487.
It's for King Maximilian.
-Who's that?
-The king of the Holy Roman Empire at the time.
-King Maximilian was a powerful ruler.
As the leader of the Holy Roman Empire, he controlled a vast swath of central Europe.
[ Horse neighs ] -And this is a receipt for what?
-He ordered 400 long pikes.
And it was used by Maximilian's elite troops.
-Okay, so, why is this important?
-The receipt says, in medieval French, "These pikes were to be distributed among the German-Swiss pikemen who Madam the Dowager sent at that time to serve her nephew, son of King Edward, who was expelled from his dominion."
This document is really important because it's telling us that the force for 1487 that was going to invade England was for the son of King Edward IV, the elder prince in the tower.
-Have you ever seen any reference to, well, the boy being alive before, like this?
-No, no.
That's why it's so unique.
-"Madam the Dowager" -- now, who's that referring to?
-This is referring to Margaret of York, also known as Margaret of Burgundy, and she's the sister of Richard III and Edward IV.
-So she's the princes' aunt?
-She's the princes' aunt.
Hugely important in this story.
-Well, to be clear, it means that Margaret of Burgundy, who is Edward's aunt, is buying these weapons because she believes for sure that the boy is definitely her nephew.
-Yes.
-But the document doesn't actually name the elder prince.
It just says her "nephew."
So it could have been the younger prince, no?
-It must have been the elder boy, because he was about 16.
It says, "Expelled from his dominion," which suggests the elder brother, because he would have been crowned king.
Right description, her nephew, and also son of King Edward.
So you've got four pointers there to tell us who this was.
-How is it conclusive?
-It's not a chronicle.
It's not somebody writing afterwards.
It's just an accounting receipt.
-Right.
This isn't from a historian.
There's no bias here.
It's just ordering goods.
-Yeah.
-Yeah.
-And people don't order goods like this unless they're confident about who it's for.
-Yeah, absolutely.
-And that's why it's persuasive.
So, who signs or who gives their stamp on this document?
-It is signed by not just one secretary for Maximilian, but then he gets it double-checked by two other leading members of Maximilian's court.
So they are saying this is accurate.
-And the three men that work for Maximilian believed that this was the older of the boys.
-Yeah.
And it's very specific wording, and these are very high court officials.
♪♪ -I can really understand Nathalie and, of course, Philippa's excitement.
I mean, here, we've got a document which mentions one of the princes.
This document, on the face of it, is proof of life, and what's more, it's written by an accountant, not a historian, not any person that's got any bias.
That's the excitement.
On the other hand, who is this Margaret of Burgundy?
She's the aunt of the boys in the tower, who has reason to perhaps make this up.
What motivations might she have had to invade England?
-Margaret of Burgundy was one of the most powerful women in medieval Europe... and a relative of King Maximilian.
A passionate supporter of the Yorkist cause, she was a staunch enemy of Henry VII, the Tudor king who killed her brother, Richard III.
Philippa's team believes Margaret helped her nephew Edward, the elder prince in the tower, amass a fleet to invade England.
But, first, the fleet sailed to Ireland for an important ceremony.
-This is Christchurch Cathedral, the oldest medieval church in Dublin.
We're going to meet a historian who, like me, believes that the force-mustering here was led by Edward, the older prince.
-We've come here today because I think one of the most interesting and important events in late medieval history took place here on the 27th of May 1487, when King Edward was crowned.
-So, by "King Edward," do you mean one of the princes in the tower?
-My reading of lots of the evidence is that the elder of the princes in the tower, Edward, came here in 1487 to undergo a coronation.
-Matt, what's your evidence for believing that this was the coronation of the older of the princes in the tower?
-So, one of the people who's here for the coronation is a guy called John de la Pole.
He's the senior Yorkist heir in 1487.
When Richard III's son dies, he's considered next in line to the throne, so if you want someone to champion to replace Henry VII on the throne, John de la Pole is the man you would go to.
But he comes here to attend this coronation for Edward.
-This is a really important point that he's sitting here in a church, in a religious service, acknowledging this man -- boy -- as king.
He wouldn't have done that, is your point, unless he was solidly certain.
-No way.
-He believed not just intellectually, but spiritually that that was the real deal in front of him.
-Yeah.
-The English government's official record, published 40 years later, states that an imposter named Lambert Simnel was coronated.
-Traditional history tells us Lambert Simnel, a 10-year-old boy, was found in Oxford and bought here to Ireland and was proclaimed and crowned King Edward of England.
-Yeah.
Who's going to follow a boy who's just come from Oxford?
Who is going to fight and die for this boy?
-And, also, we've perhaps lost sight of just how important a medieval coronation was.
It was a huge political moment, but a huge spiritual moment.
Nobody would undertake that ceremony lightly, and no one would want to do that to a random boy from Oxford.
-So, what you believe happened here was that a 16-1/2-year-old was sitting here being crowned by, well, significant members of the Church and the Irish nobility and others who showed up in force, and it's only later that they've said it was actually a 10-year-old and it's all made up.
And that's part of the propaganda of Henry VII.
-That's what I believe.
I believe all of that Lambert Simnel business is big smoke and mirrors thrown up around what would have been a hugely threatening moment for Henry VII.
[ Bell tolling ] -Clearly, there was a boy crowned here in this church, a fleet showed up, they went through a ceremony, a religious ceremony.
Whether or not that means that that's one of the boys in the tower, I'm not yet confident about.
But applying my dispassionate mind, that's certainly some evidence that the older boy, Edward, that prince in the tower, could -- could -- have been the person that they crowned here.
-A week after the Dublin coronation, the Yorkist fleet invaded England.
The established history holds that the imposter, Lambert Simnel, led the force, but Philippa's team believes it was Edward, the eldest of the missing princes, who led the army.
-I have to say, Philippa, I still find the Lambert Simnel -- or is it Prince Edward?
-- story really confusing.
I hope where we're going now might help me with that.
-We're on our way to Stoke Battlefield.
-Right.
Okay, so, is this where Edward's invasion army came to face Henry VII?
-Exactly.
And we're going to meet Matthew Lewis again, and he's gonna tell us all about the battle.
♪♪ -Welcome to the site of the Battle of Stoke in 1487.
This was the site of the last pitched battle of the Wars of the Roses, that kind of 30-odd-year fight for the crown of England.
Thousands of men crowded this field.
Many of them travelled huge distances to be here.
And many of them would never walk off this field alive.
-Oh, that's really affecting.
Seriously affecting.
-Now, the question is, is it Edward or some person called Lambert Simnel?
-That is the big question.
If I'm a mercenary, a professional soldier, I might start laughing when someone says, "We want you to follow this 10-year-old boy into battle."
-It's just so kind of evocative standing here.
So, what's the outcome?
What happens?
How does it play out?
-We know that they clash, there is a huge confrontation, and I think this is where Edward's army struggles against its own makeup.
There are disparate amounts of Flemish soldiers, Swiss and German mercenaries, Irish kerns, also some Englishmen who have joined the force.
They're just so smashed together.
They all have different proficiencies, different ways of fighting, different languages.
And they end up being routed, and the Irish begin to fall 'cause they're not wearing any armor.
One source talks about the field being littered with bodies that were pricked like hedgehogs with arrows after the battle, just men with half-a-dozen arrows in them lying all over the field.
-But then there's this name at the center of it -- Edward.
What happened to him?
-We don't know.
This is the frustrating part.
We don't have a record of what happened to him after that.
-What do the sources written by Henry VII, Henry Tudor, say about what happened to the person that led this army?
-They're at great pains to tell us the story of this 10-year-old, who is found to be named Lambert Simnel.
He is pardoned by Henry, and he puts him to work in the royal kitchens.
-Either way, the older of the princes in the tower is now out of commission, no longer a threat.
-Yeah.
But if Henry VII has just faced the greatest threat of his reign so far, in 1487, from a prince who was 16 1/2 years old, he knows that prince has a brother who is two or three years younger than him, so he's going to have to think, "Am I going to face the same problem in a few years' time?"
-Thank you, Matt.
-Good luck with the rest of your investigation.
-Thank you so much.
So, it's extraordinary to look at this field.
You know, either that army is led by a pretender, Lambert Simnel, or the real Edward V dies on that battlefield.
Either way, the trail goes cold.
So, what happens to Richard, his brother, the younger of the princes in the tower?
-We have to go back to Europe now to pick up that trail.
♪♪ -Philippa and Rob are in the Netherlands, which was once part of the Holy Roman Empire.
Her Dutch team has discovered something about Edward's brother, Richard, the younger prince in the tower.
-Have you seen it?
-I know about it.
I haven't seen it, but I think it's absolutely mind-blowing.
-Wow.
Mind-blowing.
So, what we're about to see is big.
-Just tell him what it was like for you when you found it.
-Well, I got goose bumps because it was so special, and I never find anything like this before.
Someone actually found it in the 1950s, but they dismissed it, and it was quickly forgotten about.
-So... -Right.
-So, I've got the document here for you.
-Okay.
What about a date or anything like that?
-It seems to be made between 1450 and 1500.
-Wow.
-Yeah.
-So this is within the period -- 1450 to 1500 -- slap-bang in the middle.
-Spot on.
-Yeah.
-Right.
-Rob, you're looking at Richard, the younger prince in the tower's, own story.
-You think this is his voice?
-This is his voice.
It's written in the first person.
-"I."
-Yes.
We think that the originals have been written in Latin or French, but this is a copy in Middle Dutch.
Shall we read it?
-Yeah.
-"I was bought to my brother, who was already there in the Tower of London.
Then what happens is, we were separated.
I was secretly taken into a room in a place where the lions are kept.
Lord Howard came to me and encouraged me.
At last, he ordered the guards to leave and then bought two other men.
They were called Henry Percy and Thomas Percy.
They swore by honor and oath to hide me secretly until certain years were passed."
-Okay, so, Lord Howard gets his two men, Henry and Thomas Percy, and gets them to swear to Howard that they're going to hide him secretly.
-Yes.
Yeah.
Everyone he's mentioned so far was in the Tower of London in June 1483.
I found them in the archives in Bedale, in North Yorkshire.
-Yeah.
It adds to the credibility and the reliability of the whole narrative.
-So, whoever's reporting this has to know these people, these men.
-Yes.
-We don't know what happened to Edward at this point, 'cause they'd been separated, but as far as Richard is concerned, the Percys are going to take care of him.
-And guard him.
-Yeah.
-Then what happens?
-"Then they shaved my hair and put a poor and drab skirt on me.
[ Birds chirping ] And we went to St.
Katharine's."
St. Katharine's is a dockyard.
"There, they took a boat and sailed to the sea and came ashore in the dunes of Boulogne-sur-Mer."
From here, Richard stayed in Paris, and he goes on to tell us that he then travelled across Europe to various cities before being sailed to Portugal.
-What a life.
-Unreal, isn't it?
"Shortly afterwards, Henry Percy became ill with the plague.
He told me that when he died, I would have to travel to Ireland.
Then he died, may God save his soul."
So, Richard says that he then sailed to Ireland, where several Irish lords recognized him and accepted him for who he was.
-So the people in Ireland acknowledge him as Richard, the second of the princes in the tower, straightaway.
-Yes.
-I mean, this is the stuff of kind of "Game of Thrones."
-It is.
-Do you know what I mean?
-It absolutely is.
-Why didn't Percy just say, straightaway, "Look, let's go to Ireland"?
-They had sworn to keep him away till certain years have passed.
So you can see that they're following that oath.
-What happens next, Philippa?
-Right.
Okay.
So, what happens next?
"I left and went to my dearest aunt, the Duchess of Burgundy, and by the grace of God, in a short time, I will obtain my right to which I was born."
-Okay, let me just -- 'Cause this is way more significant than I was expecting.
This is a story of roughly how many years, do we think?
-Think it's 10.
-10 years, a decade.
-It covers 10 years.
-1483 to 1493.
-Okay.
-Key years.
-This looks to me like we have a person, possibly Richard, Duke of York, the second of the boys in the tower, who arrives in the court of Margaret of Burgundy, giving his life account to persuade her, let's say, "I'm the real deal."
And this is a specific detail.
-Yeah.
-Boy, is it specific detail.
-Yeah.
-Could this be the writing of somebody who is faking a life story?
-If this is somebody who's trying to be the younger prince in the tower, you make it very general, but he's going into detail after detail after detail after detail.
-We deal in documents as lawyers.
-Yeah.
-And if I saw this statement, it would be a critical break in the case.
You know, this is a smoking-gun document.
There's no doubt about it.
I need to calmly assess what it might all mean.
You know, I have to be skeptical.
I can't just look at this and go, "Wow," although it is a "wow" document.
It is truly something.
Well, thanks, Nathalie.
-[ Laughs ] No.
I'm pleased, I'm pleased you liked it.
♪♪ -With this new discovery placing the younger prince at the court of his aunt, Margaret of Burgundy, Philippa and Rob head to the duchess' former home in the town of Binche, in Belgium.
There, they're meeting another member of the research group, who has something new to show them.
The team believes that after helping Edward, the older prince, it seems Margaret went on to support his younger brother, Richard.
-Wow!
So, Zoe, this is a ruin of where, exactly?
-This is the remains of the Palace of Margaret of Burgundy.
-This is her palace.
-Yes.
She lives here in retirement.
-But it must have been pretty splendid at the time.
I mean, she was loaded.
She was very rich.
-Yes, And if you just look to the right... -Yeah, yeah.
-...you see an arch, right?
-Yes.
-Yeah.
So, that's actually called "Richard's Room," what we know it as now.
-Well, which Richard?
-It's the younger prince in the tower.
We believe that he stayed here, and she names a special room after him, Richard's Room, which is there.
-How do you know this?
-Well, actually, the account books state that after renovating the palace, it's actually called Richard's Room.
-And I think what is lovely about this is, by this point, when she's renovating this, in 1496, the timing is absolutely spot on for the younger prince in the tower.
-What's he doing here with Margaret, you know, in her retirement castle?
-Well, it's a really important moment, because Margaret of Burgundy is pulling all of her resources, and all of Maximilian's resources, behind Richard to support him, making his push for the throne.
-So, Zoe, how do we know that it was him?
-Richard showed people three marks on his body that couldn't be faked.
-So, what's the evidence for these three marks?
-Quite by chance, I found a document in the Austrian State Archive.
So, if you will look here, the document is about Maximilian's meeting with Richard, and it states the reasons why Maximilian decided to give his support and his favor to Richard.
-But who's written this account?
-It is written by one of his French scribes, a person at the meeting.
-What?
When Richard, the possible prince, meets Maximilian?
-Yes, presents himself.
-We have a transcription here of the documents.
-And it says, "My lord, the Duke of York, offers to present himself and show several signs by which those who knew him would recognize him.
Especially three natural marks, which he has on his body and which cannot be counterfeited.
That is, his mouth, one of his eyes, and a mark he has on his thigh."
And that comes from Maximilian's court at the right time for the younger prince in the tower, Richard, Duke of York.
-Okay.
Thanks very much.
♪♪ My mind's a washing machine of stuff.
I've been following Richard, the younger prince's, story, and there have been two really big bombshell documents.
There may be proof of life here, but the difficulty is, you know, I have to acknowledge I learnt my history in England, in the U.K., right?
And Richard III is the bad king.
So, every time I'm looking at a document, the most important thing I have to do is step back and imagine I know none of it.
That's so essential.
But the reality is, that's really hard.
It's a difficult thing not to bring your bias to a document.
♪♪ ♪♪ -Philippa has come to the medieval city of Dresden, once a major hub in the Holy Roman Empire.
Her research team has found something related to the younger prince in the tower.
Nathalie, from the Dutch research group, uncovered a document at the Saxon State Archive.
-Rob can't come, so I'm going to be calling him about it from the archive.
And I'm getting really excited.
-She's meeting an expert in medieval manuscripts, who's made a translation for her.
-I'm incredibly excited.
I've never seen it before.
And I'm actually on tenterhooks.
[ Laughs ] -So, do you want to see it?
-Please.
-It's a really lovely document.
Now comes the real treasure... the seals.
You see "1493."
We unfold it.
And here we go.
Isn't it lovely?
-I can't believe this.
I mean, this is just... Wow, wow, wow.
-So, at the bottom, you have the signature.
-Yeah, I can see "Richard of England."
I can see his monogram.
-Yep.
-That's really special.
I've never seen that before.
Do you mind if I just use the magnifier?
I just want to -- Oh, look at that.
"Richard of England."
Oh, wow.
That royal seal is just incredible.
And even the little "R" at the bottom, the royal "R." But what's really fascinating is it's the closed crown of a king.
That's what this is depicting.
And it's the Royal Arms of England.
I mean, this is telling me it's a king.
It is blowing my mind.
Good God.
It's just -- I'm actually shaking.
[ Laughs ] So, Henrike, this is a really extraordinary document, but can you tell me more about what it actually says?
I think you've done a translation for me, is that right?
-Yes.
Here it is.
So, "This is Richard, Duke of York, son of King Edward IV, pledging 30,000 florins to Duke Albert of Saxony, for support in regaining the throne of England.
If he-" -Sorry.
How much?
-30,000 florins.
-30,000 florins.
What -- How much?
I mean, that sounds like a lot to me.
How much is that?
-It's a real princely sum, "to be paid within three months once he has got the throne of England."
-I really need to call Rob about this.
Hi, dearest travel mate.
Guess where I am.
Dresden!
We are looking at this most incredible document.
I'm actually shaking at the moment.
And I just wish you were here to see it.
It is just -- It's mind-blowing.
-What have you found?
-It's a pledge for 30,000 florins from Richard of England to give to Albert of Saxony within three months of him becoming king.
I mean, can we show Rob, Henrike?
-Yeah.
-Let's have a look.
-Yeah.
I don't know if you can see this, but the royal seal here -- there's a beautiful, intact royal seal from Richard, the younger prince.
And right at the bottom, there's a tiny, little royal "R." -That is extraordinary.
Was 30,000 florins a lot of money back then?
What are we talking?
-It's difficult to specify exactly.
It's throwing around big sums and a sum meant to impress.
It's the GDP of a medieval city or a castle or something like that.
-Have to have some -- there's no nice way of putting it -- balls to go and promise that sort of sum unless you were pretty sure you were able to deliver on it.
-Yeah, 100%.
-So, how do we know that this is Richard, the younger of the princes of the boys in the tower?
How do we know it's his signature?
-So, Rob, let me just read you how the document begins, what it says.
It says, "Richard, by the grace of God, Duke of York, son and heir of our most revered lord and father, Edward IV, late King of England and France and Lord of Ireland."
So he's making very clear that this is the younger prince in the tower.
-It's a confident hand, obviously a contemporary hand, so what we can be fairly sure of is, the charter is authentic, whoever signed it, but it's from that time and place it claims to be.
And it's signed 4th of October 1493.
-Philippa, you look so happy.
-I am.
I'm in seventh heaven at the moment.
[ Laughter ] I just wish you were here.
Thanks, sweetie.
Bye.
Bye-bye.
Bye.
-Philippa believes that the man she calls Richard, Duke of York, used his European backers' money to launch an attack on England.
But the invasion fails, and he takes refuge with King James IV in Scotland.
James treats him as an equal and finds him a wife, a noblewoman, and they have a son.
But Henry VII is told this man called Richard is actually an imposter.
There are two more invasions, but the suspected imposter is eventually captured by Henry VII in 1497.
-So, Rob, we're in the tower.
-It was only a matter of time for you, Philippa, let's face it.
-After years of challenging Henry VII, the man I believe is the younger prince, Richard, had been captured.
We're now going to meet a writer who has done her own investigation into what happened next.
-Now, Henry's finally got his prize, Richard.
He's caught him.
-Yes.
-So, I assume, bearing in mind it's the third time Richard's tried to invade the realm, that Henry just immediately, well, has him executed, no?
-No, far from it.
He's always wanted to see this chap alive.
He's wanted to torture him.
The next thing he does is, he faces him with a confession that's already been drawn up over years by Henry's spies, and he gets him to sign it.
-He signs a confession?
-Yes.
-What name does he give?
-He gives Perry Ozbeck, which is a Flemish version of Perkin Warbeck.
-The official confession states that the name of the man captured by Henry is Perkin Warbeck, an imposter believed to be a boatman's son from Tournai, in Flanders.
-So, he gets him to sign a confession that's pre-prepared.
What happens then?
-His treatment of Perkin -- Richard -- is extraordinary.
He isn't shackled or bound at all.
He's still robed, as far as we know.
He goes to Westminster Hall, and there, it's said, he just strolled into the hall arm in arm with an officer of the court.
Not chained, not in any way presented as a prisoner.
-This feels totally bonkers.
You know, the traditional view of medieval kings, including Richard III, is when you've got someone in your way, you kill them, including your own nephews.
Here, we have Henry, who captures Richard or Perkin, who's tried to take his throne at least three times, and he doesn't execute him.
He treats him like one of the family.
-Yeah, because for several European monarchs, he is one of the family.
You have people like Maximilian writing to him and saying, "If you kill this man, you will have killed your brother-in-law."
-This is exercising the whole of European royalty, all of the big power players.
The big club is all -- is activated by the capture of this person who signed a confession calling himself Perkin Warbeck.
-Yes.
They don't all disown him.
In fact, they carry on supporting him for a long time.
-And as long as he promises to be that person, what's the deal?
-He gets very good treatment at court.
He's not kept in any sort of confinement.
He's allowed to see his wife.
And she never requests a divorce, and Henry doesn't make her divorce.
Although, one of the few reasons to get divorced in the Catholic Church is if your husband's a fraud.
-It's almost like he's held as a sort of pet, as a person on display.
-He's even kept like a pet, because where he is kept is in the king's wardrobe, which I have to explain is not a cupboard, it's a room, but it's still like a walk-in closet with all the king's robes.
And he's sleeping in there with a guard on either side of him.
There's also a ladder in the wardrobe, which could nicely go up to the window.
-I see.
Why is that significant?
-Because he might want to get out.
And he does get out.
-He escapes.
-He escapes.
This time, Henry has lost patience.
He comes back and he's sent to the tower.
-Is the treatment the same?
Is it as honorable as it was before?
-Certainly not.
Now he's in a dungeon.
He's shackled and he's tortured, and we know this from the Spanish ambassador, who goes to see him and says he's "desfigurada," i.e., he's had his face broken so that he doesn't look like Richard, Duke of York.
-Was he just left there to rot?
What happened?
-There was a plot made up that he had decided to blow up the tower.
He's charged with treason, which is interesting, because if he's a Fleming, he can't be a traitor, because he's not a subject.
-He's charged with treason.
That only applies to an English subject.
What happened to him after the trial?
Is he found guilty?
-Yes.
And then he's sent for execution, but he does not have the traitor's death.
He has a nobleman's death, in fact.
The sentence for treason is to be hung, drawn, and quartered.
-Yes.
-But he is only hung.
-Ann, we don't know this story, we don't learn it, because we learn the Tudor narrative, right?
-Yes.
We are satisfied with the Tudor narrative, and I don't see why anyone is satisfied with a forced confession or a confession that's cobbled together by other people and somebody is forced to sign.
If it happened today, you wouldn't accept it.
You'd query it as a journalist and lawyer.
-Blooming heck.
-See?
Told ya.
Yeah, what a story, right?
-A closet, a ladder, a wife... -I know.
-...a son, the beginning of the Tudor dynasty.
-Yeah, yeah.
-Bloody hell, Philippa.
-It's unbelievable, isn't it?
♪♪ I've come down to London today because I'm going to see Rob in his chambers.
And he's going to give me his conclusion.
I'm off-the-scale anxious here because I'm going to walk into a room where I get Rob's conclusion.
Which way is he going to go?
Is the evidence as compelling that he's seen?
Is it not?
Is he going to go with the 500 years of Tudor propaganda, "Murder most foul in the Tower of London"?
There's kind of no going back, and I've just got to see what he's going to say.
[ Door opens ] -Hi, Philippa?
How are you doing?
-Hi.
How are you?
-Nice to see you.
-Nice to see you.
-Do come in.
After you.
-Thanks.
-So, Philippa, at the heart of this case is whether Richard III murdered his nephews or not -- the older one being Edward, the younger one being Richard -- in order to obtain the throne.
Or could it be a missing-person inquiry and they survived?
I'm only interested in the evidence, the evidence that supports whether or not he killed those boys or whether they may have escaped and come to invade England.
What I'm going to give you now is a summary of what I consider to be the conclusion in this case.
There are four documents that we stopped at during our zig-zag across Europe.
One of them's from the Lille Archive, and it's a receipt that shows that Maximilian was providing an army for the older of the boys in the tower, who was going to claim his throne in England.
And I'm satisfied that that receipt is authentic and from the time.
There are a further three documents that have been unearthed in respect of the younger of the boys in the tower, Richard.
From the Dresden Archive, document which is a contract promising if Richard succeeds in taking over the throne, he's going to pay that money back to Maximilian.
And, critically, it's got his signature on it.
I'm satisfied that that is an authentic document.
The Austrian Archive, which, again, is an account where somebody takes a note of marks that were on the body of Richard.
I am again entirely satisfied that that is a document from the time.
And, lastly, a document from the Gelders Archive, and it's from a scribe which may have been at the time where a person purporting to be Richard gives a full narrative of his entire life.
I have had grave doubts about that document.
In fact, I want to be absolutely clear with you.
I took the view that it was a fake.
I asked two independent experts, world-leading experts in their field.
The bad news, I'm afraid... is that I was entirely wrong.
Both of those experts take the view that it was written precisely at the period that we're focusing in.
There is no way this could be a forgery from a later date.
-Wow.
Wow.
Thank you.
-Now, based on the documents that you've provided me with, on the balance of probabilities, I'm satisfied that it is perfectly possible to challenge the traditional narrative.
In fact, it seems to me it is highly plausible that Edward, the older of the boys in the tower, survived.
He was not killed in the tower by Richard III.
It seems to me more probable than not that he lived and he fought at the Battle of Stoke.
In respect of Richard... my view is even stronger.
The material you've unearthed is more than sufficient to conclude that this was not a murder, that the person who came to be known in history as Perkin Warbeck was the younger of the boys in the tower.
Not only did Edward and Richard survive the tower, but they lived, they continued to live on, they tried to invade England, that they failed.
You, Philippa Langley, along with your team in Europe, may just have solved the greatest mystery in British history.
Congratulations.
-Wow.
Thank you.
-Thank you.
-Thank you.
Thank you for doing this for me.
Thank you.
You know, that was big news.
Heavens above, that was big news.
It's overwhelming because we've had 500 years of this story being rolled out and repeated.
We've changed that now.
We've completely changed the conversation.
I'm overjoyed.
-They say lightning doesn't strike twice, but, in your case, it may have done.
I've no doubt that Philippa's work is going to cause controversy, but the reality is, without question, Philippa's account is more persuasive based on the evidence.
That's as it currently stands.
History is for everybody, whoever you are, wherever you're from, to go and join in the investigation.
That's the exciting thing about this.
The conclusion I've reached is that one woman, along with an army of other people, their energy, their enthusiasm, their determination may have solved the greatest cold case in history.
But now it's up to the rest of the world to see what they think.
♪♪ ♪♪
