Anthony Willis family tree » Edward Plantagenet King V (1470-1483)

Personal data Edward Plantagenet King V 

• He was born on November 4, 1470 in Westminster, Worcester, Massachusetts, USA.Sources 2, 3, 5, 6, 8
• He died on June 22, 1483 in London, England, he was 12 years old.Sources 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8
• He is buried in Westminster, London, England.Sources 5, 6
• A child of Edward Plantagnet and Elizabeth Wydville Woodville

Household of Edward Plantagenet King V

Notes about Edward Plantagenet King V

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_V_of_England

Edward V (2 November 1470 – 29 July 1483?) was King of England from 9 April 1483 until his deposition two months later. His reign was dominated by the influence of his uncle Richard, Duke of Gloucester, who succeeded him as Richard III. Along with his younger brother Richard of Shrewsbury, Duke of York, Edward was one of the Princes in the Tower, who disappeared after being sent (ostensibly for their own safety) to the Tower of London. Responsibility for their deaths is widely attributed to Richard III, but the actual events have remained controversial for centuries.

The mysterious disappearance of a boy claimant to the English throne, possibly at the hands of his uncle, mirrors the presumed death of Arthur, Duke of Brittany in 1203.

Along with Edward VIII, and the disputed Matilda and Jane, Edward V is one of only four English monarchs since the Norman Conquest never to have been crowned. If, as seems likely, he died before his fifteenth birthday, he is the shortest-lived monarch in English history (his great-nephew Edward VI died in his sixteenth year).

Edward was born on 2 November 1470 in Westminster Abbey. His mother, Elizabeth Woodville, had sought sanctuary there from Lancastrians who had deposed his father, the Yorkist King Edward IV, during the course of the Wars of the Roses. Edward was created Prince of Wales in June 1471, following Edward IV's restoration to the throne,and in 1473 was established at Ludlow Castle on the Welsh Marches as nominal president of a newly-created Council of Wales and the Marches.

It was at Ludlow that the 12-year-old prince received news of his father's sudden death on 9 April 1483. Edward IV's will, which has not survived, nominated his trusted brother Richard, Duke of Gloucester, as Protector during the minority of his son. Both the new king and his party from the west, and Richard from the north, set out for London, converging inStony Stratford, Buckinghamshire.[3] On the night of 29 April Richard met and dined with Earl Rivers and Edward's half-brother, Richard Grey, but the following morning Rivers and Grey, along with the king's chamberlain, Thomas Vaughan, were arrested and sent north.[4] They were all subsequently executed. Mancini reports that Edward protested, but the remainder of his entourage was dismissed and Richard escorted him to London, where the new king took up residence in the Tower of London. On 16 June he was joined by his younger brother, Richard, Duke of York.

Edward's coronation was repeatedly postponed and then, on 22 June, Ralph Shaa presented evidence in a sermon 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, and therefore, on 25 June, an assembly of Lords and Commons declared Richard to be the legitimate king (this was later confirmed by the act of parliament Titulus Regius). The following day he acceded to the throne as King Richard III.

After Richard III's accession, the princes were gradually seen less and less within the Tower, and by the end of the summer of 1483 they had disappeared from public view altogether. Their fate remains unknown, but it is generally believed that they were murdered. The five principal suspects are King Richard, his erstwhile ally Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham; Richard's servant James Tyrrell, and Margaret Beaufort and her son Henry Tudor, who defeated Richard at Bosworth Field and took the throne as Henry VII. As king, Henry claimed that Richard was the murderer, and this became the official version of events.

Thomas More wrote that the princes 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. Subsequent re-evaluations of Richard III have questioned his guilt, but in 1992 Alison Weirconcluded that the ultimate responsibility could only lie with Richard, considering the time line of the events, and what Richard III had done, and more significantly what he had not done, to distance himself from the disappearance of the princes.[5]

Bones were discovered in 1674 by workmen rebuilding a stairway in the Tower, and these were subsequently placed in Westminster Abbey, in an urn bearing the names of Edward and Richard. However it has never been proven that the bones belonged to the princes. In 1789, workmen carrying out repairs in St George's Chapel, Windsor, rediscovered and accidentally broke into the vault of Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville. Adjoining this was another vault, which was found to contain the coffins of two children. However, this tomb was inscribed with the names of two of Edward IV's children: George, 1st Duke of Bedford who had died at the age of 2, and Mary of York who had died at the age of 14; both had predeceased the King.[6]

In 1486 Edward's sister, Elizabeth, married Henry VII, thereby uniting the Houses of York and Lancaster.

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Timeline Edward Plantagenet King V

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