Princes and Management of a conspiracy

I am far, far from being anything but a newbie. However, given the shifting circumstances of their lives - and I mean all the Plantagenet's - I would imagine those boys HAD to know that life was scary as hell for them. Richard and George were sent abroad, and that had to be family lore.
Even if Richard had dispatched a few relatives, that was pretty common during their lives, and I think, would have been less scary than we think. I agree about the personal space and how very difficult it would have been to conceal them, and yet........ Does this not bring us back to why have those remains in the urn remained sacrosanct and never tested, and it is taken as the gospel that they are the princes. I try and avoid conspiracy theories, but this is a Royal puzzle, which would be wonderful to solve!



From: [mailto:] On Behalf Of A J Hibbard
Sent: Tuesday, April 23, 2013 12:43 PM
To:
Subject: Management of a conspiracy



I keep trying to put this aside to work on other things, but y'all know how
that goes--

I like the idea that Richard was a whopping success at concealing what he
did with his nephews (who, in this message, for brevity's sake & however
incorrectly, I'll just call "the princes"). But before I can convince
myself that this is true, I find I have a whole slew of questions.

Baldwin says it's really about how *many* people knew what happened. Which
echoes what my husband always says every time we talk about any conspiracy
(& here in the States were are chock-a-block with them - I cut my teeth on
the Kennedy Assassination & have demonstrated my own lack of discrimination
by swinging in every possible direction it's possible to swing on that
one). It's hard to keep everybody involved quiet.

As King, Richard clearly could not personally have taken the boys off
somewhere & told them to keep their mouths shut; I don't think medieval
monarchs really had that much personal space, not to mention how compliant
a couple of nephews would have been who hardly knew their uncle, an uncle
who had just executed a couple of relatives that at least one of them did
know well. And, as soon as Richard handed them off, even if up to that
point he had been the only one with them, immediately someone else would
have known what was going on. Did the princes agree to "keep quiet?" And
allowed themselves to be handed about with false identities? If Perkin
Warbeck was indeed one of the princes, he evidently never made such an
agreement or thought better of it later.

If Richard really did value loyalty as a personal attribute (was Loyaulte
me lie understood to be his personal & consistent motto, or was it used
sporadically, & interchangeably with others?) how good was he in
recognizing it in others? We know he was pretty terrible at managing those
who he ought to have predicted would be self-serving &/or disloyal. Did
he, on the other hand, have a body of associates who valued loyalty to the
degree he did & so didn't really need to be "managed?" And if so, who were
they & what happened to them after Bosworth?

Were the princes hidden in England? If so, for how long? Were they hidden
in plain sight? (References to the children's breakfast in the household
regulations for the castle in the north (sorry name currently unretrievable
from my non-peripheral brain) where the King's Council was held? I do
think, given the context in which they occur amongst other documents, that
most of the references to the "Lord Bastard" are likely to refer to
Richard's bastard son John. If, as Doug just mentioned, Perkin Warbeck
didn't surface until 1490, who had him in charge until then?

I really have to go - late for an appointment....

A J