Product Description

The spectacle of the cruel, hunchbacked king, Richard III, ending once and for all the menacing existence of his brother's two sons by committing an abhorrent crime is one of the most fearful and enduring moments in English history. Elizabeth Jenkins does not pretend that Richard was innocent of the murder of the two young princes but she presents the crime more as a serious blunder than the action of a thorough-paced criminal, and thus all the more alarming. Paying scrupulous attention to the period, Elizabeth Jenkins assesses the influence of the savage struggle of York and Lancaster for the crown, the fatal breach in the family bond caused by Edward IV's execution of his brother, the Duke of Clarence, and the wide-spread unpopularity of his Queen, Elizabeth Woodville. In 1674 Charles II gave orders that workmen at the Tower of London should clear the White Tower of "all contiguous buildings". When they demolished the external staircase they found, under the bottom stair, at a depth of ten feet, a wooden chest. In it were the skeletons of two children, aged 12 and 10.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1174971 in Books
• Published on: 2002-03-14
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

About the Author
Elizabeth Jenkins was educated at St Christopher School, Letchworth, and Newnham College, Cambridge. A distinguished novelist, historian and biographer she was awarded the Femina Vie Heureuse Prize in 1934 for her novel HARRIET, and she received the OBE in 1981.

Customer Reviews

Somewhat Lacking
Firstly, Jenkins' book is not really about the Princes in the Tower - it's a bit of a misnomer. It covers the events of the Wars of the Roses period, which has an important bearing on the fate of the two children, but you would expect a reader of a book on the princes to be au fait with the main events which had gone before, allowing merely for a brief summary and then a more detailed analysis of particularly relevant events to support Jenkins' arguments.

As a history of the Wars of the Roses, the book is not bad, but I have read better. Geoffrey Richardson' concise analysis in The Hollow Crowns is an excellent example. On the Princes, Jenkins adopts pretty much the Traditionalist stance, but I do not feel she presents much of a case either for why this is the right explanation or manages to successfully deconstruct any Revisionist theories. She gives more credit to More's writings than I would allow and seems to have decided that John Russell was definitely the author of the Croyland Chronicle Continuation and that the bones discovered in the Tower in the reign of Charles II must be those of the Princes when it's not even clear what period they are from and even if they are actually male.

Somewhat Lacking
Geoffrey Richardson' concise analysis in The Hollow Crowns is an excellent example. On the Princes, Jenkins adopts pretty much the Traditionalist stance, but I do not feel she presents much of a case either for why this is the right explanation or manages to successfully deconstruct any Revisionist theories. To conclude, I would recommend that you give this book a miss - there are much better titles out there both in their analysis of the Wars of the Roses and the fate of the Princes. I remain unconvinced by Jenkins.

Misnomer
While Elizabeth Jenkins assembles all of the information regarding the end of the family of York in an easy-to-read fashion, it is only, at best, an introduction with very little new information to add to the fascinating story of Edward IV, Richard III and the princes. Her title "The Princes in the Tower" leads one to believe that this book delves primarily into the disappearance of the two boys, Edward V and Richard duke of York. In actual fact, the story begins with the boys grandfather, Richard duke of Mortimer and only spends two to three chapters on the boys. One would do better to read Ross or Pollard concerning the fate of the boys.