The abdication crisis of 1936

King Edward VIII of the United Kingdom was born on the 23rd of June 1894 at White Lodge, Richmond Park, London. His great grandmother Queen Victoria was in her 57th year on the throne. The then born Prince Edward of York was the eldest son of the Duke and Duchess of York (later King George V and Queen Mary)

Young Prince Edward

Soon after his parents inherited the throne (after the death of King Edward VII on the 6th of May 1910) the new King George V invested his eldest son as the Prince of Wales in a special ceremony at Caernarvon Castle on the 13th of July 1911.
When the First World War (1914–1918) broke out, the Prince had reached the minimum age for active service and was keen to participate. He had joined the Grenadier Guards in June 1914, and although Prince Edward was willing to serve on the front lines, Secretary of State for War Lord Kitchener refused to allow it, citing the immense harm that would occur if the heir to the throne were captured by the enemy.

The Prince during World War I

Throughout the 1920s the Prince of Wales, represented his father, King George V, at home and abroad on many occasions. He took a particular interest in visiting the poverty stricken areas of the country,and undertook 16 tours to various parts of the Empire between 1919 and 1935. During a tour of Canada in 1919, he acquired the Bedingfield ranch, near Pekisko, Alberta, and in 1924 he donated the Prince of Wales Trophy to the National Hockey League. His rank, travels, good looks, and unmarried status gained him much public attention, and at the height of his popularity, he was the most photographed celebrity of his time.

The Prince's compulsive womanising and reckless behaviour during the 1920s and 1930s worried Prime Minister Baldwin, King George V, and those close to the Prince. The King was disappointed at his eldest son's failure to settle down in life, disgusted by his affairs with married women, and was reluctant to see him inherit the Crown. "After I am dead," King George said, "the boy will ruin himself in 12 months.". Meanwhile his younger brother Prince Albert (nicknamed "Bertie" by his family) married Lady Elizabeth  Bowes-Lyon on the 26th of April 1923 in Westminster Abbey. They were styled the Duke and Duchess of York. In April 21st 1926 they welcomed the birth of Princess Elizabeth of York (Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom) and a second daughter Princess Margaret of York on the 21st of August 1930. At this stage the Prince of Wales had not married.

The Prince had numerous affairs. Many with married women. Prince Edward would meet and fall in love with a woman. This woman would result in a change in history. That woman was Mrs. Wallis Simpson.  
Bessie Wallis Warfield was born in Pennsylvania in the USA on the 19th of June 1896. Her first marriage, to US. naval officer Win Spencer in 1916, was  dramatised with periods of separation and eventually ended in divorce in 1927. She remarried again in1928 to Ernast Simpson.  In 1934, during her second marriage to Ernest she began an affair with the Prince of Wales. When the Prince became King, Wallis divorced Ernast. Soon after the new King would propose to his mistress. This would later topple the new Monarch.

Wallis Simpson
1936

George V died on January 20th 1936 and thus the Prince of Wales was now King Edward VIII of the United Kingdom, the dominions (the commonwealth) and Emperor of India. A heavy burden had been placed upon him. He had always been reluctant to be King. Edward caused unease in government circles with actions that were interpreted as interference in political matters. His comment during a tour of depressed villages in South Wales that "something must be done" for the unemployed coal miners was seen as directly critical of the Government. Government ministers were reluctant to send confidential documents and state papers to Fort Belvedere because it was clear that Edward was paying little attention to them and there was a lack of confidence in his discretion in constitutional and political matters. It was feared that Simpson and other house guests might see state papers and that confidential information in them might be improperly or inadvertently disclosed in ways that could be detrimental to the country's national interests.

The King was madly in love with his fiancée and wished to marry her. When he declared his intentions he faced numerous challenges. Firstly, Wallis was a "commoner" and "would not be suitable to be Queen" Secondly as Monarch, the King held the role as Supreme Governor of the Church of England. In the Church of England re-marriage after divorce was opposed. Wallis was twice divorced. With his position in the church  the clergy expected the King to obey by the rules of the church.

The King proposed an alternative solution of a morganatic marriage, in which he would remain King but Wallis would not become Queen. She would enjoy some lesser title instead, and any children they might have would not inherit the throne. This was rejected by the British Cabinet and dominion governments.

King Edward informed Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin that he would abdicate if he could not marry Wallis. Baldwin then presented the King with three choices: give up the idea of marriage; marry against his ministers' wishes; or abdicate.It was clear that the King was not prepared to give up Wallis, and he knew that if he married against the advice of his ministers, he would cause the government to resign, prompting a constitutional crisis. He chose to abdicate.

Edward duly signed the instruments of abdication at Fort Belvedere on the 10th of December 1936 in the presence of his younger brothers: Prince Albert, Duke of York, next in line for the throne; Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester; and Prince George, Duke of Kent. The next day, the last act of his reign was the royal assent to His Majesty's Declaration of Abdication Act 1936. As required by the Statute of Westminster, all the Dominions consented to the abdication.

The instrument of abdication

On the night of 11th December 1936, Edward, now reverted to a Prince, made a broadcast to the nation and the Empire, explaining his decision to abdicate. He famously said, "I have found it impossible to carry the heavy burden of responsibility and to discharge my duties as King as I would wish to do without the help and support of the woman I love."

After the broadcast, Edward departed for Austria; he was unable to join Wallis until her divorce became absolute, several months later. His brother, Prince Albert, Duke of York, succeeded to the throne as King George VI. George VI's elder daughter, Princess Elizabeth, became first in the line of succession, as heiress presumptive.

On 12th December 1936, at the accession meeting of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom, George VI announced he was to make his brother "His Royal Highness The Duke of Windsor". He wanted this to be the first act of his reign, although the formal documents were not signed until 8th March the following year. During the interim, Edward was universally known as the Duke of Windsor. George VI's decision to create Edward a royal duke ensured that he could neither stand for election to the House of Commons nor speak on political subjects in the House of Lords.

King George VI

The Duke of Windsor married Wallis, who had changed her name by deed poll to Wallis Warfield, in a private ceremony on the 3rd June 1937, at Château de Candé, near Tours, France. When the Church of England refused to sanction the union, a County Durham clergyman, the Reverend Robert Anderson Jardine (Vicar of St Paul's, Darlington), offered to perform the ceremony, and the Duke accepted. The new King, George VI, forbade members of the Royal Family to attend.

Wedding Day

The denial of the style Her Royal Highness to the Duchess of Windsor caused conflict. The Government declined to include the Duke or Duchess on the Civil List, and the Duke's allowance was paid personally by George VI. The Duke compromised his position with his brother by concealing the extent of his financial worth when they informally agreed on the amount of the allowance. Edward's wealth had accumulated from the revenues of the Duchy of Cornwall paid to him as Prince of Wales and ordinarily at the disposal of an incoming King. George VI also paid Edward for Sandringham House and Balmoral Castle. These properties were Edward's personal property, inherited from his father, George V, and thus did not automatically pass to George VI on his accession.


Relations between the Duke of Windsor and the rest of the Royal Family were strained for decades. Edward became embittered against his mother, writing to her in 1939: "destroy the last vestige of feeling I had left for you ... [and has] made further normal correspondence between us impossible." In the early days of George VI's reign the Duke telephoned daily, importuning for money and urging that the Duchess be granted the style of Royal Highness, until the harassed King ordered that the calls not be put through.
The Duke had assumed that he would settle in Britain after a year or two of exile in France. King George VI (with the support of their mother Queen Mary and his wife Queen Elizabeth) threatened to cut off Edward's allowance if he returned to Britain without an invitation.

HRH The Duke of Windsor

For the rest of their lives the Duke and Duchess of Windsor retired in France. The City of Paris provided the Duke with a house at 4 Route du Champ d'Entraînement, on the Neuilly-sur-Seine side of the Bois de Boulogne, for a nominal rent. The French government exempted him from paying income tax, and the couple were able to buy goods duty-free through the British embassy and the military commissary.

In June 1953, instead of attending the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in London, the Duke and Duchess watched the ceremony on television in Paris. The Duke said that it was contrary to precedent for a Sovereign or former Sovereign to attend any coronation of another.

The Royal Family never fully accepted the Duchess. Queen Mary refused to receive her formally. However, the Duke sometimes met his mother and brother George VI, and attended George's 1952 funeral. Queen Mary remained angry with Edward and indignant over his marriage to Wallis: "To give up all this for that", she said.

In 1965, the Duke and Duchess returned to London. They were visited by Elizabeth II, Princess Marina, Duchess of Kent, and Mary, Princess Royal and Countess of Harewood. A week later, the Princess Royal died, and they attended her memorial service. In 1967, they joined the Royal Family for the centenary of Queen Mary's birth. The last royal ceremony the Duke attended was the funeral of Princess Marina in 1968. He declined an invitation from Queen Elizabeth II to attend the Investiture of the Prince of Wales in 1969, replying that Prince Charles would not want his "aged great-uncle" there.

In later years

The Duke, who was a smoker from an early age, was diagnosed with throat cancer and underwent cobalt therapy. Queen Elizabeth II visited the Windsors in 1972 while on a state visit to France; however, only the Duchess appeared with the royal party for a photocall.

On the 28th of May 1972, the Duke died at his home in Paris, less than a month before his 78th birthday. His body was returned to Britain, lying in state at St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle. The funeral service was held in the chapel on 5th June in the presence of the Queen, the Royal Family, and the Duchess of Windsor, who stayed at Buckingham Palace during her visit. The coffin was buried in the Royal Burial Ground behind the Royal Mausoleum of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert at Frogmore. Frail, and suffering increasingly from senile dementia, the Duchess died 14 years later aged 89, and was buried alongside her husband as Wallis, Duchess of Windsor

The graves of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor