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A horseman stood at the gate of the Tower of London, and demanded entrance in the name of the king, Richard III.

On hearing the summons, and the authority claimed by the stranger, the governor, Sir Thomas Brackenbury, directed that he should be admitted, and deliver his message.

“Read this,” said the man, handing a missive sealed with the royal seal.

Sir Thomas read the document hastily, and as he read his face grew troubled. For a long time he was silent; then addressing the king’s messenger, he said–

“Know you the contents of this letter?”

“How should I know?” replied the other evasively.

“The king directs me here,” said Sir Thomas, “to do a deed horrible and unworthy of a man. He demands that I should rid him of the two lads now lying in this Tower in my custody.”

“And what of that?” said the king’s messenger. “Is it not necessary to the country’s peace? And will you, Sir Thomas, render so base an ingratitude for the favours you have received at the king’s hands by refusing him this service?”

“Not even with the sanction of a king will Thomas Brackenbury hire himself out as a butcher. My office and all I have,” he added, “I hold at His Majesty’s pleasure. He may take them from me if he will, but my hands shall at least stay free from innocent blood!”

With that he bade the messenger return to his master and deliver his reply.

When Richard, away in Gloucestershire, heard of the refusal of the Governor of the Tower to execute his commands, he was very wroth, and vowed he would yet carry out his cruel purpose with regard to his two helpless nephews.

These two boys, the sons of Edward the Fourth, were the principal obstacles to Richard’s undisturbed possession of the throne he had usurped. The elder of them, a boy of thirteen, had already been crowned as Edward the Fifth, but he was a king in name only. Scarcely had the coronation taken place when his bad uncle, under the pretence of offering his protection, got him into his power, and shut him up, with his young brother Richard, in the Tower, while he himself plotted for the crown to which he had neither right nor title.

How he succeeded in his evil schemes history has recorded.

By dint of falsehood and cunning he contrived to make himself acknowledged king by an unwilling people; and then, when the height of his ambition had been attained, he could not rest till those whom he had so shamefully robbed of their inheritance were out of his path.

Therefore it was he sent his messenger to Sir Robert Brackenbury.

Foiled in his design of making this officer the instrument of his base scheme, he summoned to his presence Sir James Tyrrel, a man of reckless character, ready for whatever might bring him profit or preferment; and to him he confided his wishes.

That same day Tyrrel started for London, armed with a warrant entrusting him with the Governorship of the Tower for one day, during which Sir Robert Brackenbury was to hand over the fortress and all it contained to his keeping.

The brave knight had nothing for it but to obey this order, though he well knew its meaning, and could foretell only too readily its result.

In a lofty room of that gloomy fortress, that same summer evening, the two hapless brothers were sitting, little dreaming of the fate so nearly approaching.

The young king had indeed for some time past seemed to entertain a vague foreboding that he would never again breathe the free air outside his prison. He had grown melancholy, and the buoyant spirits of youth had given place to a listlessness and heaviness strangely out of keeping with his tender years. He cared neither for talk nor exercise, and neglected both food and dress. His brother, two years younger than himself, was of a more hopeful demeanour, perhaps realising less fully the hardships and dangers of their present imprisonment. As they sat this evening in their lonely chamber, he tried to rally his elder brother from his melancholy.