Abstract
This chapter explores the abdication of Edward VIII, and so the issue of the extent to which the later Duke of Windsor qualifies as a ‘true’ Windsor, given the reasons for his abdication. It explores, also, the extent to which Edward VIII was badly advised, arguing that had the King been more determined to seek alternatives, he could have challenged the opinion of his Prime Minister in particular. The chapter assesses the extent to which, as an unexpected result of the changes instituted by George V, monarchs found themselves faced with a new reality: that their private lives were as much part of the ‘job description’ as their public and ceremonial duties. Drawing also upon the consequences of the way in which the royal family reacted to the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, the implication here is that the Windsors can, and will, only survive so long as they are perceived publicly to be doing the job—and continue to be willing to accept a high level of popular expectation of intrusion into what might once have been considered ‘private’ matters for individual Windsors.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Hansard, Commons, 10 December 1936, col.2186.
- 2.
Edward VIII is referred to in this article as ‘the King’ for events occurring during his reign, rather than his post-abdication title of Duke of Windsor; or alternately as ‘Edward’, rather than David which was the name his family and friends called him. His full names were Edward Albert Christian George Andrew Patrick David.
- 3.
Philip Zeigler (1990) King Edward VIII: The Official Biography (London: Harper). See also Frances Donaldson (1974) Edward VIII: The Road to Abdication (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson); Susan Williams (2003) The People’s King: The True Story of the Abdication (Harmondsworth: Penguin).
- 4.
For the constitutional law and history, see Robert Blackburn (1990) The Meeting of Parliament: A Study of the Law and Practice Relating to the Frequency and Duration of the United Kingdom Parliament (Dartmouth: Dartmouth Publishing Co). The most recent regulation has been the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011.
- 5.
See Sir William Dale (1983), The Modern Commonweath (Oxford: Butterworths Law).
- 6.
Notably prime ministerial appointment, Royal Assent to legislation, and the summoning of Parliament. Robert Blackburn (2004) ‘Monarchy and the Personal Prerogatives’, Public Law, 546–63.
- 7.
As King visiting the poverty of mining communities in South Wales he uttered the now famous words, ‘Something must be done to meet the situation in South Wales and I will do all I can to assist you’, Daily Herald, 20 November 1936.
- 8.
Alan Lascelles (1989) In Royal Service: the Letters and Journals of Sir Alan Lascelles 1920–1936 (1989), ed Duff Hart-Davis (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson); Alan Lascelles (2006) King’s Counsellor: Abdication and War, the Diaries of Sir Alan Lascelles, ed Duff Hart-Davis (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson), especially pp104–13.
- 9.
Hansard, Commons, 10 December 1936, col.2179.
- 10.
On the conduct of the press see Lord Beaverbrook (1966) The Abdication of King Edward VIII ed A. J. P. Taylor (London: Hamish Hamilton).
- 11.
The Prime Minister of Canada was visiting the UK between 16 and 31 October, enabling him to brief Baldwin on the press and public opinion in his country and America. Meanwhile Baldwin was receiving ‘a vast volume of correspondence … all expressing perturbation and uneasiness’ at the news being reported abroad. Hansard, Commons, 10 December 1936, col.2177.
- 12.
Hansard, Commons, 10 December 1936, col.2180. According to Edward’s memoirs, during the meeting Baldwin suggested the King prevail upon Wallis to withdraw her divorce case. This was immediately rejected by Edward, saying, ‘I have no right to interfere with the affairs of an individual. It would be wrong were I to attempt to influence Mrs. Simpson just because she happens to be a friend of the King’s’, Duke of Windsor (1951) A King’s Story (London: Cassell) p318.
- 13.
See Windsor, King’s Story, p327.
- 14.
For the full text of the letter, see Hardinge Papers, Cambridge University Library; Helen Hardinge (1967) Loyal to Three Kings (London: William Kimber) p117; Duchess of Windsor, The Heart Has its Reasons (London: Chivers) pp244–5.
- 15.
Hansard Commons, 10 December 1936, cols.2180–2181.
- 16.
Windsor, King’s Story, p332; Hansard, Commons, 10 December 1936, col.2181.
- 17.
On the office of Private Secretary see Vernon Bogdanor (1995) Monarchy and the Constitution (Oxford: Oxford University Press) Ch.8. On Edward VIII’s Royal Household appointments, see Windsor, A King’s Story pp304–05.
- 18.
See Windsor, King’s Story, p327.
- 19.
The role and support of Winston Churchill is considered below.
- 20.
Windsor, King’s Story, p329.
- 21.
Co-founder of the firm Allen and Overy, a large legal practice still in existence today. Following the abdication, Allen became Edward’s primary legal representative in dealings with the British government, on matters including the ex-King’s exile, financial settlement, and title for Wallis after their marriage.
- 22.
See Malone v. Metropolitan Police Commissioner [1979] Ch 344.
- 23.
A note from the Home Office to the GPO’s head Sir Thomas Gardiner dated 5th December 1936 marked ‘most secret’, reads, ‘The home secretary asks me to confirm the information conveyed to you orally, with his authority, by Sir Horace Wilson that you will arrange for the interception of telephone communications between Fort Belvedere and Buckingham Palace on the one hand and the Continent of Europe on the other’: TNA CAB 301(101).
- 24.
Monkton Papers, Dep. Monkton Trustees file 22, f.279.
- 25.
The view of Sir Brian MacKenna, a colleague of Monckton and High Court judge, was that, ‘Walter was not a great or original lawyer, nor one who could himself generate a way of looking at a question’, cited, Lord Birkenhead (1969) Walter Monckton: The Life of Viscount Monckton of Brenchley (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson) p73; Ch.8 generally.
- 26.
Monckton Papers, f.289, p11 in his account.
- 27.
Churchill Archives Centre (henceforth CAC), Brendon Papers, interview with Kenneth de Courcy. Subsequently Monckton became an MP in 1951 and served in Cabinet (as Minister for Labour, Defence, then Postmaster General) until 1957 when he was awarded an hereditary peerage, becoming Viscount Monckton of Brenchley.
- 28.
The best-known instance being the marriage of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria to Sophie Chotek in 1900.
- 29.
Windsor, King’s Story, p342. Harmsworth was Chairman of Associated Newspapers and publisher of the Daily Mail.
- 30.
Hansard, Commons, 4 December 1936, cols.1611–12. Edward later commented that, ‘He undertook in a few shrewdly chosen words to demolish for Parliament’s benefit the case for the middle way—the morganatic marriage’, Windsor, King’s Story, pp377–8.
- 31.
Monckton Papers, f.290, p12 in his account.
- 32.
Windsor, King’s Story, p342.
- 33.
Thus the Crown is an extra-parliamentary legislature, though its working and measures are subject always to the primacy of an Act of Parliament: for the classic exposition of parliamentary sovereignty see A. V. Dicey (1885) Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution (London: Macmillan). Orders in Council in modern times may also, and regularly are, made under statutory authority conferred by Acts of Parliament on specific subject-matter.
- 34.
Generally see J. P. Mackintosh (1977) The British Cabinet (London: Stevens and Son).
- 35.
Royal Warrant dated 4 December 1905, London Gazette 5 December 1905.
- 36.
Today a hereditary peerage may be disclaimed under the terms of the Peerage Act 1963.
- 37.
Queen Caroline’s Claim to be Crowned (1821) 1 State Trials NS 949.
- 38.
Mackay of Clashfern (2008) Halsbury’s Laws of England , Vol. 29: Crown and Crown Proceedings, (London: Butterworth) para.31.
- 39.
Halsbury’s Statutes (1985–1992) 4th edn (London: Butterworths); Treason Act 1351.
- 40.
40Regency Act 1937, section 2(1).
- 41.
See Halsbury’s Laws of England Vol. 29: Crown and Crown Proceedings, para.31.
- 42.
House of Lords Precedence Act 1539.
- 43.
See Prince’s Case (1606) 8 Co. Rep. 1a at 18b; Sir Edward Coke (1644) Institutes of the Laws of England, Part 4, pp361; 363; Halsbury’s Laws of England (2014) 5th edn, Vol.20, Constitutional and Administrative Law, para.567.
- 44.
The same procedure was subsequently been given statutory form by Sect. 4 of the Judicial Committee Act 1833, under which a monarch has power to refer any matter to the Judiciary Committee for ‘consideration and report’.
- 45.
Monckton Papers, f.294, p15 in his account.
- 46.
Edward later said, ‘Gratefully I grasped Walter’s proposal—it was a lifeline thrown across a crevasse’, Windsor, A King’s Story p387; also generally Ch.XXVI (‘The Fate of the Two Bills’).
- 47.
Between 1800 and 1857 there were 193 divorces by private Acts of Parliament, an average of over three a year: generally see Sybil Wolfram (1985) ‘Divorce in England 1700–1857’, Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, 5(2) pp155–86.
- 48.
Monckton papers, f.295, p17 in his account.
- 49.
Windsor, King’s Story, p343.
- 50.
Ibid. On the ambit of ministerial responsibility for the monarchy see further below.
- 51.
Ibid.
- 52.
TNA CAB 21/4100/2.
- 53.
Quoted in Ziegler, Edward VIII pp305–6 (RA KEVIII Ab. Box 1/19).
- 54.
Hansard, Commons, 10 December 1936, col.2182. The statement was qualified by the exception of the formal exchange of letters on 9 December: see below.
- 55.
See further below.
- 56.
TNA PREM 1/448, Churchill to Baldwin, Letter, 5 December 1936.
- 57.
Monckton Papers, file 22, f.267. Monckton in his own account said the King was ‘even more tired than I had thought and seemed worn out’, but made little of this in his negotiations with Downing Street.
- 58.
A view expressed to Edward at their meeting of 16 November 1936, Windsor, King’s Story, pp330–1.
- 59.
See James Pope-Hennessy (1959) Queen Mary 1867–1953 (London: Allen and Unwin); Robert Beaken (2012) Cosmo Lang: Archbishop in War and Crisis (London: I.B. Tauris).
- 60.
Windsor, King’s Story, p357.
- 61.
Quoted in Ziegler, Edward VIII, p316.
- 62.
The text of this draft broadcast, which in the event was stopped by the Prime Minister from being made, is among Walter Monckton’s private papers released to the Bodleian Library in 2000: Monckton Papers, DMT 14, fols.52–4; now also available in The National Archives, TNA CAB 21/4100/2. See also Windsor, King’s Story, p361.
- 63.
TNA PREM 1/451 (2003 release).
- 64.
This summary is taken from Windsor, King’s Story, pp378–9.
- 65.
According to Thomas Dugdale, Baldwin’s Parliamentary Private Secretary. See Nancy Dugdale ‘An Abdication Diary’, Review, The Observer, 7 December 1986, p22.
- 66.
For reasons of length and the broadcast being well known, it is not reproduced or extracted here: for its text see Windsor, King’s Story, pp413–14. An audio recording is at www.poynter.org/news/mediawire/307221/today-in-media-history-radio-stations-broadcast-the-1936-abdication-speech-of-king-edward-viii.
- 67.
For the text of the letter see Hansard, Commons, 10 December 1936, col.2185.
- 68.
Windsor, King’s Story, p403; Hansard, Commons, 10 December 1936, col.2185.
- 69.
HC Bill 48 (1936–1937).
- 70.
Windsor, King’s Story, pp403–4.
- 71.
Hansard, Commons, 10 December 1936, col.2183.
- 72.
G. M. Young (1952) Stanley Baldwin (London: Hart-Davies) p241.
- 73.
Windsor, King’s Story, p343.
- 74.
Ibid., p385.
- 75.
See Geoffrey Marshall (1984) Constitutional Conventions: The Rules and Forms of Political Responsibility (Oxford: Oxford University Press); Robert Blackburn (1985) ‘The Queen and Ministerial Responsibility’, Public Law, pp361–8; Sir Ivor Jennings (1936) Cabinet Government (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), especially chs XII; XIII.
- 76.
An earlier dismissal had been of the Fox-North ministry by George III, replacing it by William Pitt as Prime Minister, in 1783.
- 77.
Edward Marjoriebanks and Ian Colvin (1934) The Life of Lord Carson, 2 vols (London; Gollancz), II, p240.
- 78.
Memorandum reproduced, J. A. Spender and C. Asquith (1932) Life of Herbert Henry Asquith, Lord Oxford and Asquith, 2 vols (London: Hutchinson) II, pp30–1.
- 79.
MacDonald was expelled from the Labour Party in consequence: see Reginald Bassett (1958) 1931: Political Crisis (Dartmouth: Dartmouth Publishing Company).
- 80.
These included as Home Secretary 1910–1911; First Lord of the Admiralty 1911–1915; Secretary of State for War, and for Air, 1919–1921; and Chancellor the Exchequer 1924–1929. Baldwin subsequently regretted allowing Edward to consult Churchill: see G. M. Young (1952) Stanley Baldwin (London: Rupert Hart-Davis) p242.
- 81.
Quoted, Windsor, King’s Story, pp390–1.
- 82.
Hansard, Commons 3 December 1936, cols.1440–1; 4 December 1936, cols.1529–30.
- 83.
A King’s Story, p382.
- 84.
Hansard, Commons, 7 December 1936, cols.1643–4.
- 85.
Roy Jenkins (2001) Churchill (London: Macmillan) p503.
- 86.
As spoken to Sir Henry Channon, see Robert Rhodes James, ed (1967) Chips: The Diaries of Sir Henry Channon (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson) p92.
- 87.
Hansard, Commons, 10 December 1936, cols.2175–97.
- 88.
Hansard, Commons, 11 December 1936, col.2223. The Act of the UK Parliament took direct effect in most parts of the Empire but subsequent national legislation was required in some of the Dominions, including Canada, South Africa and Ireland. The approval of the Dominions to any UK changes in the law of succession to the Crown was a constitutional requirement under a convention declared in the preamble of the Statute of Westminster 1931 and was deemed to have been given through the consultations over the morganatic proposal.
- 89.
See Announcement of the Marriage of HRH The Prince of Wales and Mrs Camilla Parker Bowles, Clarence House, 10 February 2005: ‘It is intended that Mrs Parker Bowles should use the title HRH The Princess Consort when The Prince of Wales accedes to The Throne’. A review and final judgement on the matter will no doubt be taken at the time of Charles’s accession, influenced by public opinion. Meanwhile the Duchess has eschewed using the title of ‘Princess of Wales’ out of respect for the memory of Princess Diana who died in 1997.
- 90.
Her honorary right to the title as the wife of Edward was removed by Letters Patent of King George VI dated 27 May 1937, duplicitously conferring the title of Royal Highness upon Edward when in fact he already possessed the title under Letters Patent of 5 February 1864 (conferring the title on all children of a monarch), then adding the real purpose of the document which was to state that the title did not extend to his wife or children. It was Sir John Simon who designed this scheme to draw a line between the Duchess and the Royal Family, to the everlasting hurt and anger of Edward.
- 91.
The British film industry banned movie coverage of the Edward and Wallis’s marriage from being shown in cinemas around the country to comply with the government’s direction that undue publicity should not be given to the wedding.
- 92.
These were the words used by Lord Devlin to describe the government’s refusal to admit the title of Royal Highness to the Duchess of Windsor, as Wallis became. Michael Bloch (1988) The Secret File of the Duke of Windsor (London: HarperCollins) p76.
- 93.
Hansard, Commons, 10 December 1936, col.2179.
- 94.
Baldwin resigned office in May the following year, having served as Prime Minister 1923–1924, 1924–1929, 1935–1937.
Select Bibliography
Robert Beaken (2012) Cosmo Lang: Archbishop in War and Crisis (London: I.B. Tauris).
Lord Beaverbrook (1966) The Abdication of King Edward VIII (London: Hamish Hamilton).
Lord Birkenhead (1969) Walter Monckton: The Life of Viscount Monckton of Brenchley (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson).
Michael Bloch (1988) The Secret File of the Duke of Windsor (London: HarperCollins).
Michael Bloch (1990) The Reign and Abdication of Edward VIII (London: Bantam Press).
Vernon Bogdanor (1995) Monarchy and the Constitution (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Henry Channon (1967) Chips: The Diaries of Sir Henry Channon, ed Robert Rhodes James (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson).
A. V. Dicey (1885) Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution (London: Macmillan).
Frances Donaldson (1974) Edward VIII: The Road to Abdication (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson).
Duke of Windsor (1951) A King’s Story (London: Cassell).
Duchess of Windsor, The Heart Has its Reasons (London: Chivers).
Helen Hardinge (1967) Loyal to Three Kings (London: William Kimber).
Roy Jenkins (2001) Churchill (London: Macmillan).
Ivor Jennings (1936) Cabinet Government (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Alan Lascelles (1989) In Royal Service: the Letters and Journals of Sir Alan Lascelles 1920–1936, ed Duff Hart-Davis (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson).
Alan Lascelles (2006) King’s Counsellor: Abdication and War, the Diaries of Sir Alan Lascelles, ed Duff Hart-Davis (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson).
Geoffrey Marshall (1984) Constitutional Conventions: The Rules and Forms of Political Responsibility (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Keith Middlemas and John Barnes (1969) Baldwin: A Biography (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson).
Harold Nicolson (1952) King George V: His Life and Reign (London: Constable).
John W. Wheeler-Bennett (1958) King George VI: His Life and Reign (London: Macmillan).
James Pope-Hennessy (1959) Queen Mary 1867–1953 (London: Allen and Unwin).
Anne Sebba (2011) That Woman: The Life of Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson).
J. A. Spender and C. Asquith (1932) Life of Herbert Henry Asquith, Lord Oxford and Asquith, 2 vols (London: Hutchinson).
Susan Williams (2003) The People’s King: The True Story of the Abdication (Harmondsworth: Penguin).
G. M. Young (1952) Stanley Baldwin (London: Hart-Davies).
Philip Ziegler (1990) King Edward VIII: The Official Biography (London: Harper).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2016 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Blackburn, R. (2016). The Abdication of Edward VIII: Legal and Constitutional Perspectives. In: Glencross, M., Rowbotham, J., Kandiah, M. (eds) The Windsor Dynasty 1910 to the Present. Palgrave Studies in Modern Monarchy. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56455-9_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56455-9_7
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-56454-2
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-56455-9
eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)