The New Murrey and Blue blog

The bones, purporting to be of the former Edward V and the elder of his brothers, have an interesting history of their own.

1) More relates that they were buried at night by one priest, without anyone knowing – which narrative is regarded as a Fifth Gospel by Cairo residents, if regarded as a farce by everyone else.

2) Wroe (p.140, as cited in “The Mystery of the Vanishing Chapel” here in July) quotes Henry VII (“Tudor”) as offering (in 1495) to show Maximilian I and Margaret of Burgundy (aunt by marriage to them both) the chapel where Richard of Shrewsbury was buried.

3) More went on to claim that the same priest dug up the “ex-Princes” and moved them on but he doesn’t know where – a point the Cairo folk ignore as inconvenient. {by the time of More’s execution}

4 Carson (p. 201) draws our attention to one John Webb, who found some bones in 1647.

5 She also (pp. 200-) talks of the better known 1674 find in the same place, which Charles II used for propaganda, were the same. Were they reburied immediately on the first occasion, after all the Civil War was in progress with the Parliamentarians having the upper hand and caring not for another ex-King and brother thereof?

So, for those not suffering from cognitive dissonance, is it likely that they were buried, moved to a chapel by 1495, moved back to the rough area of their first burial, dug up in 1647, immediately reburied in the same place and rediscovered “by accident” in 1674? Or is it far more logical that the whole More story amounts to “ten pounds of hogwash in a five pound bag” (to quote Sam Shepherd’s defence counsel) a story that people have desperately tried to bolster with a random but convenient set of remains for four centuries?

Frankly, it just doesn’t add up and it never has.