The innocent blood was, however, avenged in the following reign. In 1502 Tyrell was beheaded, not on the charge of murdering the Princes, but for aiding John de la Pole to make his escape; this John de la Pole was Richard’s nephew, upon whom he had settled the succession after his own death. Tyrell, it is said, confessed to the murder of the little Princes shortly before his execution. Dighton, who was hanged at Calais shortly after Tyrell’s execution, also confessed his share in the murder, and his knowledge of the bodies of the children having first been buried by a priest near the Wakefield Tower, and subsequently in some other place unknown to him. [Illustration: _The Wakefield Tower, time of George III._] The earliest historian who wrote an account of this double murder was the French chronicler, Philip de Commines, a contemporary of Richard III. In his Chronicles occurs this passage relating to the King: “il fist mourir ses deux nepheux, et se fist roy appellé Richard III.” Two contemporary English authors have also written to the same effect. The first of these is a Londoner named Arnold, who, in his “Chronicles of the Customs of London,” states that in the year 1484 “the two sons of Kynge Edward were put to silence.” The second is Fabyan, from whom I have already quoted in these pages. He writes, “Kynge Edward V., and his broder the Duke of York, were put under suer Kepynge within the Tower, in such wyse that they never came abrode after,” and he adds, “common fame went that Kynge Richard hadde within the Tower put unto secrete deth the two sons of his broder Edward the IV.” Sir Thomas More, in a history which he did not write himself, for it was written by Morton, the Bishop of Ely, but which More published, also asserts as a fact that the Princes were murdered. Polydore Vergil, Hall, Stowe, and Bacon have all written to similar effect. Horace Walpole amused himself—much in the same way as did Archbishop Whateley in later days—by writing a clever skit entitled, “Historic Doubts of the Life and Reign of King Richard III.,” in which that amusing and prolific writer of gossiping letters casts doubt on the very existence of such a being as King Richard III., which, if proven, would do away with the existence of the little Princes. But I imagine that “Horry” had as firm a belief that the Princes were destroyed by their uncle in the Tower, as the Archbishop had in the existence of Napoleon. The tragic death of the sons of the fourth Edward has been a favourite subject both with poets and painters. Two of Paul de la Roche’s finest paintings represent the brothers in the Tower, and one of Millais’ most successful and characteristic works is a group of the two boy princes standing together on the prison stairs, and seeming to listen for their murderers’ approach. And who does not recall, when thinking of that tragedy, the matchless pathos of the lines describing the scene as spoken by Tyrell in _Richard III._: