Editing Princes in the Tower (section)

===Henry VII===
Henry VII (Henry Tudor), following his seizure of the crown, executed some of the rival claimants to the throne.<ref>Cawthorne, Nigel. ''Kings and Queens of England.'' New York: Metro Books, 2010. Print. p. 89.</ref> [[John of Gloucester]], illegitimate son of Richard III, is said by some sources to have been one of those executed.<ref name=Markham/><ref name="RH" /> Henry was out of the country between the princes' disappearance and August 1485, thus his only opportunity to murder them would have been after his accession in 1485. Pollard suggests Henry (or those acting on his orders) is "the only plausible alternative to Richard III".<ref name=Pollard/>

The year after becoming king, Henry married the princes' eldest sister, [[Elizabeth of York]], to reinforce his claim to the throne. Not wanting the legitimacy of his wife or her claim as heir of Edward IV called into question, prior to the marriage he had repealed the ''Titulus Regius'' which had previously declared the princes (and Elizabeth) illegitimate.<ref name=Markham/> Markham (1906) suggested that the princes were executed under Henry's orders between 16 June and 16 July 1486, claiming that it was only after this date that orders went out to circulate the story that Richard had killed the princes;<ref name=Markham/> this claim has been disproven.<ref name=Gairdner/> Markham also suggested that the princes' mother, Elizabeth Woodville, knew that this story was false, and that this was the motivation behind Henry's decision, in February 1487, to confiscate all of Elizabeth's lands and possessions, and have her confined to [[Bermondsey Abbey]], "where she died six years afterwards".<ref name=Markham/> However, Arlene Okerlund suggests that her retirement to the abbey was her own decision,<ref name="Ref_i">Arlene Okerlund, ''Elizabeth: England's Slandered Queen''. Stroud: Tempus, 2006, 245.</ref> while Michael Bennett and Timothy Elston suggest the move was precautionary, precipitated by [[Lambert Simnel]]'s claim to be her son Richard.<ref>Bennett, Michael, ''Lambert Simnel and the Battle of Stoke'', New York, St. Martin's Press, 1987, pp.42; 51; Elston, Timothy, "Widowed Princess or Neglected Queen" in Levin & Bucholz (eds), ''Queens and Power in Medieval and Early Modern England'', University of Nebraska Press, 2009, p. 19.</ref> Pollard calls Markham's theory "highly speculative", and states that Henry's silence over the princes was more likely "political calculation than personal guilt".<ref>Pollard p 130</ref> Henry was also never accused of the murder by any contemporary, not even by his enemies, which he likely would have been had contemporaries thought there was any possibility of his guilt.<ref name="Jonathan Cape"/> Jeremy Potter, at the time he wrote Chairman of the [[Richard III Society]], noted, "With Henry, as with Richard, there is no real evidence and one must suspect that if he had killed the princes himself he would quickly have produced the corpses and some ingeniously appropriate story implicating Richard."<ref>{{cite book|last1=Potter|first1=Jeremy|title=Good King Richard? An Account of Richard III and his reputation|date=1983|publisher=Constable|location=London|page=128}}</ref> Further, Raphael Holinshed reported in 1577 that Richard "purged and declared his innocence" regarding "the murther of his nephews towards the world", indicating that the boys did indeed meet their end during Richard's days.<ref>Holinshed, Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland, 1577 p. 746.</ref> It is also unlikely that the princes would have been kept alive in secret by Richard for two years after their last sighting while rumours of his responsibility for their murder circulated.