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Edward VIII (Edward Albert Christian George Andrew Patrick David Windsor), later The Prince Edward, Duke of Windsor (23 June 1894 - 28 May 1972), was the second British monarch of the House of Windsor. He reigned as the King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the British Dominions beyond the Seas, and Emperor of India for slightly less than a year, from the death of his father, George V, on 20 January 1936 until his own abdication on 11 December 1936. Prior to his accession to the throne he held the titles of Duke of Cornwall, Duke of Rothesay, and Prince of Wales with the style Royal Highness. After his abdication he reverted to the style of a son of the sovereign and was created Duke of Windsor. During World War II he was the Governor and Commander-in-Chief of Bahamas after spending a great deal of time in Bermuda. Edward is the only British monarch to have voluntarily relinquished the throne. He signed the instrument of abdication on 10 December 1936. The British Parliament passed His Majesty's Declaration of Abdication Act 1936 the next day and, on receiving the Royal Assent from Edward, he legally ceased to be King in the United Kingdom and all but one of his commonwealth realms. However a delay in the meeting of the Irish Free State's Dáil Éireann meant that his abdication from his Irish throne did not legally come into force until one day later. As a result Britain and Ireland for 24 hours had different kings. Early life Edward was born on 23 June 1894 at White Lodge, Richmond, Surrey. His father was The Duke of York (later King George V), the second son of The Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII) and The Princess of Wales (formerly Princess Alexandra of Denmark). His mother was The Duchess of York (formerly Princess Victoria Mary of Teck, the eldest daughter of The Duke of Teck and Princess Mary Adelaide of Cambridge). As a great grandson of Queen Victoria in the male line, Edward was styled His Highness Prince Edward of York at his birth. He was baptised in the Green Drawing Room of White Lodge on July 16, 1894 by Edward White Benson, Archbishop of Canterbury and his twelve godparents were Queen Victoria, the Prince and Princess of Wales, the King and Queen of Denmark, the King of Württemberg, the Queen of Greece, the Tsarevitch of Russia, the Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, the Duke and Duchess of Teck and the Duke of Cambridge. He was named after his deceased uncle Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence and Avondale, who had always been known as Eddy. His last four names - George, Andrew, Patrick and David - came from the Patron Saints of England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales. The Prince was nevertheless, for the rest of his life, known to his family and close friends, by his last name, David. His paternal grandfather was still the Prince of Wales at the time of his birth. His eldest son, The Duke of Clarence and Avondale, had been second in line for the throne. However the Duke reportedly died of pneumonia on 14 January 1892. The Duke of York replaced him as second in line for the throne. Prince Edward was consequently third in line for the throne at the time of his birth. Edward's parents, The Duke and Duchess of York, were often removed from their children's upbringing. Edward and his younger brother Albert received considerable abuse at the hands of the royal nanny. The nanny would pinch and scratch Edward before he was due to be presented to his parents. His subsequent crying and wailing would lead the Duke and Duchess to send Edward and the nanny away. Four younger siblings of Edward and Albert were born between 1897 and 1905: Mary, Henry, George and John. Prince of Wales He automatically became Duke of Cornwall and Duke of Rothesay, Earl of Carrick, Baron Renfrew, Lord of the Isles, and Great Steward of Scotland when his father ascended the throne on 6 May 1910. The new king created him Prince of Wales and Earl of Chester on 2 June 1910 and officially invested him as such in a special ceremony at Caernarfon Castle in 1911. For the first time since the Middle Ages this investiture took place in Wales; it occurred at the instigation of the Welsh politician David Lloyd George, who at that time held the position of Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Liberal government. Army service When the First World War broke out Edward had reached the minimum age for active service and expressed keenness to participate. He was allowed to join the army, serving with the Grenadier Guards, and although Edward expressed a willingness to serve on the front lines, the British government refused to allow it, citing the immense harm that the capture of the heir to the throne would cause. Despite this Edward witnessed at first hand the horror of trench warfare, and attempted to visit the front line as often as he could, leading to his award of the Military Cross in 1916. His role in the war, although limited, led to his great popularity among veterans of the conflict. Royal duties 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. After the Great Depression he visited many deprived areas of the UK and signed up 200,000 people to his back-to-work scheme. Abroad the Prince of Wales toured the Empire, undertaking 13 tours between 1919 and 1935. Love life In 1928, King George V gave Edward a home, Fort Belvedere, near Sunningdale in Berkshire. There Edward conducted relationships with a series of married women including Anglo-American textile heiress Freda Dudley Ward and the Viscountess Furness. Lady Furness, née Thelma Morgan, an American beauty of part-Chilean ancestry, introduced the Prince to fellow American Wallis Simpson. Simpson had divorced her first husband in 1927 and subsequently married Ernest Simpson, an Anglo-American businessman. Mrs. Simpson and the Prince of Wales became lovers while his mistress Lady Furness travelled abroad. Edward's relationship with Wallis Simpson further weakened his poor relationship with his father, King George V. The King and Queen refused to receive Mrs Simpson at court, and his brother, Prince Albert, urged Edward to seek a more suitable wife. Edward, however, had now fallen in love with Wallis and the couple grew ever closer. Reign as King King George V died on January 20, 1936, and Edward ascended to the throne as King Edward VIII. The next day, he broke royal protocol by watching the proclamation of his own accession to the throne from a window of St. James's Palace, in the company of the still-married Mrs. Simpson. It was also at this time that Edward became the first British monarch to fly in an aeroplane, when he flew from Sandringham to London for his Accession Council. It was now becoming clear that the new King wished to marry Mrs Simpson, especially when divorce proceedings between Mr and Mrs Simpson were brought at Ipswich Crown Court. Powerful figures in the British government deemed marriage to Mrs Simpson impossible for Edward, even if Wallis obtained her second divorce, because he had become de jure head of the Church of England, which prohibited remarriage after divorce. Edward's alternative proposed solution of a morganatic marriage was rejected by the Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin and the Dominion governments. Edward also caused unease in government circles with actions that were interpreted as interference in political matters. His visit to the depressed coal mining villages in South Wales saw Edward call for "something to be done" for the unemployed and deprived coal miners. Government ministers were also reluctant to send confidential documents and state papers to Fort Belvedere in the event Mrs. Simpson were to see them. The Prime Minister also sent detectives from Scotland Yard to follow both the King and Mrs. Simpson and report on their whereabouts. Abdication On November 16, 1936, Edward met with Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin at Fort Belvedere and expressed his desire to marry Wallis Simpson when she became free to do so. The Prime Minister responded by presenting the King with three choices: he could give up the idea of marriage; marry Wallis against his minister's wishes; or abdicate. It was clear that Edward was not prepared to give up Wallis. By marrying against the wishes of his ministers, it was likely that the government would resign, prompting a constitutional crisis. The Prime Ministers of the British dominions had also made clear their opposition to the King marrying a divorcée; only the Irish Free State did not oppose the idea of marriage. Faced with this opposition, Edward chose to abdicate. Edward duly signed an instrument of abdication at Fort Belvedere on December 10, 1936 in the presence of his three brothers, The Duke of York, The Duke of Gloucester and The Duke of Kent. The next day, he performed his last act as King when he gave royal assent to His Majesty's Declaration of Abdication Act 1936 which applied to the United Kingdom and all the dominions except the Irish Free State, which passed the equivalent External Relations Act the next day. On the night of December 11th, Edward, now reverted to the title of His Royal Highness The Prince Edward, 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 the United Kingdom for France, where Wallis was waiting for him. His brother, Prince Albert, Duke of York succeeded to the throne as King George VI, with his eldest daughter, The Princess Elizabeth first in the line of succession, as the heir presumptive. Duke of Windsor On March 8, 1937, George VI created his brother, the former king, Duke of Windsor. George VI actually created his brother Duke of Windsor and re-created him a Knight of the Garter on December 12, 1936 at his Accession Privy Council because he wanted this to be the first act of his reign, but the formal documents were not signed until March 8 of the following year. During the interim, however, Edward was universally known as the Duke of Windsor after December 12. However, letters patent dated May 27, 1937, which re-conferred upon the Duke of Windsor the "title, style, or attribute of Royal Highness," specifically stated that "his wife and descendants, if any, shall not hold said title or attribute." Some British ministers suggested that Edward should no longer carry any royal title or style, as an abdicated King. However, George VI insisted that Edward should revert to his previous title of prince. The decision to create Edward a duke also ensured he could not sit in the House of Commons, lest he have the idea to stand for election, nor could he, by convention, speak or vote in the House of Lords. The Duke of Windsor married Mrs. Simpson, then known as Wallis Warfield, in a private ceremony on 3 June 1937 at Chateau de Candé, Monts, France. None of the British royal family attended. The denial of the style "HRH" to the Duchess of Windsor, as well as the financial settlement, strained relations between the Duke of Windsor and the rest of the royal family for decades. The Duke had assumed that he would settle in Britain after a year or two of exile in France. However, King George VI (with the support of his mother Queen Mary and his wife Queen Elizabeth) threatened to cut off his allowance if he returned to Britain without an invitation. The new King and Queen were also forced to pay Edward for Sandringham House and Balmoral Castle. These properties were Edward's personal property, inherited from his father, King George V on his death, and thus did not automatically pass to George VI on abdication. In 1937, the Duke and Duchess visited Germany as personal guests of the Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, a visit much publicised by the German media. The couple then settled in France. When the Germans invaded the north of France in May 1940, the Windsors fled south, first to Biarritz, then in June to Spain. In July the pair moved to Lisbon, Portugal, where they lived at first in the home of a banker with close German Embassy contacts. The British Foreign Office strenuously objected when the pair planned to tour aboard a yacht belonging to a Swedish magnate, Axel Wenner-Gren, whom American intelligence considered to be a close friend of Hermann Goering, one of Hitler's top lieutenants. A "defeatist" interview with the Duke that received wide distribution may have served as the last straw for the British government: in August a British warship dispatched the pair to the Bahamas. The Duke of Windsor was installed as Governor, and became the first British monarch to ever hold a civilian political office. He enjoyed the position and was praised for his efforts to combat poverty on the island nation. He held the post until the end of World War II in 1945. The couple then retired once again to France, where they spent much of the remainder of their lives. Café Society After their marriage, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor lived in high style. They both fully indulged their love of fashion and the excitement of Café Society. Before the war, a world audience followed their every move. Photographers chased them across America and Europe to capture a glimpse of the glamorous couple in luxurious surroundings with famous personalities of the day. The Duke changed the rules about men's clothing simply because the public followed the fashions he set, which were often for his own practical purposes. He once had a tuxedo made in dark blue so that the details in construction and cut would show up better in photographs. On their wedding day, his wife wore a dress ensemble by the legendary Mainbocher. The rest of her trousseau was also designed by Mainbocher. Other designers favoured by the Duchess included Schiaparelli, Chanel, Molyneux, Vionnet and Givenchy. World War II When the Germans invaded the north of France in May 1940, the Windsors fled south, first to Biarritz, then in June to Spain. In July the pair moved to Lisbon, Portugal, where they lived at first in the home of a banker with close German Embassy contacts. The British Foreign Office strenuously objected when the pair planned to tour aboard a yacht belonging to a Swedish magnate, Axel Wenner-Gren, whom American intelligence considered to be a close friend of Hermann Goering, one of Hitler's top lieutenants. A "defeatist" interview with the Duke that received wide distribution may have served as the last straw for the British government: in August a British warship dispatched the pair to the Bahamas. The Duke of Windsor was installed as Governor, and became the first British monarch to ever hold a civilian political office. He enjoyed the position and was praised for his efforts to combat poverty on the island nation. He held the post until the end of World War II in 1945. The couple then retired once again to France, where they spent much of the remainder of their lives. In recent years, some have suggested that the Duke (and especially the Duchess) sympathised with Fascism before and during World War II, and had to remain in the Bahamas to minimise their opportunities to act on those feelings. These revised assessments of his career hinge on some wartime information released in 1996, and on further secret files released by the U.K. government in 2003. The files had remained closed for decades, as Whitehall judged that they would cause the Queen Mother substantial distress if released during her lifetime. U.S. naval intelligence revealed a confidential report of a conference of German foreign officials in October 1941, that judged the Duke "no enemy to Germany" and the only English representative with whom Hitler would negotiate any peace terms, "the logical director of England's destiny after the war". President Roosevelt had ordered covert surveillance of the Duke and Duchess when they visited Palm Beach, Florida, in April 1941. The former Duke of Wurttemberg (then a monk in an American monastery) convinced the FBI that the Duchess had been sleeping with the German ambassador in London, Joachim von Ribbentrop, had remained in constant contact with him, and continued to leak secrets. Adrift In later years, the couple lived in Neuilly near Paris for most of the remainder of their lives. They hosted parties and travelled extensively. It was largely a prosperous (if lonely) existence of the two of them. The British Royal Family never accepted the Duchess and would not receive her formally, although the former King sometimes met his mother and a brother after his abdication. It is believed that Queen Elizabeth, Edward’s sister-in-law, remained bitter towards Wallis for her role in bringing her husband to the throne. In 1965 the Duke and Duchess returned to London. They were visited by the Queen, Princess Marina and also the Princess Royal. Within a week the Princess Royal was dead. In 1967 they joined the Royal Family for the centenary of Queen Mary's birth. The last occasion they were in England together was the funeral of Princess Marina, Duchess of Kent in 1968. The Duke died following a battle with throat cancer in 1972 in Paris, and his body was returned to Britain for burial at Frogmore, near Windsor Castle. The increasingly senile and frail Duchess travelled to England to attend his funeral, staying at Buckingham Palace during her visit. The Duchess, on her death a decade and a half later, was buried alongside her husband in Frogmore simply as "Wallis, his wife". The Duke and Duchess had no children, though an Australian magazine, the Australian Women's Weekly, published an article (with photographs depicting startling likenesses) purporting that the Duke, as Prince of Wales, had an affair with a young Australian woman named Mollee Little and produced a son, known as David Anthony Chisholm (1921-1987). Chisholm later had a daughter, Barbara, with an aborigine mistress; his grandson by this daughter, and presumably the Duke's great-grandson, is Australian footballer Scott Chisholm. Titles from birth to death In addition to his seven personal names, the specific styles and titles held by the future Duke of Windsor changed several times before his ascension to the throne. Under Queen Victoria's Letters Patent of 30 June 1864 and settled practice dating back to 1714, as a male-line great-grandchild of the Sovereign, Edward was a prince of Great Britain and Ireland with the qualification of Highness (not Royal Highness). Queen Victoria's Letters Patent of 27 May 1898 expressly granted the titles of prince and princess of Great Britain and qualification of Royal Highness to the children of the surviving son of the Prince of Wales (the future Edward VII). As a male-line great-grandson of Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha he bore the titles Prince of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha and Duke of Saxony (with the qualification of Highness). George V's Order in Council on 20 July 1917 relinquished for himself and all descendants of Queen Victoria who were British subjects the "use of the Degrees, Styles, Dignities, Titles and Honours of Dukes and Duchesses of Saxony and Princes and Princesses of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, and all other German Degrees, Styles, Dignities, Titles, Honours and Appellations". From his father's ascension to the throne on 6 May 1910 until his own accession on 20 January 1936, he held the titles Duke of Cornwall, Duke of Rothesay, Earl of Carrick, Baron Renfrew, Lord of the Isles and Prince and Great Steward of Scotland. His full title as king was "Edward VIII, of Great Britan, Ireland, and of the British Dominions beyond the Seas, King, Defender of the Faith, Emperor of India." The Duke of Windsor's titles and styles were as follows: His Highness Prince Edward of York (23 June 1894-27 May 1898) His Royal Highness Prince Edward of York (27 May 1898-22 January 1901) His Royal Highness Prince Edward of Cornwall and York (22 January-9 November 1901) His Royal Highness Prince Edward of Wales (9 November 1901-6 May 1910) His Royal Highness The Duke of Cornwall (in Scotland "His Royal Highness The Prince Edward, Duke of Rothesay") (6 May 1910-2 June 1910) His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales (in Scotland "His Royal Highness The Prince Edward, Duke of Rothesay") (2 June 1910-20 January 1936) His Majesty The King (20 January 1936-11 December 1936) His Royal Highness The Prince Edward (11 December 1936-12 December 1936 / 8 March 1937) His Royal Highness The Duke of Windsor (12 December 1936 / 8 March 1937-28 May 1972) His Excellency The Governor of the Bahamas, (18 August 1940 / 28 July 1945) Another Version: Edward VIII, also called (from 1936) Prince Edward, Duke Of Windsor, in full Edward Albert Christian George Andrew Patrick David, Prince of Wales (1911-36) and King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and of the British dominions and Emperor of India from Jan. 20 to Dec. 10, 1936, when he abdicated in order to marry Wallis Warfield Simpson of the United States. He was the only British sovereign ever voluntarily to resign the crown. The eldest child of George, Duke of York (later King George V), and Princess Mary of Teck (later Queen Mary), he became heir to the throne on the accession of his father (May 6, 1910). Although trained (1907-11) for the Royal Navy, he was commissioned in the Army's Grenadier Guards after the outbreak of World War I (Aug. 6, 1914) and served as a staff officer. After the war and through the early 1920s he undertook extensive goodwill tours of the British Empire; and, after an illness that his father suffered in 1928, the prince took an increasing interest in national affairs. In 1932, after unemployment had reached unprecedented levels, he toured workingmen's clubs throughout Britain and enlisted more than 200,000 men and women in occupational schemes. During these years his popularity rivaled, if it did not exceed, that of his grandfather King Edward VII when the latter was prince of Wales. In 1930 King George V gave him Fort Belvedere, an 18th-century house belonging to the crown, near Sunningdale. The Fort, as he always called it, gave him privacy and the sense of making a home that was entirely his own. He worked arduously in the garden and woodlands, becoming in the 1930s something of an authority on horticulture, especially on the growing of roses. He soon began to regard the Fort as a refuge from the official world that he increasingly disliked. There he entertained a private circle of friends, not drawn from the conventional aristocracy and perhaps better characterized as part of the “high society” of the time. In 1930 the prince's friendship with Mrs. Simpson began. Mrs. Simpson, divorced from a U.S. Navy lieutenant in 1927, married Ernest Simpson in 1928. Members of a private circle of friends, the Simpsons were frequently in the company of the prince, and by 1934 he was deeply in love with Mrs. Simpson. It was at this point, before he could discuss the matter with his father, that George V died (Jan. 20, 1936) and Edward was proclaimed king. As king, Edward VIII set in motion drastic economies in the royal estates. In November he opened Parliament and then toured distressed areas in South Wales. Meanwhile his attempts to gain the royal family's acceptance of Mrs. Simpson, who had obtained a preliminary decree of divorce on Oct. 27, 1936, met with firm opposition, backed by the Church of England (of which he was the head) and most politicians in both Britain and the Commonwealth. (Winston Churchill, then out of power, was his only notable ally.) His affair with Mrs. Simpson evoked much lurid comment in American and continental European newspapers and journals but, until nearly the end of his kingship, was kept out of the British press through governmental persuasions and pressures. Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin attempted to impress upon the king the peril to the integrity of the monarchy caused by the private friendship with a divorcée. Discussions of a morganatic marriage were pursued, but on December 2 Baldwin assured him that this was impracticable. It was doomed by being somewhat hurriedly and forcibly put to the dominions and by the explosion of the whole matter in the press and Parliament on December 3. On the following day the word “abdication” appeared in the newspapers for the first time. The king therefore made his final decision and submitted his abdication on Dec. 10, 1936 (“I, Edward, do hereby declare my irrevocable determination to renounce the throne for myself and my descendants”). The instrument of abdication was endorsed by Parliament on December 11, and on the same evening the former king spoke on a radio broadcast: “I have found it impossible to carry on the heavy burden of responsibility and to discharge the duties of King as I would wish to do without the help and support of the woman I love.” That night he left for the Continent, where he lived several months with friends in Austria and discreetly apart from Mrs. Simpson until after her decree of divorce became final. On June 3, 1937, Edward was married to Mrs. Simpson by a clergyman of the Church of England at the Château de Candé, France. The new king, George VI, had created his older brother duke of Windsor (Dec. 12, 1936) but in 1937, on the advice of the Cabinet, refused to extend to the new duchess of Windsor the rank of “royal highness” enjoyed by her husband; this decision severely wounded the duke. For the next two years the duke and duchess lived mainly in France, visiting various other European countries, including Germany (October 1937), where the duke was honoured by Nazi officials and had an interview with Adolf Hitler. The outbreak of World War II failed to close the breach between the duke and his family, and, after visiting London, he accepted a position as liaison officer with the French. On the fall of France he traveled to Madrid, where he was subjected to a fanciful plan of the Nazis to remake him king and to use him against the established government in England. When he reached Lisbon, he was offered by Prime Minister Winston Churchill the governorship of the Bahamas, a British colony in the West Indies, and he remained there for the duration of the war (1940-45). After 1945 he lived in Paris. Short visits to England followed in succeeding years-notably, to attend the funerals of his brother King George VI (1952) and their mother, Queen Mary (1953)-but it was not until 1967 that, for the first time, the duke and duchess were invited to attend an official public ceremony with other members of the royal family-initially, the unveiling of a plaque to Queen Mary at Marlborough House. After their deaths, the duke and the duchess were buried side by side at Frogmore, within the grounds of Windsor Castle. http://en.wikipedia.org
William B.
