The Princes in the Tower [Paperback]

Alison Weir (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 10, 1995

Despite five centuries of investigation by historians, the sinister deaths of the boy king Edward V and his younger brother Richard, Duke of York, remain two of the most fascinating murder mysteries in English history. Did Richard III really kill “the Princes in the Tower,” as is commonly believed, or was the murderer someone else entirely? Carefully examining every shred of contemporary evidence as well as dozens of modern accounts, Alison Weir reconstructs the entire chain of events leading to the double murder. We are witnesses to the rivalry, ambition, intrigue, and struggle for power that culminated in the imprisonment of the princes and the hushed-up murders that secured Richard’s claim to the throne as Richard III. A masterpiece of historical research and a riveting story of conspiracy and deception, The Princes in the Tower at last provides a solution to this age-old puzzle.

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Weir examines the 1483 disappearance of Richard III's two young nephews and determines that he was to blame for their murders.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Proponents of Richard III will not be pleased by this book. Weir ( The Six Wives of Henry VIII , LJ 2/15/92) explores documentary evidence and various theories about the fate of the famous princes (Edward V and his brother, ages 12 and 10) in the Tower of London. Relying on contemporary accounts, Weir assesses credibility and compares details. Her sound research and rational arguments make a convincing case for Richard's direct involvement in the murder of his two young nephews. While she admits that there is no convincing evidence that Richard was hunchbacked or more evil than his contemporaries, Weir does show that he was supremely unpopular, largely because of the murder of the children. This is an excellent and persuasive book, one that belongs in all collections covering the history of Great Britain.
- Katharine Galloway Garstka, Intergraph Corp., Huntsville, Ala.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 287 pages
• Publisher: Ballantine Books (July 10, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345391780
• ISBN-13: 978-0345391780
• Product Dimensions: 5.4 x 0.6 x 8.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (108 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #54,088 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #100 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Leaders & Notable People > Royalty

More About the Author

Alison Weir is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels Innocent Traitor and The Lady Elizabeth and several historical biographies, including Mistress of the Monarchy, Queen Isabella, Henry VIII, Eleanor of Aquitaine, The Life of Elizabeth I, and The Six Wives of Henry VIII. She lives in Surrey, England with her husband and two children.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

184 of 204 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Good story, brutal history, October 29, 2002

By 

David Roy (Vancouver, BC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Princes in the Tower (Hardcover)

I'm of two minds on Alison Weir's The Princes in the Tower. On the one hand, it is an immensely readable history of Richard III, king of England, and the mystery of what happened to his nephews who he had confined to the Tower of London. Weir comes down strongly on the side that Richard had his nephews killed. Weir writes well, and the reader is sucked in to the story. On the other hand, though, Weir's research and conclusions are atrocious and beneath what a proper historian should be. She makes many suppositions and then treats them as fact. Some of her timelines are wildly inaccurate, and since she uses these to support her theory, that puts the entire theory in doubt. Thus, while it's an enjoyable read, I can't really recommend the book unless the reader is aware of this and willing to read further on the subject without taking Weir's view as indisputable fact.

Where to begin? Weir starts out by discussing the various sources of information on the controversy. Many of these sources weren't contemporary at all, being written after Henry VII had taken the throne. The one she bases most of her theories on, an unfinished history by Sir Thomas More, she claims is contemporary. However, Thomas was eight years old at the time these events occurred and didn't start his book until much later. He supposedly had access to many people "in the know," and Weir takes this as proof that what he says is, for the most part, accurate. What she fails to take into account, however, is More's history was written during the Tudor reign, when it wasn't exactly safe to be extolling Richard's virtues. Sure, More's sources may have been there, but do you really think they're going to risk their head by telling the truth? In fact, Weir states many times that many people who were involved in the events were still alive at this time, and surely would have been in a position to know if More wasn't accurate. This is complete hogwash, since it would have meant dire consequences to dispute these "facts." The other sources written during the Tudor reign suffer from this problem as well.

Weir states at the beginning of the book that she wrote this book "...because there is a need for the subject to be dealt with from an objective viewpoint based on common sense and sound research." After saying this, however, Weir proceeds to write a hatchet job on Richard that shows no real signs of objectivity at all. She mentions the Tudor historians and the problems inherent in taking them at face value, but then proceeds to do just that when they support her theory. When they don't, of course, they may have gotten it wrong. She casually presents and discards some of the pro-Richard historical work that is around, dismissing them as impossible.

Elsewhere in the book, she gets timelines wrong in ways that make what she says impossible. One of the most blatant is when she's discussing the timing of the murders. She says that the murders had to have happened on the night of September 3. However, later when she's discussing how other monarchs around Europe felt about Richard and the Princes, she states that Louis XI of France clearly believed that Richard had committed the murders. She goes on to say, though, that Louis died on August 30, 1483, 4 days before the murders supposedly happened! How can this be? There are other problems in Weir's logic that similarly cast her theories into doubt.

Finally, many times in the book she says that something "could have" happened, or she claims that it's logical to assume something. She then goes on to base many more "facts" on these suppositions, making her conclusions balanced on a tissue-thin platform just waiting to collapse. One of the most outrageous is her assumption that More has credibility because he talked to some nuns. Thomas More used to go visit a convent in which Brackenbury's widow and some other Yorkist (a noble family at this time) ladies were in retirement. He could have talked with them, says Weir, and they could have known the real truth about the princes, and they could have told him. She then goes on to say that thus, More's tale has to be accurate, because these nuns would know. Huh? Weir has no idea if More actually did this, but she goes on to base her assumption on this. The book is filled with these "might have been" statements.

It's a shame that such a well-written book has to be so poorly presented as history. I really like Alison Weir's books (though I am aware that many historians find her work shoddy), but this one is just too much. Even I, a historical novice, can see how badly done this book is. She did a lot of research, but the conclusions she has taken from that research are flimsy and not well-supported at all (though she attempts to show that they are). If you find yourself reading this book, please keep that in mind and read something else on the subject as well. As long as the beginning reader is aware of this, then it's not so bad and this book can be a good start on getting interested in the subject. However, if the new reader comes in unaware, then many "facts" will have to be unlearned later on.

25 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not her best work, March 28, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: The Princes in the Tower (Paperback)

I've read a bunch of Weir's other works and I've liked them all, but after having read this I began doubting her other works. Having read nearly a dozen accounts of Richard III's life and his relationship to the princes, I can say that this is more or less a rehashing of Sir Thomas More's UNFINISHED biography of RIII. Her whole case rests on the work of More, whose work has been questioned, most notbably and effectively by Horace Walpole.
Weir questions her own sources and then uses them to prove her point the "Richard did it". An earthshattering conclusion? Not by any means, but the way she gets there is somewhat lazy and ignores some pretty decent scholarship on the subject. Most of what we "know" about RIII comes from Shakespeare's play, which is based on More. Weir didn't seem to stray any further than Shakespeare (the Oliver Stone of the Elizabethian age) to come to her conclusion.
Again, not her best work. She does a much better job with the Tudors.

13 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Worth reading only for devotees of the subject, March 15, 2002

By 

Elizabeth A. Root (Laurel, MD USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Princes in the Tower (Paperback)

As usual, Weir has written a lively, readable book, but I think it is a very poor history. Weir makes some insightful remarks when the facts suit her, but I would only recommend the book to readers who know enough about the subject to carefully weigh her claims. Others have talked about the reliability of Weir's sources, but I'll just stick to the problems that are internal to the book, even if the reader knows nothing else about the topic.

Weir constantly contradicts herself and her logic is often bizarre. On a general level, she tries to argue that the facts surrounding the death of the princes were at one and the same time, a closely guarded secret and known to everyone in Europe, depending on which is most convenient to her at any given point. At a more detailed level:

She spends several pages arguing that the story that Edward IV's marriage to Elizabeth Woodville was bigamous is completely ludicrous and that no contemporary writer believed it. She then describes it as "well-conceived and plausible".

Citing More, she claims that Margaret Beaufort was able to prove to Elizabeth Woodville that her sons (the princes in the tower) were dead. Later, Weir claims that Henry VII (Beaufort's son) didn't know whether or not they were dead. What happened to the evidence provided to Woodville?

Weir claims that Louis XI knew that Richard III murdered the princes, in spite of the fact that she believes they were alive when Louis died.

She claims that More got otherwise unknown information from knowledgeable people of his acquaintance. If it is obvious to Weir that these people might have known something, wouldn't it have been even more obvious to Henry VII and his advisors? Wouldn't he have questioned them? Would they have refused to answer the king and then babbled all they knew to More?

She argues that no-one other than Richard III could have killed the princes during his reign, since no-one was tried for it. Then she claims that Henry VII knew who murdered the princes, at Richard's order, but never tried them because it would have raised embarrassing questions. Wouldn't it have been even more embarrassing for Richard to have tried someone during his reign? She also claims that Henry feared it might alienate other European rulers, in spite of her claim that those rulers already knew all about it while Richard was alive and continued to deal with him.

She argues that More's friends read the manuscript and would have corrected any errors, in spite of the fact that (as she admits) it contains numerous errors as it is.

There are more problems, but I can't sum them up in a few sentences.

Since originally writing this review, I have looked into the issue of the textile evidence, i.e., Weir's claim that an unidentified person said that there were scraps of velvet in the coffin when it was opened; Weir does not bother to cite a source. I strongly fault her failure to provide documentation for this new and very interesting argument.

She claims that an unnamed textile expert told her that velvet first came to England in 1400. She then argues that it was very expensive and custom limited its use to only "the very highest", so these bones must have been the princes. This contradicts her cherished quote from More that the princes were naked when they were strangled; I think it's unlikely that people committing murder in haste would dress the bodies before burial. Further, according to Textiles and Clothing, c.1150-1450 (Medieval Finds from Excavations in London) (Medieval Finds from Excavations in London) by Elisabeth Crowfoot, Frances Pritchard, Kay Staniland, the first WRITTEN records of velvet imports were in the late 13th century. The wardrobe records of Edward IV, the princes' father, show that pieces of velvet were common gifts to his followers, and the wardrobe records of Sir John Fastolf (d.1459) show that he had several velvet garments. [Fastolf was an extremely wealthy man, so his wardrobe can't be taken as typical for all knights.] Fabric of all types was relatively much more expensive prior to the industrial era and there was a very active trade in used garments and fabrics. So there had been something close to two hundred years prior to the deaths of the princes, and three hundred and fifty years prior to finding of the bones, for resold pieces of velvet to work their way down the social chain.

I am therefore not convinced that small scraps of velvet prove that the bodies belonged to princes, even assuming that the unknown witness in the uncited source was correct in his/her identification of fabric as velvet and not some other nappy fabric. I am, however, convinced that Weir was suspiciously sloppy in presenting her case, particularly given that many of her other statements are carefully documented.

If you're a student of the topic, as I am, it's worth reading. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone as an introduction. For that, try reading A.J. Pollard's Richard III and the Princes in the Tower. Pollard also believes that Richard III was guilty; my objections to Weir are not primarily based on the assumption that Richard was innocent, just a preference for good, well-documentated research and logical thinking. Mysterious Deaths - The Little Princes in the Tower (Mysterious Deaths) by William W. Lace is also better than Weir, just realize that a lot of the illustrations are 19th century. I also recommend Royal Blood: Richard III and the Mystery of the Princes by Bertram Fields. Fields is more sympathetic to Richard III, and quite dismissive of Weir, but the exciting thing to me is that he tosses around ideas and thought-provoking possibilities without necessarily drawing conclusions. Some people find that irritating, but I find it very stimulating.