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Portrait of Edward V

Monarchs · Lancaster & York

Edward V

1470–1483 (presumed)

House of York — the king who was never crowned

In office: 9 April – 25 June 1483

Twelve years old when his father died, he reigned for less than three months and was never crowned. Intercepted on the road from Ludlow by his uncle the Duke of Gloucester, lodged in the Tower with his younger brother, and declared illegitimate in June 1483, he disappeared that summer. What became of the two boys is the most argued-over cold case in English history.

How to spot them

  • ▸A reign of about eleven weeks in 1483, ending in deposition rather than death or abdication
  • ▸Clue words: 'Ludlow', 'Stony Stratford', 'Eleanor Butler', 'precontract', 'the Princes in the Tower'
  • ▸The elder of the two boys who vanished from the Tower
  • ▸No coronation, no known grave, and no agreed date of death
  • ▸Cross-reference: his disappearance belongs to the Wars of the Roses and to his uncle's reign

In the reign

A boy of twelve intercepted on the road from Ludlow at Stony Stratford in April 1483, his maternal uncle arrested before his eyes (1483)

Anthony Woodville, Earl Rivers, and the boy's half-brother Richard Grey were seized and later executed at Pontefract.

A coronation fixed for 22 June 1483, postponed, and then simply never held (1483)

The date was moved to November and then abandoned when the throne was claimed by the Protector.

A sermon at Paul's Cross in June 1483 alleging a dead king's earlier marriage contract with Lady Eleanor Butler (1483)

The precontract story, which made Edward IV's children by Elizabeth Woodville illegitimate.

A mother who took her younger children into sanctuary at Westminster, then gave up the second boy in June 1483 (1483)

Elizabeth Woodville surrendered Richard of Shrewsbury to join his brother in the Tower.

Two boys last recorded shooting and playing in the grounds of a royal fortress in the summer of 1483 (1483)

Sightings in the Tower grew rarer through the summer and then stopped altogether.

Bones found beneath a staircase in the White Tower in 1674 and reburied in Westminster Abbey on Charles II's orders (1674)

Examined in 1933; requests to test them by modern methods have been refused.

Quick-fire facts

  • •Born on 2 November 1470 in sanctuary at Westminster Abbey, while his father was in exile in Burgundy.
  • •He became king on 9 April 1483 and was deposed on 25 June 1483, a reign of about seventy-eight days.
  • •He was brought up at Ludlow under his uncle Anthony Woodville, Earl Rivers, as head of the Council of Wales and the Marches.
  • •His uncle Richard, Duke of Gloucester, was named Lord Protector and took the crown as Richard III on 26 June 1483.
  • •He and his brother Richard, Duke of York, were declared illegitimate by the assembly of June 1483 and by the statute Titulus Regius of 1484.
  • •He is one of only two English kings since the Conquest never to be crowned; the other is Edward VIII.
  • •Thomas More and the Tudor chroniclers blamed his uncle for the boys' deaths; some historians have suspected Henry VII or the Duke of Buckingham.
  • •There is no agreed date or place of death and no known grave.

Drill it — 6 cards

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Sources