It is certain that the helpless children in the Tower were not seen again after the month of July 1483. Yet we are invited by some to believe that they languished in captivity, unnoticed and unrecorded, for another two years, only to be done to death by Henry Tudor. According to Sir Thomas More’s story, Richard resolved in July to extirpate the menace to his peace and sovereignty presented by the princes. He sent a special messenger, by name John Green, to Brackenbury, the Constable of the Tower, with orders to make an end of them. Brackenbury refused to obey. “Whom should a man trust,” exclaimed the King when Green returned with this report, when those who I thought would most surely serve at my command will do nothing for me?” A page who heard this outburst reminded his master that Sir James Tyrell, one of Richard’s former companions in arms, was capable of anything.

Winston Churchill, A History of the English-Sp…, loc. 726