In his 1593 play Richard III, William Shakespeare portrays Tyrrell as the man who organises the princes murders.
[3] He was not attainted, and his eldest son and heir's wardship and the custody of his lands were granted to Cecily Neville, Duchess of York, who sold them to William Tyrrell's widow in March 1463 for £50.
[5] He was in France in 1485, and played no part in the Battle of Bosworth Field which signalled the end of the Yorkists and the start of the Tudor dynasty.
However, in 1501, Tyrrell lent his support to Edmund de la Pole, 3rd Duke of Suffolk, now the leading Yorkist claimant to the English throne, who was in voluntary exile.
[1] Tyrrell was charged with treason, was tried and convicted at the Guildhall in London on 2 May 1502 and executed four days later, on 6 May,[1] together with one of his accomplices in aiding Suffolk, Sir John Wyndham.
Richard III gave James Tyrrell and Sir Thomas Tyrell (of "brethren of blood") the keys to the Tower.
Tyrell, according to the chronicles, supervised the burials "at the stayre foote, metely deepe in the ground under a great heape of stones".