The two princes were murdered by their uncle Richard III

The argument

The most common theory is that the two princes were murdered by their uncle, Richard Duke of Gloucester. Richard took the two brothers to the tower of London shortly after their father died and pronounced himself the Lord Protector until Edward V was of age to rule. It was in the tower of London, in Richard’s custody, that the two princes disappeared. Richard also stood to gain the most if the boys died, with the two princes out of the way he would be the next king. Richard had the means and opportunity to murder them, as they were with him in the tower of London. He could have also paid someone to murder them for him, in order to create a believable alibi. Thomas More wrote that James Tyrell, an English Knight who served Richard III, confessed to being paid to smother the two boys in their sleep by Richard Duke of Gloucester. This claim is made more believable by the two skeletons found buried under the stairs in the tower of London in 1674, about 200 years later.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Many believe that killing the princes would have actually been unnecessary for Richard Duke of Gloucester to become King. In June of 1483, before the disappearance of the two princes, Richard issued the Titulus Regius, which was a document explaining that the two princes were illegitimate and therefore had no claim to the throne. This document allowed for Richard to ascend to the throne while the two princes still lived. If Richard had already guaranteed the throne for himself, he would have had no need to murder the two princes. This act would have been unnecessary and would damage his reputation.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Means, motive and opportunity establish that a suspect could have done it, not that he did, and others with access and a later interest — Buckingham, and the claimant who displaced Richard — meet the same test. The motive is weaker than the premise assumes: as the counter notes, the boys had already been declared illegitimate by act of the realm, so Richard's title did not depend on their deaths. [Rejecting P2] The confession is reported at long remove. More was writing decades afterwards under the dynasty that had overthrown Richard, and Tyrell's alleged admission survives only in that account rather than in any record of the proceedings against him. The bones found in 1674 have never been shown to be the princes — they were taken for them by assumption, examined once in the 1930s by methods that could not establish sex or date, and have not been tested since. The physical evidence therefore assumes the conclusion it is offered to support.