Edward V (2 November 1470 – presumably July 1483) was King of England from 9 April to 25 June 1483. He succeeded his father, Edward IV, upon the latter's death. Edward V was never crowned, and his brief reign was dominated by the influence of his uncle and Lord Protector, the Duke of Gloucester, who deposed him to reign as King Richard III. This was confirmed by the Titulus Regius, an act of Parliament that denounced any further claims through Edward IV's heirs by delegitimising Edward V and all of his siblings. The act was later repealed by parliament under Henry VII, who married Elizabeth of York, Edward V's eldest sister.
Edward V and his younger brother, Richard of Shrewsbury, are known as the Princes in the Tower. They disappeared after being sent to heavily guarded royal lodgings in the Tower of London. Responsibility for their disappearance, and presumed deaths, is widely attributed to Richard III, who sent them to the Tower, but the lack of conclusive evidence and conflicting contemporary accounts allow for other possibilities.
Early life and Prince of Wales
Edward was born on 2 November 1470 at Cheyneygates, the medieval house of the Abbot of Westminster adjoining Westminster Abbey. His mother, Elizabeth Woodville, had sought sanctuary there from Lancastrian supporters who had deposed his father, the Yorkist king Edward IV, during the Wars of the Roses. Edward was created Prince of Wales in June 1471, following his father's restoration to the throne, and in 1473 was established at Ludlow Castle on the Welsh Marches as nominal president of the newly created Council of Wales and the Marches. In 1479, his father conferred the earldom of Pembroke on him; it merged into the crown on his succession.
Prince Edward was placed under the supervision of the queen's brother, Anthony Woodville, 2nd Earl Rivers, a noted scholar. In a letter to Rivers, Edward IV set out precise conditions for his son's upbringing and the management of the prince's household. Edward was to "arise every morning at a convenient hour, according to his age". His day began with matins and then Mass, which he was to receive without interruption. After breakfast, his education commenced with "virtuous learning". Dinner was served from ten in the morning, after which he was to be read "noble stories ... of virtue, honour, cunning, wisdom, and of deeds of worship" but "of nothing that should move or stir him to vice". The king, perhaps mindful of his own vices, instructed Rivers to ensure that no one in the prince's household was a habitual "swearer, brawler, backbiter, common hazarder, adulterer, [or user of] words of ribaldry". After further study, in the afternoon the prince was to take part in sporting activities suitable for his rank before evensong. Supper was served from four, and curtains were drawn at eight. After this, his attendants were to "enforce themselves to make him merry and joyous towards his bed". They then watched over him as he slept.
Dominic Mancini wrote of the young Edward V:
In word and deed he gave so many proofs of his liberal education, of polite nay rather scholarly, attainments far beyond his age; ... his special knowledge of literature ... enabled him to discourse elegantly, to understand fully, and to declaim most excellently from any work whether in verse or prose that came into his hands, unless it were from the more abstruse authors. He had such dignity in his whole person, and in his face such charm, that however much they might gaze, he never wearied the eyes of beholders.
As with several of his other children, Edward IV planned a prestigious European marriage for his eldest son. In 1480, he concluded an alliance with Francis II, Duke of Brittany, whereby Prince Edward was betrothed to the duke's four-year-old daughter and heiress, Anne. The pair were to marry upon reaching majority, with their eldest son inheriting England, and their second son Brittany.
It was at Ludlow that the 12-year-old Edward received the news, on Monday 14 April 1483, of his father's sudden death five days before. Edward IV's will, which has not survived, nominated his trusted brother Richard, Duke of Gloucester, as Protector during the minority of his son. The new king left Ludlow on 24 April. Richard left York a day earlier, planning to meet him at Northampton and travel to London together. When Richard reached Northampton, however, Edward and his party had already travelled onward to Stony Stratford, Buckinghamshire. The Earl Rivers travelled back to Northampton to meet Richard and Buckingham, who had now arrived. On the night of 29 April, Richard dined with Rivers and Edward's half-brother, Richard Grey, but the following morning Rivers, Grey, and the king's chamberlain, Thomas Vaughan, were arrested and sent north. Despite Richard's assurances, all three were subsequently executed. Dominic Mancini, an Italian who visited England in the 1480s, reports that Edward protested, but the remainder of his entourage was dismissed and Richard escorted him to London. On 19 May 1483, the new king took up residence in the Tower of London; on 16 June, his younger brother Richard of Shrewsbury, Duke of York joined him there.
The Privy Council had at first hoped for a speedy coronation, to avoid the need for a protectorate. This had previously happened with Richard II, who had become king at the age of ten. Another precedent was Henry VI, whose protectorate, which began when he inherited the crown aged nine months, had ended with his coronation aged seven. Richard, however, repeatedly postponed the coronation.
On 22 June, Ralph Shaa preached a sermon declaring that Edward IV had already been contracted to marry Lady Eleanor Butler when he married Elizabeth Woodville, thereby rendering his marriage to Elizabeth invalid and their children together illegitimate. The children of Richard's older brother George, Duke of Clarence, were barred from the throne by their father's attainder. On 25 June, an assembly of Lords and Commons declared Richard to be the lawful king. This was later confirmed by the act of parliament Titulus Regius. The following day he acceded to the throne as King Richard III.
Dominic Mancini recorded that after Richard III seized the throne, Edward and his brother Richard were taken into the "inner apartments of the Tower" and then were seen less and less until late summer to early autumn 1483, when they disappeared from public view altogether. During this period, Mancini records that Edward was regularly visited by a doctor, who stated that Edward, "like a victim prepared for sacrifice, sought remission of his sins by daily confession and penance, because he believed that death was facing him." The Latin reference to Argentinus medicus was previously translated as "a doctor from Strasbourg", because the Latin name for Strasbourg, Argentoratum, was still current at the time. However, D. E. Rhodes suggests it may refer instead to "Doctor Argentine", whom he identifies as John Argentine, an English physician who later served as provost of King's College, Cambridge, and as doctor to Arthur, Prince of Wales, eldest son of King Henry VII of England.
The princes' fate after their disappearance remains unknown, but the most widely accepted theory is that they were murdered on the orders of their uncle, King Richard. Thomas More (1478–1535) wrote that they were smothered to death with their pillows, and his account forms the basis of William Shakespeare's play Richard III, in which Tyrrell murders the princes on Richard's orders. In the absence of hard evidence, a number of other theories have been put forward. The most widely discussed are that they were murdered on the orders of Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham, or by Henry Tudor. However, A. J. Pollard argues that these theories are less plausible than the straightforward one that they were murdered by their uncle, who in any case controlled access to them and was regarded as responsible for their welfare. In the period before the boys' disappearance, Edward was regularly being visited by a doctor; historian David Baldwin extrapolates that contemporaries may have believed Edward had died of an illness, or as the result of attempts to cure him. An alternative theory is that Perkin Warbeck, a pretender to the throne, was indeed Richard, Duke of York, as he claimed, having escaped to Flanders after his uncle's defeat at Bosworth to be raised by his aunt, Margaret, Duchess of Burgundy.