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 Abbey, but the Abbey authorities have refused to allow either set of remains to be subjected to DNA analysis to positively identify them as the remains of the princes. Several sources suggest there were rumours of the princes' deaths in the time following their disappearance. Rumours of murder also spread to France. In January 1484 , Lord Chancellor of France, urged the Estates General to "take warning" from the fate of the princes, as their own king, Charles VIII, was only 13. The early reports, including that of Rochefort, Philippe de Commines (French politician), Caspar Weinreich (contemporary German chronicler) and