Edward V
Edward V was king of England for eleven weeks and was never crowned. Born in November 1470 in sanctuary at Westminster Abbey, where his mother Elizabeth Woodville had taken refuge while his father Edward IV was temporarily driven from the throne, he was created Prince of Wales the following year and raised at Ludlow under the supervision of his maternal uncle Anthony Woodville, Earl Rivers. His father died unexpectedly in April 1483, and Edward acceded at twelve. His father's will named his paternal uncle Richard, Duke of Gloucester, as protector. Richard intercepted the boy's party at Stony Stratford as it travelled towards London, arrested Rivers and others, and took charge of the king. Elizabeth Woodville fled into sanctuary again with her younger son Richard, who was persuaded out in June to join his brother in the Tower of London — then a royal residence as well as a fortress. The coronation was postponed twice. On 22 June a sermon was preached at St Paul's Cross claiming that Edward IV had been contracted to another woman before his marriage, making the children illegitimate. Parliament endorsed it in the act Titulus Regius, and Richard was crowned on 6 July. The two boys were seen playing in the Tower grounds through the summer of 1483 and then not again. What happened to them is unresolved; Richard III is the traditional suspect, and the Duke of Buckingham and Henry VII have both been argued for. Bones found under a staircase in 1674 were reinterred in Westminster Abbey and have not been examined with modern methods.
- Lived: 1470 CE – 1483 CE
- Nationality: English
- Roles: king, head_of_state
