Lost Prince [Paperback]

The author has a lively writing style, but I found this book far less convincing in its arguments than his biography of Elizabeth Woodville. My suspicions were aroused when in the opening chapter he said that an impartial survey on the supposed survival of Richard must include the "evidence" provided by a spiritual medium. Although that low point was not plumbed in the main part of the book, the theory the author presents is wafer thin, too thin to make a whole book - the main text is only 150 pages and that is padded out with a fair amount of only tangentially relevant historical detail. He is too inclined to treat ambiguities in the sources as the foundation for a whole tower of speculation, which is all he really has. I am not sure whether the author even really believes it himself; it reads as though it is a mere exercise in speculative argumentation.

David Baldwin has written a pretty good biography on Elizabeth Woodville, Queen Consort of Edward IV and mother of the princes in the Tower. In appendix 6 of this biography he devotes a chapter to the disappearance of the princes. However, it must have rankled in his mind that he did not find a convincing explanation what happened to Edward V and his brother Prince Richard;, Duke of York. So in a way "The Lost Prince" is a follow-up of his biography of Queen Elizabeth Woodville.

His hypothesis is that Edward V died properly of natural cause while his younger brother and rightful heir of the York dynasty survived as the bricklayer Richard in Colchester and Eastwell and this with the full knowledge of the Tudor monarchs. All is based on the story that this Richard was discovered by Sir Thomas Moyle of being in command of Latin - how come as a mere bricklayer? - and this Richard told him the story that he was brought to king Richard III just before the battle of Bothwell and told by the king that he was his son.

David Baldwin sets out to prove this story. Of course, he has first to try to explain how his Richard was not the bastard son of Richard III but the legitimate son of Edward IV. Then he has to construct a whole story how Prince Richard was brought to safety; protected through the various ups and downs of English history which have costs other claimants to the throne easily their lives.

Does he succeed? I believe not at all. This book is full of maybes, assumption, half truth. As with all this books on historical mysteries there are always open questions and this creates the opportunity for speculation. The system is always the same: one assumes a fact (here the survival of the Prince Richard as Richard of Eastwell). Then one tries to prove this "fact" by finding certain less clear other facts ( f.e. trip by Queen Katherine of Aragon through Colchester even tough that was not the most straight forward route to take to her destination) and gives that the only explanation surviving the purpose that this must have taken place because here the lost prince was living. Here a perfect, but false circle is created. And indeed David Baldwin has NO concrete fact that proves his theory. This is nothing but guesswork, nicely presented, but not at all convincing.

Oscar Handlin said once that history is the distillation of evidence surviving the past. Here no hard evidence is presented that Prince Richard had survived and David Baldwin fails to prove his theory. A theory is no prove.

This is one of the most intriguing books I have read for some time - a hypothesis which, as the author readily admits, may be based on no more than a series of unrelated coincidences, but which might, quite possibly, be the answer to the most famous of all historical mysteries. Edward V, the elder prince, was receiving regular visits from his doctor and could well have died from natural causes: but there is no evidence that Richard III (or anyone else) then murdered his younger brother Richard of York. It is surely more probable that the boy was allowed to live out his life under an assumed identity, and this would explain the secrecy, the deafening silence, which surrounded his disappearance. Where he was taken, and how and why he came to Eastwell in Kent more than half a century later, makes for a fascinating story, a story in which fact and conjecture are always carefully separated. Richard III is exonerated, but the book does not seek to whitewash him. On the contrary, he is portrayed as determined, ruthless when he thought he had no alternative, and very much a man of his time.

Recommended to everyone who enjoys a fresh approach to an old subject - the traditional account of the Princes' deaths, accepted for more than five centuries, is not, after all, the last word.