George Plantagenet, 1st Duke of Clarence not present – Edward himself prosecuted his brother, and demanded that Parliament pass a Bill of Attainder against his brother, declaring that he was guilty of "unnatural, loathly treasons" which were aggravated by the fact that Clarence was his brother, who, if anyone did, owed him loyalty and love. Following his conviction, he was "privately executed" at the Tower on 18 February 1478, by tradition in the Bowyer Tower, and soon after the event, the rumour gained ground that he had been drowned in a butt of Malmsey wine. Richard III biographer Paul Murray Kendall believes that the reason that
Richard of York, 3rd Duke of York VII, he became an ancestor to all subsequent English monarchs. Richard of York was born on 21 September 1411, the son of Richard, 3rd Earl of Cambridge, by his wife Anne de Mortimer, the daughter of Roger Mortimer, 4th Earl of March. Anne Mortimer was the great-granddaughter of Lionel, Duke of Clarence, the second surviving son of King Edward III (r. 1327–1377). After the death in 1425 of Anne's childless brother Edmund, the 5th Earl of March, this ancestry supplied her son Richard, of the House of York, with a claim to the English throne that was, under English law,