Buck and others, who have endeavoured to disprove King Richard's guilt, have rested much of their argument on the fact that the remains of Edward and his brother never could be found iu the Tower, although much search had been made for tbem ; but on the 17th of July 1674, in making some alterations, the labourers found covered with a heap of stones at the foot of an old pair of stairs a quantity of partially-consumed bones, which on examination appeared to be those of two boys of the ages of the two princes. They were removed by order of Charles II. to Henry VIL's Chapel in West minster Abbey, where the inscription placed over them recites that they appeared by undoubted indications to be those of Edward V. and his brother. (" Casa desideratorum diu at multum quresita, &e., scalarum in ruderibus (smite istte ad sacellum Tunis Albre nurser ducebant) alto defossa, indiciis certiesimis aunt reperta, Sic.") This discovery is sufficiently in conformity with More's account, who tells us that Tyrrel caused the murderers to bury the bodies "at the stair foot, meetly deep in the ground under a great heap of stones." It is true he mentions a report that Richard "allowed not the burying in so vile a corner, saying that he would have them buried in a better place, because they were a king's sons ; whereupon they any that a priest of Sir Robert Brackenbury's took up the bodies again, and secretly interred them in such place as, by the occasion of his death which only knew it, could never since come to light." This however is evidently a story both improbable in itself, and one which, although' it might naturally enough arise and get into circulation, could never have rested on any trustworthy authority. More gives it as a mere rumour, and we may fairly infer, from the words (" as I have heard ") with which it is introduced, that he did not himself believe it. He carefully adds, in his notice of the examination of Tyrrel and Dighton, " but whither the bodies were removed they could nothing tell."
Tyrrel was executed for his treason ; but Dighton still lived when More wrote. He says of him, "Dighton indeed yet walketh on alive, in good possibility to be hanged ero he die." According to Grafton, "Dighton lived at Calais long after, no less disdained and bated than pointed at." The reader may also compare upou this subject the account of the examinations of Tyrrel and Dighton given by Bacon in his History of King Henry VII.' (Montagu's edition of Bacon's Works, iii., 287, 288.) It agrees very closely with the story told by More. Bacon says that Dighton, who was set at liberty after the examinations, "was the principal means of divulging this tradition; " and from the use of that expression it has been iuferred that Bacon regarded the whole as an idle tale ; but he has in several places in this work distinctly expressed his belief of the guilt both of Richard and Tyrrel, especially in his notice (p. 385) of the execution of Tyrrel, " against whom," he says, " the blood of the innocent princes, Edward V. and his brother, did still cry from under the altar.' Tyrrell' examination, we may observe, appears to have taken place in 1493, but be was not executed till 1503. He was committed to the Tower in the first of these years on the appearance of Perkin Warbeck, expressly that he might be examined touching the murder; and it was on quite another charge that he was executed ten years after. More's account therefore of the circumstances of his confession is slightly inaccurate. He does not however expressly say, as Sir James Mackiutosh makes him do (' Hist. ii. 59), that Tyrrel "confessed his guilt when he was executed twenty years after for concealing the murder of the Earl of Suffolk." Bacon himself, who relates, in their proper places, both his first imprisonment and his execution, says, inaccurately, that he was beheaded "soon after" the examinations, [Iticuaan