'
I love history. It only made sense that, with my limited amount of time, I made a point of spending much of it at the Tower of London. In my wandering, I glanced into a very dark alcove with spiral stairs and noticed a plaque attached to the wall.
I couldn't see what it said but, as I am want to do, took a picture anyway. It wasn't until I returned home, had the film -- yes, film -- developed and did a bit of enhancement to the digital image that I realized what it said.
"The tradition of the Tower has ALWAYS POINTED out THIS as the STAIR UNDER WHICH the BONES of EDWARD the 5th and his BROTHER WERE FOUND in CHARLES the 2nd TIME and from WHENCE THEY WERE REMOVED to WESTMINSTER ABBEY."
I had long know about the disappearance of the two young princes. [from Wikipedia]:
"The Princes in the Tower were Edward V of England and Richard of Shrewsbury, Duke of York. The two brothers were the only sons of Edward IV of England and Elizabeth Woodville alive at the time of their father's death. Then 12 and 9 years old, they were lodged in the Tower of London by the man appointed to look after them, their uncle, the Lord Protector: Richard, Duke of Gloucester [who became Richard III].
This was supposed to be in preparation for Edward's coronation as king.
However, Richard took the throne for himself and the boys disappeared.
In 1674 workmen at the Tower dug up a wooden box containing two small
human skeletons. The bones were found in the ground near the White
Tower, which is close to one reported site of their burial. The bones
were widely accepted at the time as those of the princes, but this is
not proven. King Charles II had the bones buried within Westminster Abbey."
I had also, long before, read "The Daughter of Time" by Josephine Tey. Still, to have come across the framed plaque was unexpected and just a bit chilling.
No comments:
Post a Comment