Richard had been made king by act of Parliament
and then go on to write:
The princes were the rightful heirs of Edward IV .
Titulus Regius the "act" enacted by Parliament under threat of arms by Richard the Usurper invalidated the Prince's claim to the throne. Thus, both of your statements cannot be true.
Titulus Regius the "act" enacted by Parliament under threat of arms by Richard the Usurper invalidated the Prince's claim to the throne. Thus, both of your statements cannot be true.
However, much of Henry Tudor's quite precarious claim to the throne and, more importantly, his SOLE BASIS for declaring Richard to be a usurper was predicated on Titulus Regius being invalid. One of his first acts as king was to have Parliament declare the act invalid and to have all known copies destroyed.
So, IF (and I will acknowledge that it is only an if) the Princes were alive after Bosworth, Tudor would have been forced to acknowledge that they were the rightful heirs to the throne and not him or his wife.
As you mention in other posts, Mancini's writings (not a diary, but a report written for the French court) are important; however, they were not without bias. Mancini spent much of his time being told by Lancastrian supporters what was going on. It is uncertain how much English he actually understood. More importantly, it is not known WHEN he actually left England.
You are absolutely correct that Tudor used RUMORS of the Princes being murdered as the basis for securing French assistance to equip an army. But that doesn't negate the fact that HIS claim to the throne was completely invalid if the Princes were alive.
The bottom line is that we will never know for certain what the true fate of the Princes was or who was responsible. They neither the first nor the last Royals to be eliminated for personal gain, but they are among the most talked about because their fate (regardless of the perpetrator) culminated in major transformation of England. One thing we DO know is that neither Richard nor Henry had any qualms about eliminating anyone they perceived to be a threat (it was, unfortunately, the accepted practice of the era) and cases can be made for either one being responsible for the fate of the Princes.
It is said that history is written by the victors and the Tudors certainly benefited from this. More and Shakespeare both owed much to Tudor patronage, so it is hardly surprising that they would treat Richard as an evil villain even if untrue.
I think one of the best things to come from the discovery of Richard's remains and his subsequent internment is that, in today's society where so many are ignorant about history, people are actually taking the time to figure out what all the fuss was about. Many people had HEARD of the War of the Roses, Bosworth Field and the Princes in the Tower, but, just as with the Jacobites, they have never really understood what it was really about and this has prompted many to find out.