d at Westminster on the sixth of July.

Every one knows the tragic end to the story. While the little boys lived
their uncle's throne was insecure. They were still in the Tower. Rivers
their uncle was beheaded; so were their half-brother Grey and many more
of their mother's kinsmen and friends. A mystery must always hang over
this dreadful deed. Whether by Richard's direct order, or simply in
accordance with his known but half-expressed wishes, the two children
suddenly disappeared--murdered, as it was alleged, by their uncle. Sir
James Tyrell, when tried for high treason in Henry the Seventh's reign,
only eight years after, confessed to the murder. And it was commonly
supposed that the boys were "buried in a great heap of rubbish near the
footstairs of their lodging; where is now the raised terrace."[42] But
the priest of the Tower having died shortly after, "left the world in
dark as to the place."

For nearly two hundred years nothing more was known. In Charles the
Second's reign, however, orders were given to rebuild some offices in
the Tower. In taking away the stairs going from the King's Lodging into
the Chapel of the White Tower, the workmen found a wooden chest buried
ten feet deep in the ground, which contained the bones of two boys,
about eleven and thirteen years of age. Charles the Second hearing of
this discovery ordered the bones to be carefully collected and put in a
marble urn, which he placed in Westminster Abbey, with an inscription in
Latin of which the following is a translation:

Here lie
The Reliques
of Edward the Fifth King of _England_, and Richard, Duke
of York.
These brothers being confined in the Tower,
and there stifled with Pillows,
Were privately and meanly buried,
By order of
Their perfidious Uncle _Richard_ the usurper;
Whose bones, long enquired after and wished for,
After two hundred and one years
In the Rubbish of the Stairs (i. e. those lately leading to
the Chapel
of the _White Tower_)
Were on the 17th day of _July_, 1674, by undoubted Proofs
discovered,
Being buried deep in that Place.
Charles the Second, a most compassionate Prince, pitying
their severe fate,