A little bit
of a re-wind and an update. I mentioned in my last post that poor “Perkin
Warbeck” (deluded? mad? power-hungry?), claiming to be the rightful King of
England—not Henry VII—claiming that
he was Edward, the younger of the two young princes (Richard III’s own
nephews!), 12 and 9, whom Richard had ordered murdered in the summer of 1483 in
the Tower of London—Perkin, invading England (more than once!) in failed
attempts to seize the throne, was captured and hanged in 1499 at Tyburn near
the Marble Arch. (Whew! Long sentence!)
A couple of
additions and/or elaborations here. I visited the scene of that hanging during
my 1999 journeys around Europe, visits to as many Mary-Shelley-related sites as
I could cram into six weeks. I saw the Arch—and Tyburn—on May 5.
My journal,
sadly, mentions only this—a list of sites I visited that day: 24 Chester Square [Mary’s final home—where she
died]; Marble Arch-Tyburn; Bread Street [where Mary and Bysshe were married on
December 30, 1816—but the Luftwaffe destroyed the building in World War II]; 14
North Bank [another residence]; Harrow School [where Mary’s son, Percy Florence
went to school—as had, much earlier, Lord Byron]; 2 Nelson Square [another residence];
the Lyceum and Theater Royal Haymarket;
Royal Doulton. Doesn’t sound like all
that much, but it was pretty much eight solid hours of nonstop hustling.
What I didn’t
mention in my journal is that I was taking pictures (35mm slides) with gleeful
abandon, and I see in my folders of slides that I have some pictures of the
Arch and of Tyburn. But when I checked, just now, I found there are only two—and both are very similar. So, what
you see below are that slide as well
as a couple of other images of Tyburn I “borrowed” from Google. Sigh.
But I also
discovered, while a-Googling I was going, that there are some new
investigations into the deaths of those two princes. Here’s a link to the
entire story I found, but I can say, in general, that some other perps are in
the picture now, including Henry VII himself.[1]
 |
| X marks the hanging spot |
[1]The Independent, 21 August 2015. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/the-princes-in-the-tower-will-the-ultimate-cold-case-finally-be-solved-after-more-than-500-years-10466190.html
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