Wars of the Roses Thomas Bourchier, the Archbishop of Canterbury, then persuaded Elizabeth Woodville to allow her younger son, the 9-year-old Richard, Duke of York, to join Edward in the Tower. Having secured the boys, Robert Stillington, Bishop of Bath and Wells then alleged that Edward IV's marriage to Elizabeth Woodville had been illegal and that the two boys were therefore illegitimate. Richard then claimed the crown as King Richard III. The two imprisoned boys, known as the "Princes in the Tower", disappeared and are assumed to have been murdered. There was never a trial or judicial inquest on the matter. Perkin Warbeck claimed
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