These two men’s names were Dighton and Forrest. They went into the room where the princes were both on the same bed. Their little arms were round each other’s necks, and their little cheeks close together. Then the wicked murderers took some cushions, and laid them over the poor children as they lay asleep, and smothered them.
Then they took them on their shoulders, and carried them to a little back-staircase, near their room in the Tower, and buried them in a great hole under the stairs, and threw a heap of stones over them; and a long time afterwards, some workmen, who were employed to repair that part of the Tower, found their bones in that place.
And this was the end of our little King Edward the Fifth, and his brother York.
You will read something about their sister Elizabeth very soon.
CHAPTER XXXV.
RICHARD III.—1483 to 1485.
How Richard the Third tried to make the people his friends; how the Duke of Buckingham rebelled and was put to death; how Richard was killed at Bosworth fighting against the Earl of Richmond, who was made King.
Richard, Duke of Gloucester, had got himself made king, as I told you, before he murdered his young nephews in the Tower. The people were told that the young princes had died suddenly.
He tried to make the people forget the wicked way in which he came to be king by making some good laws; but he could not succeed. The English could not love so base and cruel a man, and Richard had but a short and troublesome reign.
The first vexation he had was caused by a cousin of his, the Duke of Buckingham, almost as bad a man as himself, who had helped him in most of his bad deeds, but who did not mean to let him kill the little princes. So the Duke got an army together, and hoped by beginning a civil war to punish Richard; but he was taken prisoner, and Richard treated him as he had done Lord Hastings, that is, he cut off his head directly.
But there was another cousin of Richard’s, and a much better man, about whom I must tell you a great deal more. His name was Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond. Now his father, Edmund Tudor, Earl of Richmond, was related to the old princes of Wales, who you must remember were Britons, and his mother, the Countess of Richmond, was a lady of the family of Lancaster, or the Red Rose. Richard the Third hated the Earl of Richmond, because he knew that many people thought Henry ought to be king, and he did everything he could to injure him and his family. But Richmond himself was abroad, where Richard could not hurt him.