A reader of this blog asked me earlier this year if she needed to light a candle or incense when using the Yes-and-No stones (known in the Bible as Urim and Thumin). I told her I usually use them as an on-the-go divination device, but if you have a whole list of questions you want to ask them, it might be a good idea. Helps focus the mind and summon the Spirits. Considering it further, I decided to do a demonstration of what Urim and Thumin can do. Choose a nice, plump mystery, light a candle, focus the mind, call in the spirits, and do a deep-dive on a multi-question list. I chose to focus my attention on one of the oldest, fattest, most-fraught historical mysteries out there—the Princes in the Tower.
The 12-year-old King Edward V of England and his brother, 9-year-old Richard, Duke of York, were committed to the Tower of London by their uncle, King Richard III in May and June respectively, in 1483. The boys mysteriously disappeared sometime that summer, and everyone assumed they died. 191 years later, the bodies of two young boys were discovered when workers were digging to start the foundation for an addition to the Tower. It was never proved that the bodies found were those of the princes, but some experts in 1933 examined the bones and determined they were the right age. No permission has been granted to attempt a DNA test of the remains. For much of the past 530+ years, their uncle King Richard III has been blamed for their disappearance (and presumed murder), but how they got from their Tower room to that deeper-than-normal grave is the big mystery.
Disclaimer: before I go any further, I wish to make it plain this is a personal investigation I conducted, using a divination tool. It does not, in and of itself, constitute factual proof that the answers I received are true. There is no court of law on Earth that would accept this transcript as evidence. I do confess to having read Josephine Tey’s The Daughter of Time at least thirty years ago, so some of my questions are inspired by what I recall of that book.
I asked and received a number of questions and answers over a period of days in September 2019, and accumulated some 24 pages of notes. Many questions I asked proved to be beside the point and irrelevant to the outcome of the central question. Historians have haggled over the details of this incident in English history for over 530 years. I’m not going to definitively solve the mystery here.
Because I’m a member of a Druid organization, I think in threes. After lighting the candle, I invoked the Gods, the Ancestors, and the Sidhe. I also like to call on my own Higher Self, the God Within, to answer my questions. I find in my daily spiritual practice I like to have my head covered, so I was veiled too. Holding the bag’s mouth with one hand and one corner of the bag by the other, I rolled the stones around in the bag, while I asked each question, out-loud, three times.
After first verifying with the stones that I myself wasn’t Richard III in a past life, nor anyone in his family, nor any of his supporters, nor even a part of his soul-cluster, and thus, had no horse in this race, I began:
Were the two princes in the tower murdered while their uncle, King Richard III was still alive and still king?
Yes.
Were they murdered within 72 hours of King Richard III leaving to go on Progress in mid-August 1483?
Wrong Question.
Were they murdered the night of the same day their uncle, King Richard III left London to go on Progress in mid-August 1483?
Yes.
Lady Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry Tudor, the future King Henry VII and later Countess of Richmond and Derby, and Henry Stafford, the 2nd Duke of Buckingham, had been named by King Richard III as the official guardians or protectors of the two princes before he went on Progress in August 1483. Because of this historical detail and what happened later, a little suspicion has fallen on them, so I asked several questions about their role in this mystery:
Did Lady Margaret Beaufort kill Edward V and Richard, Duke of York?
No.
Did she know who did?
No.
Was Lady Margaret purposely-absent (from the Tower of London) when the murders occurred?
No.
But she was not at the Tower of London when the boys were murdered, correct?
Wrong question.
Let me re-phrase: was Lady Margaret Beaufort at the Tower of London when the murders occurred?
Wrong question.
(Okay, let’s leave that alone for now).
Was Henry Stafford, the 2nd Duke of Buckingham, at the Tower of London when the murder of the two princes occurred?
No.
So neither of the officially-designated protectors were at the Tower of London when the two princes were murdered. That eliminates them as murder suspects. That doesn’t mean, however, they weren’t involved in any plot to murder the two princes, so I asked a series of questions regarding their involvement in any possible plots:
Was it Lady Margaret herself who first conceived the idea to murder the two princes in the tower?
No.
Was Lady Margaret an active member of any plan to murder the boys?
No.
Did she help ensure the murder, or murderers, access to the boys?
No.
Was Henry Stafford, the 2nd Duke of Buckingham, aware of the plot to murder the boys?
Wrong Question.
Was he in on the plot?
No.
Was Lady Margaret Beauforts’s son, Henry Tudor, aware of any plot to murder the boys?
Yes.
Was Henry Tudor actively-involved in the plot to murder the princes?
Yes.
This is a curious detail. According to Wikipedia, Henry Tudor had been gone from England from just after the two princes ‘disappeared’ into the Tower (early summer 1483) until August 1485. Edward V was taken to the Tower in late-May 1483 and his younger brother Richard, the Duke of York, was taken to the Tower in mid-June 1483.
Was Henry Tudor still in England in July 1483?
Yes.
Was Henry Tudor still in England in August 1483?
Yes.
Was Henry Tudor still in England in September 1483?
Yes.
So Urim and Thumin put Henry Tudor still in England within the window of time they indicate the two princes were murdered. I want to temporarily detour from Henry Tudor’s involvement, and focus on who came up with the idea of murdering the boys in the first place.
Was it a supporter of Henry Tudor’s claim to the throne who first proposed the murder be carried-out?
Yes.
Was this supporter who first proposed the murder of the two princes:
-a member of the nobility? Wrong question.
–a member of the royal court? Yes.
–a knight? No.
–a female? No.
–a courtier? No.
–a clergyman? No.
–a member of the palace staff? No.
–one of Henry Tudor’s friends? No.
–someone who personally-disliked King Richard? No.
–someone who just wanted to get rid of Richard as King? No.
–serious when they first proposed it (the murder)? Yes. This line of questioning was getting me nowhere, and was contradictory. Time to take a stab in the dark:
Was Henry Stafford, the 2nd Duke of Buckingham, the one who first suggested murdering the boys?
Yes.
Was it Henry Tudor himself who started the whispering campaign against Richard III after the two princes’ deaths?
No.
Was it a supporter of his?
Yes.
Was the same person who first suggested murdering the boys the same Henry Tudor supporter who started the whispering campaign against King Richard III after the boys were murdered?
Yes.
Oh, Hell. One of the very people King Richard III named as an official ‘protector’ of the boys was the same person who first proposed the two princes’ murder to their murderer, then started the campaign of suspicion against Richard III while the bodies were still cooling in the grave. Henry Stafford, up until this point in the story, had been considered a supporter of King Richard. This explains the ‘wrong question’ response earlier when I asked if Henry Stafford was aware of the planned-crime—no he wasn’t aware of the plot to murder the two princes, nor involved in the plot, he merely suggested it in the first place.
One publicly-known detail of the story is when King Richard returned from Progress in September 1483, he and Stafford had a big row and a falling-out, and Stafford became one of the leaders of a rebellion against Richard that autumn, which failed. Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham, was executed for treason on November 2, 1483.
How long before the murder of the two princes took place did Stafford suggest it?
–the day of? No
-the night before? Yes.
-less than a week before? Wrong Question.
-one week before? Yes.
These last four questions seemed a bit contradictory at first glance, but they make a sort of sense. Henry Stafford first suggested the murder to Henry Tudor one week before it was carried-out. I surmise he reiterated to Henry Tudor the night before, that King Richard would be leaving on Progress the next day and that it would be a perfect opportunity to commit the murder. Henry Stafford wasn’t an active part of the conspiracy to murder the boys, just an abettor.
I wanted to focus on pinning-down details about the night of the murder.
How many people were involved in the conspiracy to murder the two boys?
Was Henry Tudor the only conspirator? No.
– Was it 2? No.
-3? No.
-4? No.
-5? No.
-6? No.
-7? Wrong Question.
Was it more than 7 people involved? Yes.
Were more than 10 people involved in the murder? Yes.
At this point, I lost interest in pinning-down how many were involved, because I was gob-smacked at the number of people involved. The more people in a conspiracy, the greater the danger somebody’s going to talk. So I asked a few clarifiers:
Did he (Henry Tudor) promise to reward them for their silence on the matter?
No.
Did he threaten them?
Yes.
Was anyone later murdered for knowing too much about the murder of the two princes?
Wrong question.
And again:
Was Lady Margaret Beaufort purposely kept in the dark about any plan to murder the two princes in the tower?
Wrong question.
Was it simply not considered important to inform her?
Yes.
Was the Duke of Buckingham aware of any details of the plot to murder the princes in the tower?
No.
I’ve poked at her long enough, so it’s now completely clear, Lady Margaret Beaufort was totally out of the loop about the conspiracy to murder the two princes, and the Duke of Buckingham, the one who first proposed it, left the details and the execution to Henry Tudor. Next, I wanted to focus on the state of security at the Tower of London on the night of the murders.
Were any Tower of London personnel a part of the plot to murder the boys?
No.
Did Henry Tudor and his team have to overpower anybody at the Tower in order to get to the boys?
No
Were there guards posted outside the two princes’ chamber?
Wrong question.
Were there guards anywhere along the way to the princes’ chamber?
Wrong question.
Were the two princes completely unguarded on the night in question?
Yes.
Was the boys’ chamber door locked that night?
Yes.
Well, at least their door was locked. Security at the Tower of London that night appears to have been rather lax, given an intruder was able to reach its two VIP inmates, ‘disappear’ them, and get out of there without anyone at the Tower being the wiser. This continued to bother me. Several days after I was through with the all questions, a nasty thought popped up in my head, so I fired up the stones and asked the question which had occurred to me:
Did Henry Stafford, in his capacity as one of the officially-designated protectors of the boys, issue Henry Tudor any sort of writ, granting him permission to visit the princes in the Tower, which Tudor could then present to Tower personnel, in the event he was challenged?
No.
Shoot. Well duh, Euphonia, of course Buckingham wouldn’t leave a paper trail which could tie him to the events of that night. He’d keep his hands clean. I then tried to pin down a time period wherein the double-murder took place, but Urim and Thumin were resolutely uncooperative.
Was this apparently lax state of security at the Tower of London that night:
-Intentional? No.
-Accidental? Yes.
Was Henry Tudor aware that security at the Tower of London was going to be lax that night?
No.
Did anyone willingly hand him the key to the princes’ chamber?
No.
Did Henry Tudor or anyone on his team have to get the key to the princes’ chamber door from someone?
Wrong question.
Did they have to borrow (steal) or otherwise filch the key to that door from someone?
No.
Did they force the lock?
Wrong question.
Did the door have to be taken off its hinges in order for them to gain access to the room?
No.
Did they come in through the window?
No.
I was getting frustrated. How the Dickens did Henry Tudor get into the boys’ room?! He didn’t get the key, he didn’t force the lock, he didn’t take the door off its hinges, he didn’t come in through the window. How was access to the room achieved? I ended the session frustrated and no wiser. When I woke the next day, an alarming thought had taken up residency in my mind:
Did Henry Tudor knock on the door of their (the two princes’) chamber and identify himself to the boys?
Yes.
Did the boys let him in?
Yes.
So they were awake when Henry Tudor came in the room?
Yes.
Oh. My. Heart. Those poor children. The possibility that the lock on their chamber door was on the inside was a possibility which hadn’t occurred to me.
Did Henry Tudor assure the boys he would watch over them as they slept?
Yes.
Was Henry Tudor in the room when they went to sleep?
Wrong question.
Were the princes in the Tower murdered by just one person?
Yes.
…and was that person Henry Tudor himself?
Yes.
Were the boys awake and conscious when they were murdered?
Wrong question.
Were the two boys asleep when they were murdered?
Yes.
Just to clarify, were the two princes smothered to death with a pillow?
Yes.
Did Henry Tudor personally take the two bodies down to their grave?
Wrong question.
Did he have help?
Yes.
Did Henry Tudor exit the room immediately following the murder?
Yes.
How many people were involved in conveying the two bodies from their Tower room down to the grave? Was it:
Just 2 people? Yes.
Was Henry Tudor one of them?
Wrong question.
What is believed to be the bodies of the two princes were found 191 years later, in the year 1674; they had been buried in a deeper-than-normal-grave.
Had that hole been dug and was ready to go before the two princes were murdered?
Yes.
Did the people who dug the grave know for what purpose it was being dug?
No.
Did they suspect what purpose the hole was for after the fact of the princes’ disappearance became publically- known?
Yes.
Was anyone on Henry’s team at the Tower of London that night assigned the role of look-out to make sure no one spotted them moving the bodies down to the grave and burying them?
Yes.
How many:
-2 people? Wrong question.
-3 people? Wrong question.
-4 people? Wrong question.
-5 people? Yes.
Clarification question: after Henry Tudor came to the throne as King Henry VII, Sir Richard Tyrell confessed to the murder of the two princes, after having been subjected to torture while being interrogated about the matter. Was Sir Richard Tyrell involved in any way in the murder of the two princes, Edward V and Richard, Duke of York?
Wrong question.
Given the fact this confession from Sir Richard Tyrell was extracted from him under torture about fifteen years after the murder, I’ll take this ‘wrong question’ response as a ‘no.’
Did Henry Tudor alert Henry Stafford, the 2nd Duke of Buckingham, in any way, shape or form, that the deed had been done after he murdered the two princes in the Tower?
Yes.
I now turned my attention to King Richard III when he returned from Progress in September 1483.
When King Richard learned his nephews Edward V and Richard, Duke of York had disappeared while he was away on Progress, did he accurately guess they had been murdered?
Yes.
Did he worry he would be blamed for their disappearance?
Yes
At some point over the next three to four months, Richard III eventually, in some venue, officially denied having had anything to do with his nephews’ disappearance, or presumed murder, but he never publically-addressed the issue again, and his was one lone voice in a hurricane of suspicion against him. I asked:
Did King Richard III’s own family eventually come to believe he’d ordered the boys’ murder?
No.
Did his niece, Elizabeth of York, later Queen Consort to King Henry VII, believe her uncle, King Richard III was guilty of her brothers’ murder?
Yes.
Did she believe it because she was told he did it?
Yes.
Did she ever suspect her husband of involvement in her brothers’ murder?
Wrong question.
Did she know her husband was involved in her brothers’ murder?
No.
I then asked what I thought was a couple of throwaway questions and instead, it sent me down an unexpected rabbit-hole. I felt like I was in one of those carts at Gringott’s Bank:
Did the ghosts or spirits of the two princes ever haunt King Henry VII afterward?
Wrong question.
Did the two princes he’d murdered ever haunt King Henry VII’s dreams?
Wrong Question.
Did the ghost or spirit of King Richard III ever haunt King Henry VII afterward?
Yes.
Boom. So the ghosts of the two boys he’d murdered never bothered Henry Tudor after death. Their ghosts may’ve been seen at the Tower in the centuries since, but they didn’t follow Henry around. No, it was Richard III who came back to haunt him after death. Damn.
Did King Henry VII actually see King Richard’s ghost, or spirit?
Yes.
When King Richard III’s ghost appeared to King Henry VII, did he appear solid and real to him, as if he were still alive?
Yes.
Did he appear to him only at night?
Yes.
Did King Richard’s ghost ever deliberately look at Henry VII?
Yes.
Did King Richard’s ghost ever show up, just to stare at Henry VII?
Yes.
So, were King Richard’s ghostly visits to Henry VII always purposeful?
No
When King Henry VII saw King Richard III’s ghost, were any of these sightings just Richard III walking by?
Yes.
Did King Richard’s ghost ever actually speak to him?
Yes.
What did the ghost say? ‘I know you murdered my nephews in the Tower’?
Yes.
Did King Henry VII ever speak to the ghost of Richard III?
No.
Did King Richard III ever haunt King Henry VII’s dreams?
No.
Did these visitations by King Richard’s ghost only occur when King Henry VII was on his deathbed, close to dying?
No.
Did King Richard’s ghost ever reliably show-up at certain times?
Wrong question. (Apparently these nocturnal ghostly visits were random).
Did King Richard’s ghost ever visit his niece, Elizabeth of York, either awake or in dreams?
Wrong question.
Somehow, this answer makes me sad; it’s like he knew she was a lost-cause.
Did King Richard’s ghost ever engage in what we would now call poltergeist activity?
Wrong question.
Did his (Richard III’s) ghost ever move things?
Yes.
I now want to focus on King Henry VII’s reaction to these visits by King Richard III’s ghost.
Did Henry VII think he was merely hallucinating Richard III’s ghostly visits?
No.
Did he find Richard III’s ghostly visits disturbing?
No.
Did he find them terrifying?
Wrong question.
Did he find them irritating?
Yes.
Why? Did these visits by King Richard’s ghost bother his conscience?
Yes.
I’m going to pivot to Henry VII’s successors; his son Henry VIII, and his grandchildren, Edward VI, Mary I and Elizabeth I. Did King Richard III’s spirit ever deliberately visit them?
Yes.
Did they see him?
Yes.
Did they recognize him for who he was?
Wrong question.
When he appeared to them, did he appear as solid and real to them as he did to Henry VII?
No.
Did King Richard’s ghost ever say anything to them?
Yes. (I honestly was expecting a ‘no’ to this one).
Was it anything different from what he said to King Henry VII?
Wrong question.
Did King Richard’s ghost speak warnings to them?
No.
Did he give them information?
No.
I decided to end my line of questioning on the whole subject of the princes in the Tower at this point, because it would take too long to discern just what Richard III’s ghost had to say to Henry VII’s son and grandchildren. So what can we surmise about events surrounding the deaths of Edward V and Richard, Duke of York?
SUMMATION
The boys were murdered the very night of the same mid-August day their uncle, King Richard III, left London to go on progress. Neither Lady Margaret Beaufort nor Henry Stafford, the 2nd Duke of Buckingham, the officially-designated ‘protectors’ of the two princes, were at the Tower of London on the night in question. Lady Margaret Beaufort was completely out of the loop regarding any plan to murder the princes. The Duke of Buckingham first suggested the murder to Henry Tudor, and reminded him the night before that King Richard was leaving the next day, but aside from verbally-prodding Henry Tudor twice, he knew no details of the plot.
Sources say Henry Tudor left England around the time the princes disappeared into the Tower. That would put his departure about June 1483. He reportedly didn’t return until August 1485, the month he defeated Richard III in battle. According to Urim and Thumin, however, Henry Tudor was still in England within the time-span the murders likely occurred, July-September 1483. The plot to murder the princes was carried-out by Henry Tudor himself, per the Duke of Buckingham’s suggestion, the very night after King Richard III left town, accompanied by more than 10 men (still shaking my head at that number) to carry out the crime.
As fate would have it, security at the Tower was a little more lax than it usually was. (Understandable. Half the northern hemisphere of the planet goes on vacation in August, mentally, if not physically). Sometime the day of the murder, Henry Tudor had a team of grunts (who were certainly not in the information-loop) dig the grave, so it was ready to go for immediate burial of the bodies. I was not able to get an answer from the stones about any stationed guards Henry Tudor had to get past in order to get to the boys, but the upshot is, he got to the princes’ room, knocked on the door, identified himself and the boys, at least one of whom was still awake, let him in. He told them he would watch over them as they slept. The boys went to bed and when Henry Tudor was confident they were asleep, he smothered them to death with a pillow. He didn’t entrust the job to one of his lackeys; he did the dirty deed himself. He wanted to make sure those boys were dead.
Tudor immediately left the room after the murder and had two of his men enter the room to deal with the bodies. The two small bodies were loaded into a box, then trundled down to the grave, while another five men served as look-out, to make sure the two men assigned body-disposal weren’t seen conveying the box containing the corpses from the princes’ Tower room down to the grave. The remaining guys must’ve been watching the horses or playing cards. The conspirators departed, with the understanding Henry Tudor would rain Perdition down on the head of anybody who talked about what they’d just done.
Henry Tudor let Henry Stafford, the Duke of Buckingham know, ‘It’s done.’ Sometime later, Tudor left England while Buckingham and other malcontents staged their failed uprising against Richard. Buckingham was executed at the Tower on November 2, 1483, but the whispering campaign against Richard continued, culminating in the Battle of Bosworth Field. How Richard felt personally about his nephews’ disappearance, I just couldn’t get the yes-and-no stones to say.
You’d think that would be the end of it but no, Richard’s ghost or spirit did come back to haunt the new King Henry VII. Richard’s ghost told Henry VII he knew Henry murdered his nephews and apparently never let him forget it. Richard III’s ghost appeared to Henry VII throughout his reign, often-enough to become an irritant. I’m glad to hear Richard III did this, which is petty of me but, hey. If he’s going to turn the people against you for a crime he himself committed, defeat you in battle, take your crown, marry your niece, lie to her about your role in the crime, and get the general public to revile your name for the next 500 years, then the least you can do is needle him from beyond the grave. Richard III’s ghost also appeared to Henry VII’s Tudor-successors, who saw him and to whom he spoke, but who knows what he said to them. It isn’t even clear from the yes-and-no stones they knew they were seeing and hearing King Richard III’s ghost specifically.
OBSERVATIONS ABOUT THE METHOD
This was good practice in intuiting possible lines of inquiry and learning to ask the right questions. I found I got better results when I took a Joe-Friday-just-the-facts-ma’am attitude in my questioning. A few questions which I asked with some emotion, I had to ask again later when I could phrase the question more neutrally. Emotionally-asked questions seemed more likely to net me the third stone from the bag, the Wrong Question/Rephrase Your Question/You’re Barking up the Wrong Tree stone.
A number of questions and answers I had to discard from the final result, because they turned out to be unimportant information in the matter, or a ‘wrong question’ response to an inquiry which was based on a faulty assumption anyway. One example of this line of questioning was asking questions about ‘Why did Richard III clam-up about his nephews’ disappearance?’ I got a lot of third-stone answers to those questions. Additional reading on the subject disclosed King Richard III did deny murdering his nephews– three months after their murder, in just one venue, when the gossip-campaign against him was in full-swing.
MY REACTION TO THIS EXERCISE
I feel confident about the responses I received via the yes-and-no stones. I feel the answers I received were true. I also found it fun and addictive. Questions led to more questions later. I’d seen it suggested in fiction that Lady Margaret Beaufort did the murders, given she’d pillow-murdered a relative on their death-bed, so I was a little surprised she had absolutely no hand in it. Then again, the existing portrait of her depicts a very pious person, so maybe her son didn’t want to disrupt his mother’s stellar-reputation for piety.
I remember reading a World Book Encyclopedia article about King Henry VII when I was a child. It described him as ‘cold, shrewd and sly.’ After this exercise, I realize he was an even-more cold, cruel, calculating, and manipulative person than I realized. The words ‘low-life-scum’ come to mind. Margaret Beaufort, for most of her life, was possessed of an almost-Messianic belief that God wanted her branch of the Plantagenet family to sit on the throne of England. Could she ever have imagined her son and only child would go to such an awful extreme to make that conviction real?
I didn’t foresee that dive into the paranormal over the course of my questioning. That’s the thing with exploring mysteries with Urim and Thumin–an unexpected ‘yes’ can send the conversation running-off in a direction you never saw coming. On a lighter note, I think a play based on imagined conversations between King Richard III’s ghost and the living King Henry VII would be gripping, dramatic, and at moments, comedy gold. I’d gladly pay admission to see such a play.
I think for my next Urim-and-Thumin investigation, I’ll tackle the subject of Dame Alice Kyteler. Did she murder her first three husbands, or was it just one of those things?