Princes in the Tower under the staircase in the Tower of London. The bones were widely accepted at the time as those of the princes, but this has not been proven and is far from certain. King Charles II had the bones buried in Westminster Abbey, where they remain. On 9 April 1483, Edward IV of England died unexpectedly after an illness lasting around three weeks. At the time, Edward's son, the new King Edward V, was at Ludlow Castle, and the dead king's brother, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, was at Middleham Castle in Yorkshire. The news reached Gloucester around 15 April, although he
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