EDWARD V., the eldest son of Edward IV., was born on the 4th of November 1470, in the Sanctuary of Westminster Abbey, where his mother had taken shelter when her husband was obliged to fly to the continent on the return of Queen Margaret and the Earl of Warwick. He was consequently only in his thirteenth year when his father died. His reign is reckoned from the 9th of April 1483, the day of his father's decease; but during the few weeks it lasted he never was a king in more than name. The public transactions of his reign all belong properly to the history of his uncle, Richard III. Edward was at Ludlow in Shropshire at the time of his father's death, and possession of his person was obtained at Northampton by Richard (then Duke of Gloucester) as he was on his way to London in charge of his maternal uncle Anthony, earl Rivers. He appears not to have been brought to London till the beginning of May. In the course of that month, and probably between the 24th and 27th, Richard was declared at a great council protector of the king and the kingdom. On the 16th of Jane he contrived to obtain Edward's younger brother, the Duke of York, out of the hands of the queen his mother, who had taken refuge in Westminster Abbey with him and his sister. The two boys were forthwith removed to the Tower, then considered one of the royal palaces, there to remain, as was pretended, till the coronation of the young king, which was appointed to take place on the 22od. Before that day arrived however Richard had completed his measures for placing the crown on Lis own head. The 26th of June ie reckoned the commencement of his reign, and the close of that of his nephew. After this Edward and his brother were seen no more. They were however universally believed to have been made away with by Richard. The account which has been generally received is that given by Sir Thomas More, whose testimony may be regarded ae that of a contemporary, for he was born some years before the death of Edward IV. His statement is in substance that Richard, while on his way to pay a visit to the town of Gloucester after hie coronation, sent one John Green, "wbom he specially trusted," to Sir Robert Bracken bury, the constable of the Tower, with a letter desiring Sir Robert to put the children to death ; that Brackenbury declared he would not commit so dangerous a deed ; that SirJames Tyrrel was then despatched with a commission to receive the keys of the Tower for one night; and that under his directions the children were about midnight stifled in bed with their feather-beds and pillows, by Miles Forest, " one of the four that kept them, a fellow fleshed in murder beforetime," and John Dighton, Tyrrel's own horse-keeper, "a big, broad, square, and strong knave." The relation is given in the fullest and most particular
form, not in the Latin translation of More's History,' or in the retrans lation of that into English, published (with a strange ignorance that the work already existed in English) in Bishop Kennet's Collection of Histories' (3 vols. folio, 1706), but in the English work, which we believe is the original It is printed in full from More's works in Ilolinshed, who describes it as written about the year 1513. More does not give the story as. merely "one of the various tales he had heard concerning the death of the two princes " (Heury's History of Great Britain; and Walpole's ' Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of Richard III.'); he introduces it by saying, "I shall rehearse you the dolorous end of those babes, not after every way that I have heard, but after that way that I have so heard by such men and by such means, as methinketh it were hard but it should be true;" and he closes the narrative by repeating that it is what he had "learned of them that much knew, and little cause had to lie." It is perfectly evident that he had not himself a doubt of its truth. "Very truth it is," he says moreover, "and well known, that at such time as Sir James Tyrrel was in the Tower, for treason committed against the most famous prince, King Henry VII., both Dighton and he were examined, and confessed the murder in manner above written." The common story seems to be supported by the honours and rewards which were immediately bestowed by Richard upou Tyrrel, Bracken bury, Crean, and Dighton. (See these stated in Strype's ' Notes ou Sir George Buck's Life and Reign of Richard 11I.; book 3rd.) Symnel, or Sulforcl, who in tho reign of Henry VII. assumed the character of Edward Plantagenet, eon of George, duke of Clarence, seems to have originally intended to pass himself as Edward V. Perkin Warbeck, who appeared some years after, called himself Edward's brother, Richard, duke of York.