The story seems to be at least partly true. It is outlined in a blunt, unemotive way in the recent second volume of historian Hugh Bicheno's account of the Wars of the Roses:
(1) Clarence was convicted of treason and condemned to death on February 7, 1478. His brother King Edward IV dithered about the sentence until the Speaker of the House of Commons pressured him to allow justice to be done.
(2)According to Bicheno, Clarence was (February 18) drowned in a wine barrel then being used as a bath. Quite feasible - wine barrels used as storage containers were big. So he seems to have been drowned in water, not wine.
But why drowning? American historian Cora Scofield, in the second volume of her massive and heavily documented biography of Edward IV (first published in 1923), gives the best account:
(1) The exact details were not publicly stated, but Clarence was spared the horrifying and very public method of execution sometimes used for traitors (hanging, drawing and quartering) because of his mother's influence.
(2) Three sources of the day mention drowning and one says Clarence was allowed to choose his own method of death. Perhaps he believed drowning was a 'soft' death that not involve disfigurement. He was given a dignified funeral, as befitted a 'prince of the blood'.
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