THE MONKEYS.
[THE MURDER OF THE PRINCES IN THE TOWER.]
THE UNFORTUNATE PRINCES.
One of the wickedest acts of the wicked King Richard III. of England was the murder of his two young nephews in the Tower. He had seized upon the crown that belonged of right to them, and had shut them up in a gloomy cell of that huge castle that still stands on the banks of the Thames, below London. They were separated from their mother, the widow of the late King Edward IV., and kept like prisoners and criminals in the part of the vast fortress now known as "the Bloody Tower." The elder, Edward, Prince of Wales (now Edward V., King of England), was thirteen, his fair and gentle brother, the Duke of York, only eleven. Their cruel uncle sent orders to the Governor of the Tower, Brackenbury, to put them to death secretly, but the honest man refused to do so wicked an act. Richard then placed Sir James Tyrrel, his evil instrument, in command of the fortress for a single day; the keys of the gates and cells were given up to him by Brackenbury, and the plans for the murder were carefully prepared by the King. Tyrrel hired two hardened criminals—John Dighton, his own groom, and Miles Forest, a murderer by trade—to commit the act, and remove from their uncle's path the two innocent princes who might yet dispute his title to the throne.
It was a dark and gloomy night when Tyrrel, followed by his two assassins, crept up the narrow stone staircase that led to the room where the young children were confined. He found them clasped in each other's arms asleep, having just repeated their prayers, and lying on a bed. It is easy to imagine the terrors of the poor children in that stony and gloomy chamber, shut out from their mother and all their friends, and seeing only the cold, strange faces of their jailers. But now they had forgotten all their sorrows in a sleep that was to be their last. What dreams they may have had at that fearful moment no one can ever tell. By the light of a flickering torch Tyrrel probably looked into the chamber to see that his victims were safe. But he did not go in, and stood watching and listening at the door while Dighton and Forest performed their dreadful deed. They took the pillows and bolsters from the bed, pressed them over the faces of the children, and thus smothered them to death. When they were dead they carried their bodies down the long staircase, and buried them under a heap of stones at its foot. It was reported that Richard III., touched by an unusual feeling of superstition, had removed them to consecrated ground, and that the place of their final burial was unknown. But long afterward, in the reign of Charles II., when it was found necessary to take away the stones, and dig in the spot where it was supposed the assassins had laid them, the bones of two persons were found that corresponded to the ages of the young princes. They were buried by the King beneath a marble monument.
But wherever they slept, the murder of his nephews must have forever haunted the brain of the wicked Richard III. His people hated and feared him. He grew every day more cruel and tyrannical; he murdered friend and foe. At last Henry, Earl of Richmond, of the house of Lancaster, landed in England with a small force, which was soon increased by the general hatred of the King. The nobility and the people flocked to his camp. His army was soon very strong. Richard, at the head of a powerful force, marched to meet his rival, and on Bosworth Field, August 22, 1485, the decisive battle was fought. Richard was betrayed, as he deserved, by his own officers. He rode raging on horseback around the field, and when he saw Henry before him, rushed upon him to cut him down. He killed one of his knights, but was stricken from his horse, and fell dead in the crowd. Then the soldiers cried, "Long live King Henry!" and that night Richard's body, flung across the back of a horse, was carried into Leicester to be buried. His wicked reign had lasted only two years.