Princes in the Tower act stated that Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville's marriage was invalid because of Edward's pre-contract of marriage with Lady Eleanor Butler. Gloucester was crowned King Richard III of England on 3 July. The declaration of the boys' illegitimacy has been described by Rosemary Horrox as an ex post facto justification for Richard's accession. Dominic Mancini, an Italian friar who visited England in the 1480s and who was in London in the spring and summer of 1483, recorded that after Richard III seized the throne, Edward and his younger brother Richard were taken into the "inner apartments of the Tower" and
Princes in the Tower account with the intention of writing about a moral point rather than a closely mirrored history. While More's account does rely on some firsthand sources, the account is generally taken from other sources. Additionally, More's account is one of the bases for William Shakespeare's "Richard III", which similarly indicts Richard for murdering the young princes. In 1675, some workmen remodelling the Tower of London dug up a wooden box containing two small human skeletons. The bones were found buried 10 ft under the staircase leading to the chapel of the White Tower. They were not the first children's skeletons found