SIR JAMES TYRELL was in France when Bosworth was fought. Henry VII, on his accession, deprived him of his offices and Welsh estates, but restored them in February 1486, by which time Tyrell had crossed from Calais to offer the new King his allegiance.
He fared much better than most of those who had faithfully served Richard III. In the summer of 1486 the King, of his own volition, ordered two pardons to be issued to Tyrell; there is no evidence that these related to the murder of the Princes, as has sometimes been suggested, and they were probably concerned with his misplaced loyalty to Richard III. In July Tyrell was reappointed Governor of Guisnes in the Pale of Calais and left England, having accepted lands in France in lieu of his Welsh estates.
He remained in Guisnes for sixteen years, rendering faithful service to the King. He served as Henry’s emissary on several diplomatic missions to the courts of Europe, and was created a Knight of the Body, a royal councillor and Constable of Guisnes. He visited England on occasion and took part in a tournament held in 1494 in celebration of Prince Henry’s creation as Duke of York. Tyrell also refused to become involved with any pretender, and was praised by the King for his faithfulness.
But in the summer of 1501, Tyrell stepped out of line. The late John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln, who had died fighting at Stoke in 1487, was the eldest of several sons born to Elizabeth Plantagenet, sister of Edward IV and widow of the Duke of Suffolk. Lincoln’s next brother, Edmund, was allowed by Henry VII to inherit the earldom of Suffolk but not the dukedom, because he had not the means to support it, and this rankled. The new Earl was a hot-headed, impetuous fool with grand designs on the throne of England, and in July 1501 he went voluntarily into exile in Flanders with his brother Richard, hoping to obtain support for their cause from Maximilian. On their way they visited Sir James Tyrell, who had probably known them as children during Richard III’s reign and earlier and he unwisely offered them assistance.
Sir Richard Nanfan, Deputy Lieutenant of Calais, found out what Tyrell had done and that he had done it in the full knowledge that Suffolk was planning to overthrow Henry VII. This was treason of the first order and Nanfan duly reported what he knew to the Council in London, though Henry VII at first refused to believe it and others accused Nanfan of maliciously seeking to do Tyrell harm. However, when Sir Robert Curzon, described by Vergil as an agent of the King, laid before the Council information which corroborated Nanfan’s allegations, Henry had to accept that Tyrell was guilty, and not only Tyrell, because there was now evidence that Lord William Courtenay (husband of the Queen’s sister Katherine), William de la Pole (Suffolk’s brother) and others were involved. The King suspected a far-reaching conspiracy against him, and in October 1501 ordered the arrest of all concerned, who were then publicly proclaimed traitors. Suffolk and his brother Richard were out of reach: Suffolk was not arrested until he was extradited to England in 1506, and not executed until 1513, and Richard de la Pole remained abroad, a thorn in the side of the Tudors until he was killed at the Battle of Pavia in 1525. But William de la Pole was incarcerated in the Tower and remained there, in relative comfort, until his death thirty-eight years later. Other conspirators, including Courtenay, were also imprisoned. A luckless few were executed.
Early in 1502 Henry VII, angry because Tyrell was still at liberty in Guisnes Castle, insisted that he be apprehended without delay. Tyrell refused to surrender to the King’s officers and began to prepare the castle for a siege as the Calais garrison, loyal to Henry VII, took up its position outside the walls. Then Richard Fox, Bishop of Winchester and Lord Privy Seal, asked to speak with Tyrell, and was admitted to the castle, where he promised him, in the King’s name, a safe-conduct to England, assuring him he was in no danger. Tyrell at length agreed to go with him, but he refused to surrender the castle, leaving his son Thomas to hold it against the King’s force.
In Calais harbour a battleship waited to convey Tyrell to England. He boarded it under escort and was soon in conversation with John, Lord Dynham, the Lord Treasurer, when the Captain of the Guard informed him that, unless he ordered his son to surrender Guisnes Castle, he would be thrown overboard without delay. Tyrell complied, and both he and his son were arrested on board ship and put in chains. On arrival in England both were sent to the Tower.
‘Very truth it is,’ writes More, ‘and well known that at such time as Sir James Tyrell was in the Tower for treason, both Dighton and he were examined and confessed the murder [of the Princes], but whither the bodies were removed they could nothing tell,’ for they too had been misled by tales of a reburial.
No official record or transcript of Tyrell’s confession survives today, but it must have existed at one time because More describes it as his chief source, implying that he had seen it, and the details in his account, which occur nowhere else, argue its authenticity. More may also have obtained some information from Mary Tyrell and other inmates of the Minories and from John Dighton. Bacon says that, after being interrogated, Dighton was set at liberty and granted a pension on condition that he left England and took up residence in Calais. He also states that Dighton was ‘the principal means of divulging this tradition’. More, writing in the reign of Henry VIII, seems to have traced Dighton, for he knew he ‘yet walks alive and in good possibility to be hanged ere he die’, which suggests he had either returned from exile without permission, or was living a life of crime. Dighton’s interrogation could only have taken place if Tyrell had revealed details of the murder and his accomplices under questioning. Otherwise, why would the government have gone to the trouble of tracing and examining Dighton also?
More implies in his account that Henry VII himself had divulged the contents of Tyrell’s confession and had disclosed that Dighton was still alive and free. Bacon says the King ‘gave out’ that the statements of Tyrell and Dighton corroborated each other. However, there is no extant record of any public statement being made by the King about the death of the Princes, which argues that Henry VII probably ‘gave out’ his information to his trusted advisers only, many of whom were known to More.
More’s account became accepted as the truth by every Tudor writer on the subject. Thanks to More, we have a good idea of what was in the confession, and the striking thing about More’s account is that it substantiates many of the rumours, from as far back as 1483, and also the circumstantial evidence dating from Richard III’s reign.
The revisionists have frequently disputed the fact that Tyrell ever made such a confession, but without backing their claim by convincing arguments. Here, after all, was an eye-witness account of the murder of the Princes, and it was believed to be the truth by a man of great learning and integrity who was in a position to check its veracity. Such powerful evidence cannot easily be ignored. It has been suggested that Tyrell was forced into making a confession to suit Henry VII’s purposes. If so, why did he involve Dighton? It is far more likely that Tyrell, facing death, with nothing to lose and the hope of absolution and thereafter Heaven, was only too relieved to unburden himself. He was not necessarily looking for a reward, nor coerced by fear, but perhaps seeking the salvation of his soul. It is also significant that he was never charged with collusion in the murder.
It has been suggested that Henry VII fabricated this confession. If so, why did he not use it for propaganda purposes? Why bother to go to such trouble for nothing? There are very good reasons for accepting Tyrell’s confession as genuine, but the fact remains that Henry VII did not publicise or make use of it. It would seemingly, for many reasons, have been to his advantage to accord the widest publicity to the information he had received, which he had after all been seeking for years: nevertheless there were equally compelling reasons why the confession should be suppressed.
Firstly, it would be in keeping with Henry’s general policy of ‘least said, soonest mended’ with regard to the history of the House of York. Secondly, the King was hoping to preserve the precious alliance with Spain. Prince Arthur had just died and Henry was hoping to marry his widow, Katherine of Aragon, to the young Duke of York, now heir to the throne. But her father, King Ferdinand, had in the past expressed deep concern over the insecurity of the English crown; it was because of this that Henry had had Warwick executed. Therefore in the spring of 1502 the last thing that Henry wanted was adverse publicity about the fate of the Princes, especially since his son was not yet eleven and he himself was beginning to suffer symptoms of the disease, either cancer or tuberculosis, that was later to kill him.
Thirdly, the murder of the Princes had been very much to Henry’s own advantage. Should he publicise Tyrell’s involvement, people would view Tyrell’s previous steady advancement under Henry VII as highly suspicious, seeing it as a reward for carrying out the murder on Henry’s behalf. Henry had suffered enough public opprobrium for the killing of Warwick, and he dared not now accuse Tyrell, his faithful servant for sixteen years, for fear that people would lay the murder at his own door. He had seen what such rumours had done to Richard III’s reputation. It was one thing to learn that the Princes were really dead, but quite another to be known to have favoured their murderer.
Lastly, Henry’s chief motive in having Tyrell questioned had probably been his desire to trace the bodies of the children. Had he been able to do this he could have made out that the discovery of their remains had resulted from a search that he himself had ordered, and Tyrell’s involvement need never have been referred to. But Tyrell, of course, firmly believed that the bodies had been removed to an unknown grave or even, if rumour spoke the truth, buried at sea. It is unlikely, therefore, that Henry ordered a search to be made at the original burial site, as the bodies of the children were not found. Hence the confession was virtually worthless to Henry – without the bodies he was still no further forward.
The fact that Henry VII made no use of Tyrell’s confession therefore argues its authenticity. Its absence from official records and Vergil’s history proves how politically sensitive the issue still was. Only years later was More able to find out the truth about it, and even then his sources were reluctant to be identified. Clearly the issue was still a sensitive one when More’s book was written, and this may well be the reason why it was written for private circulation only.
On 2nd May, 1502, Sir James Tyrell was arraigned on a charge of high treason; his indictment specified that his crime was his traitorous association and correspondence with Suffolk. No mention was made of the murder of the Princes. Tyrell was found guilty, and on 6th May was beheaded on Tower Hill, apparently without making any speech to the watching crowd. A day later his son Thomas was also condemned to death, though Henry VII was merciful and spared his life. Three years later Thomas Tyrell managed to secure the reversal of the attainder on his father and himself.