Gloucester then got a creature, a brother of the Lord Mayor, to preach at Paul’s Cross from the text (Wisdom iv. 3), “Bastard slips shall not take deep root,” a sermon impugning the validity of Edward’s marriage, but the immediate result was to fill the listeners with shame and indignation. The Duke of Buckingham made a speech of the like character at the Guildhall, and it became known that Gloucester was getting an army together. So a packed assembly went to the schemer and offered him the crown, which he with feigned reluctance accepted. This was on June 28, 1483, and on July 6 he was crowned at Westminster. Immediately afterwards he started on a progress through the country with the intention of strengthening his position by granting privileges and making promises, but the conscience of the Londoners and of the country was roused, and almost immediately a fresh shock was given by the news that the boy King and his brother had been murdered in the Tower. There can be no doubt of the main fact, but the precise date is uncertain. Richard had placed the two boys under the care of Sir Robert Brackenbury, and after he had left London sent a message ordering him to kill them. When Brackenbury refused he sent Sir James Tyrrell with a warrant to receive possession of the Tower keys. Tyrrell’s groom, John Dighton, with one of the gaolers, Miles Forrest, entered the chamber of the two boys in the Bloody Tower, killed them, called on Tyrrell to recognize the bodies, then buried them at the foot of a staircase. This was some time in the latter part of August, and was not divulged until it was known that a plot was hatching to place the young Edward upon the throne. The life of Richard III, which bears the name of Sir Thomas More as its author, but which appears to have been written by Cardinal Morton and edited by More, gives information which may be implicitly trusted as to the circumstances of this cruel murder. The new king, superstitious as wicked men so frequently are, was uneasy in his mind, and ordered the Tower priest to remove the bodies, and he did so, but dying soon after, no one could ascertain where he had laid them. More does not know, and says so frankly. Shakespeare expresses the uncertainty:— The Chaplain of the Tower hath buried them, But where, to say the truth, I do not know. Henry VII would have been glad to learn at the time when Perkin Warbeck was declaring that he was one of the alleged murdered boys. It was not until the reign of Charles II that two skeletons were found under the old stone steps of the royal chapel in the great keep. They were covered with earth and had been carefully bestowed. As they answered in every way to the bones which had been vainly sought after it was concluded, and certainly with probability, that they were the bones of the murdered children, and they were laid, by King Charles’s command, in a royal sepulchre in Westminster Abbey. FOOTNOTE: