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Edward VIII abdication crisis Edward VIII
In 1936, a constitutional crisis in the British Empire arose when King-Emperor Edward VIII proposed to marry Wallis Simpson, an American socialite who was divorced from her first husband and was pursuing a divorce of her second.

The marriage was opposed by the governments of the United Kingdom and the Dominions of the British Commonwealth. Religious, legal, political and moral objections were raised. As British monarch, Edward was the nominal head of the Church of England, which did not then allow divorced people to remarry if their ex-spouses were still alive, so it was widely believed that Edward could not marry Simpson and remain on the throne. Simpson was perceived to be politically and socially unsuitable as a consort because of her two failed marriages. It was widely assumed by the Establishment that she was driven by love of money or position rather than love for the King. Despite the opposition, Edward declared that he loved Simpson and intended to marry her whether his governments approved or not.

The widespread unwillingness to accept Simpson as the King's consort, and Edward's refusal to give her up, led to his abdication in December 1936. He remains the only British monarch to have voluntarily renounced the throne since the Anglo-Saxon period. He was succeeded by his brother Albert, who took the regnal name of George VI. Edward was given the title His Royal Highness the Duke of Windsor following his abdication, and he married Simpson the following year. They remained married until his death 35 years later.

Prelude

Edward had been introduced to Wallis Simpson, an American citizen and wife of British shipping executive Ernest Aldrich Simpson, by Lady Furness on 10 January 1931. Ernest Simpson was Wallis's second husband; her first marriage, to U.S. Navy pilot Win Spencer, had ended in divorce in 1927. It is generally accepted that Wallis Simpson and the Prince of Wales became lovers in 1934, while Lady Furness (who was also in a relationship with the prince) was visiting relatives in America. However, Edward adamantly insisted to his father that he was not physically intimate with Simpson and that it was inappropriate to describe her as his mistress.  Edward's relationship with Simpson further weakened his poor relationship with his parents. Although King George V and Queen Mary met Simpson at Buckingham Palace in 1935,  they later refused to receive her.  Edward and Simpson were secretly followed by members of the Metropolitan Police Special Branch, who produced reports on the nature of their relationship and their investigations into Wallis Simpson's private life that included the "pursuit of vicious gossip" and the identification of a "secret lover"."  The prospect of having an American divorcee with a questionable past having such sway over the heir apparent led to anxiety among government and establishment figures. 

Edward VIII succeeded his father on 20 January 1936, after which Simpson attended more official functions as the King's guest. Despite her name appearing regularly in the Court Circular, the name of her husband was conspicuously absent.  In the summer of that year, the King eschewed the traditional prolonged stay at Balmoral in favour of a holiday with Simpson in the eastern Mediterranean that was widely covered in the American and continental European press, but not by the British press, which maintained a self-imposed silence. Nevertheless, Canadians and expatriate Britons, who had access to the foreign reports, were largely scandalised by the coverage. 

By October, it was rumoured in high society and abroad that Edward intended to marry Simpson as soon as she was free to do so.  At the end of that month, the crisis came to a head when she filed for divorce and the American press announced that marriage between her and the King was imminent.  The King's private secretary, Alec Hardinge, wrote to him on 13 November, warning: "The silence in the British Press on the subject of Your Majesty's friendship with Mrs Simpson is not going to be maintained ... Judging by the letters from British subjects living in foreign countries where the Press has been outspoken, the effect will be calamitous."  Senior British ministers knew that Hardinge had written to the King and may have helped him draft the letter. 

The King invited Prime Minister Baldwin to Buckingham Palace the following Monday (16 November) and informed him that he intended to marry Simpson. Baldwin replied that such a marriage would not be acceptable to the people, stating: "... the Queen becomes the Queen of the country. Therefore in the choice of a Queen the voice of the people must be heard."  Baldwin's view was shared by the Australian High Commissioner in London, Stanley Bruce, who was a former Australian prime minister. On the same day that Hardinge wrote to the King, Bruce met Hardinge and then wrote to Baldwin, expressing horror at the idea of a marriage between the King and Simpson. 

Nevertheless, the British press remained quiet on the subject until Alfred Blunt, Bishop of Bradford, gave a speech to his diocesan conference on 1 December, which alluded to the King's need of divine grace: "We hope that he is aware of his need. Some of us wish that he gave more positive signs of his awareness."  The press took this for the first public comment by a notable person on the crisis and it became front page news the following day. When asked about it later, however, the bishop claimed he had not heard of Simpson at the time he wrote the speech.  Acting on the advice of Edward's staff, Simpson left Britain for the south of France two days later in an attempt to escape intense press attention. Both she and the King were devastated by the separation. At a tearful departure, the King told her, "I shall never give you up." 

Opposition

Opposition to the King and his marriage came from several directions. Edward's desire to modernise the monarchy and make it more accessible, though appreciated by many of the public,  was distrusted by the British Establishment.  Edward upset the aristocracy by treating their traditions and ceremonies with disdain, and many were offended by his abandonment of accepted social norms and mores. 

Social and moral

The King's ministers and family found Wallis Simpson's background and behaviour unacceptable for a queen. Rumours and innuendo about her circulated in society.  The King's mother, the dowager Queen Mary, was even told that Simpson might have held some sort of sexual control over Edward, as she had released him from an undefined sexual dysfunction through practices learnt in a Chinese brothel.  This view was partially shared by Dr. Alan Campbell Don, Chaplain to the Archbishop of Canterbury, who wrote that he suspected the King "is sexually abnormal which may account for the hold Mrs. S. has over him".  Even Edward VIII's official biographer, Philip Ziegler, noted that: "There must have been some sort of sadomasochistic relationship ... [Edward] relished the contempt and bullying she bestowed on him." 

Police detectives following Simpson reported back that, while involved with Edward, she was also involved with a married car mechanic and salesman named Guy Trundle.  This may well have been passed on to senior figures in the establishment, including members of the royal family.  Joseph Kennedy, the American ambassador, described her as a "tart", and his wife, Rose, refused to dine with her. 

Wallis was perceived to be pursuing Edward for his money; his equerry wrote that she would eventually leave him, "having secured the cash".  The future prime minister Neville Chamberlain (then Chancellor of the Exchequer) wrote in his diary that she was "an entirely unscrupulous woman who is not in love with the King but is exploiting him for her own purposes. She has already ruined him in money and jewels ..." 

Relations between the United Kingdom and the United States were strained during the inter-war years and the majority of Britons were reluctant to accept an American as queen consort.  At the time, some members of the British upper class looked down on Americans with disdain and considered them socially inferior.  In contrast, the American public was clearly in favour of the marriage,  as was most of the American press. 

Religious and legal

In Edward's lifetime, the Church of England did not allow divorced people to remarry in church while a former spouse was still living. The monarch was required to be in communion with the Church of England, and was its nominal head. If Edward married Wallis Simpson, a divorcee who would soon have two living ex-husbands, in a civil ceremony it would conflict with his ex officio role as Supreme Governor of the Church of England.

Wallis's first divorce (in the United States on the grounds of "emotional incompatibility") was not recognised by the Church of England and, if challenged in the English courts, might not have been recognised under English law. At that time, the church and English law considered adultery to be the only grounds for divorce. Consequently, under this argument, her second (and third) marriages would have been bigamous and invalid. 

Political

When Edward visited depressed mining villages in Wales, his comment that "something must be done"  led to concerns among elected politicians that he would interfere in political matters, traditionally avoided by constitutional monarchs. Ramsay MacDonald, Lord President of the Council, wrote of the King's comments: "These escapades should be limited. They are an invasion into the field of politics & should be watched constitutionally."  Although Edward's comments had made him popular in Wales,  he became extremely unpopular with the public in Scotland following his refusal to open a new wing of Aberdeen Royal Infirmary, saying he could not do so because he was in mourning for his father. The day after the opening he was pictured in newspapers on holiday: he had turned down the public event in favour of meeting Simpson. 

As Prince of Wales, Edward had publicly referred to Labour county councillors as "cranks"  and made speeches counter to government policy.  During his reign as king, his refusal to accept the advice of ministers continued: he opposed the imposition of sanctions on Italy after its invasion of Ethiopia, refused to receive the deposed Emperor of Ethiopia, and would not support a strengthening of the League of Nations. 

Members of the British government became further dismayed by the proposed marriage after being told that Wallis Simpson was an agent of Nazi Germany. The Foreign Office obtained leaked dispatches from the German Reich's Ambassador to the United Kingdom, Joachim von Ribbentrop, which revealed his strong view that opposition to the marriage was motivated by the wish "to defeat those Germanophile forces which had been working through Mrs. Simpson".  It was rumoured that Simpson had access to confidential government papers sent to Edward, which he left unguarded at his Fort Belvedere residence.  While Edward was abdicating, the personal protection officers guarding Simpson in exile in France sent reports to Downing Street suggesting that she might "flit to Germany". 

Options considered

As a result of these rumours and arguments, the belief strengthened among the British establishment that Simpson could not become a royal consort. British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin explicitly advised Edward that the majority of people would be opposed to his marrying Simpson, indicating that if he did, in direct contravention of his ministers' advice, the government would resign en masse. The King responded, according to his own account later: "I intend to marry Mrs. Simpson as soon as she is free to marry ... if the Government opposed the marriage, as the Prime Minister had given me reason to believe it would, then I was prepared to go."The Duke of Windsor, p. 332. Under pressure from the King, and "startled" at the suggested abdication, Baldwin agreed to take further soundings on three options:

# Edward and Simpson marry and she become queen (a royal marriage);
# Edward and Simpson marry, but she not become queen, instead receiving some courtesy title (a morganatic marriage); or
# Abdication for Edward and any potential heirs he might father, allowing him to make any marital decisions without further constitutional implications.

The second option had European precedents, including Edward's own great-grandfather, Duke Alexander of Württemberg, but it had no parallel in British constitutional history. The prime ministers of the five Dominions (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, and the Irish Free State) were consulted, and the majority agreed that there was "no alternative to course (3)".  William Lyon Mackenzie King (Prime Minister of Canada), Joseph Lyons (Prime Minister of Australia), and J. B. M. Hertzog (Prime Minister of South Africa) opposed options 1 and 2. Mackenzie King told Edward to do "what he believed in his own heart was right" and the Canadian government appealed to the King to put his duty before his feelings for Simpson. Governor General of Canada Lord Tweedsmuir told Buckingham Palace and Baldwin that Canadians held deep affection for the King, but also that Canadian public opinion would be outraged if Edward married a divorcee.  Michael Joseph Savage (Prime Minister of New Zealand) rejected option 1 and thought that option 2 "might be possible ... if some solution along these lines were found to be practicable", but "would be guided by the decision of the Home government".  In communications with the British government, Éamon de Valera, (President of the Executive Council of the Irish Free State), remarked that as a Roman Catholic country, the Irish Free State did not recognise divorce. He supposed that if the British people would not accept Wallis Simpson then abdication was the only possible solution.  On 24 November, Baldwin consulted the three leading opposition politicians in Britain: Leader of the Opposition Clement Attlee, Liberal leader Sir Archibald Sinclair, and Winston Churchill. Sinclair and Attlee agreed that options 1 and 2 were unacceptable, and Churchill pledged to support the government. 

Churchill did not support the government, however. In July, he had advised the King's legal counsel, Walter Monckton, against the divorce, but his advice was ignored.  As soon as the affair became public knowledge, Churchill started to pressure Baldwin and the King to delay any decisions until parliament and the people had been consulted.  In a private letter to Geoffrey Dawson, the editor of The Times newspaper, Churchill suggested that a delay would be beneficial because, given time, the King might fall out of love with Simpson.  Baldwin rejected the request for delay, presumably because he preferred to resolve the crisis quickly. Supporters of the King alleged a conspiracy between Baldwin, Geoffrey Dawson, and Cosmo Gordon Lang, the Archbishop of Canterbury.  The royal physician Bertrand Dawson was possibly involved in a plan to force the prime minister to retire on the grounds of heart disease, but he eventually accepted, on the evidence of an early electrocardiograph, that Baldwin's heart was sound. 

Political support for the King was scattered and comprised politicians outside of the mainstream parties such as Churchill, Oswald Mosley, and the Communists.  David Lloyd George also supported the King despite disliking Simpson. He was, however, unable to take any active role in the crisis because he was on holiday in Jamaica with his mistress.  In early December, rumours circulated that the King's supporters would join together in a "King's Party", led by Churchill. However, there was no concerted effort to form an organised movement and Churchill had no intention of leading one.  Nevertheless, the rumours damaged the King and Churchill severely, as members of parliament were horrified at the idea of the King interfering in politics. 

The letters and diaries of working-class people and ex-servicemen generally demonstrate support for the King, while those from the middle and upper classes tend to express indignation and distaste.  The Times, The Morning Post, Daily Herald, and newspapers owned by Lord Kemsley, such as The Daily Telegraph, opposed the marriage. On the other hand, the Express and Mail newspapers, owned by Lord Beaverbrook and Lord Rothermere, respectively, appeared to support a morganatic marriage.  The King estimated that the newspapers in favour had a circulation of 12.5 million, and those against had 8.5 million. 

On 3 December, Edward had a "tense" meeting with Baldwin. Backed by Churchill and Beaverbrook, Edward proposed to broadcast a speech via the BBC. The proposed text invoked the "ancient custom" for a King to "address his public utterances to his people". Edward proposed to remind his listeners: "I am still the same man whose motto was 'Ich Dien', I serve." In the proposed speech, Edward indicated his desire to remain on the throne or to be recalled to it if forced to abdicate, while marrying Simpson morganatically. In one section, Edward proposed to say:

Baldwin blocked the speech, saying that it would shock many people and would be a grave breach of constitutional principles. By modern convention, the sovereign could only act with the advice and counsel of ministers. In seeking the people's support against the government, Edward was opting to oppose binding ministerial advice and instead act as a private individual. Edward's British ministers felt that, in proposing the speech, Edward had revealed his disdainful attitude towards constitutional conventions and threatened the political neutrality of the Crown. 

Cabinet Office files released in 2013 show that on or before 5 December 1936, the Home Secretary, Sir John Simon, had ordered the General Post Office (which controlled British telephone services) to intercept "telephone communications between Fort Belvedere and Buckingham Palace on the one hand and the continent of Europe on the other." 

On 5 December, having in effect been told that he could not keep the throne and marry Simpson, and having had his request to broadcast to the Empire to explain "his side of the story" blocked on constitutional grounds,  Edward chose the third option. 

Legal manoeuvres

Following Simpson's divorce hearing on 27 October 1936, her solicitor, John Theodore Goddard, became concerned that there would be a "patriotic" citizen's intervention (a legal device to block the divorce), and that such an intervention would be successful.  The courts could not grant a collaborative divorce (a dissolution of marriage consented to by both parties), and so the case was being handled as if it were an undefended at-fault divorce brought against Ernest Simpson, with Wallis Simpson as the innocent, injured party. The divorce action would fail if the citizen's intervention showed that the Simpsons had colluded by, for example, conniving in or staging the appearance of his adultery so that she could marry someone else. On Monday 7 December 1936, the King heard that Goddard planned to fly to the south of France to see Wallis Simpson. The King summoned him and expressly forbade him to make the journey, fearing that the visit might put doubts in Simpson's mind. Goddard went straight to Downing Street to see Baldwin, as a result of which he was provided with an aeroplane to take him directly to Cannes.

Upon his arrival, Goddard warned his client that a citizen's intervention, should it arise, was likely to succeed. It was, according to Goddard, his duty to advise her to withdraw her divorce petition. Simpson refused, but they both telephoned the King to inform him that she was willing to give him up so that he could remain king. It was, however, too late; the King had already made up his mind to go, even if he could not marry Simpson. Indeed, as the belief that the abdication was inevitable gathered strength, Goddard stated that: "[his] client was ready to do anything to ease the situation but the other end of the wicket [Edward VIII] was determined". 

Goddard had a weak heart and had never flown before, so he asked his doctor, William Kirkwood, to accompany him on the trip. As Kirkwood was a resident at a maternity hospital, his presence led to false speculation that Simpson was pregnant,  and even that she was having an abortion. The press excitedly reported that the solicitor had flown to Simpson accompanied by a gynaecologist and an anaesthetist (who was actually the lawyer's clerk). 

Abdication

At Fort Belvedere, on 10 December, Edward signed his written abdication notices, witnessed by his three younger brothers: Prince Albert, Duke of York (who succeeded Edward as George VI); Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester; and Prince George, Duke of Kent. The following day, it was given legislative form by special Act of Parliament: His Majesty's Declaration of Abdication Act 1936.  Under changes introduced in 1931 by the Statute of Westminster, a single Crown for the entire empire had been replaced by multiple crowns, one for each Dominion, worn by a single monarch in an organisation then known as the British Commonwealth. Though the British government, hoping for expediency and to avoid embarrassment, wished the Dominions to accept the actions of the home government, the Dominions held that Edward's abdication required the consent of each Commonwealth state.  This was duly given; by the Parliament of Australia, which was at the time in session, and by the governments of the other Dominions, whose parliaments were in recess. The government of the Irish Free State, taking the opportunity presented by the crisis and in a major step towards its eventual transition to a republic, passed an amendment to its constitution on 11 December to remove references to the Crown.  The King's abdication was recognised a day later in the External Relations Act of the Irish Free State and legislation eventually passed in South Africa declared that the abdication took effect there on 10 December.  As Edward VIII had not been crowned, his planned coronation date became that of George VI instead.

Edward's supporters felt that he had "been hounded from the throne by that arch humbug Baldwin",  but many members of the establishment were relieved by Edward's departure. Mackenzie King wrote in his diary on 8 December 1936 that Edward's "sense of right or wrong has been largely obliterated by the jazz of life he has led for years" and, upon receiving news of Edward's final decision to abdicate, "if that is the kind of man he is it is better he should not be longer on the Throne."  Edward's own Assistant Private Secretary, Alan Lascelles, had told Baldwin as early as 1927: "I can't help thinking that the best thing that could happen to him, and to the country, would be for him to break his neck." 

On 11 December 1936, Edward made a BBC radio broadcast from Windsor Castle; having abdicated, he was introduced by Sir John Reith as "His Royal Highness Prince Edward".   The official address had been polished by Churchill and was moderate in tone, speaking about Edward's inability to do his job "as I would have wished" without the support of "the woman I love".  Edward's reign had lasted 327 days, the shortest of any British monarch since the disputed reign of Lady Jane Grey over 380 years earlier. The day following the broadcast he left Britain for Austria.

Post-abdication

George VI gave his elder brother the title of Duke of Windsor with the style His Royal Highness on 12 December 1936.  On 3 May the following year, the Simpsons' divorce was made final. The case was handled quietly and it barely featured in some newspapers. The Times printed a single sentence below a separate, and seemingly unconnected, report announcing the Duke's departure from Austria. 

Edward married Wallis in France on 3 June 1937. She became the Duchess of Windsor, but, much to Edward's disgust, King George issued letters patent that denied her the style of Her Royal Highness.  The couple settled in France, and the Duke received a tax-free allowance from his brother, which Edward supplemented by writing his memoirs and by illegal currency trading.  He also profited from the sale of Balmoral Castle and Sandringham House to George VI. Both estates are private property and not part of the Royal Estate, and were therefore inherited and owned by Edward, regardless of the abdication. 

In October 1937, the Duke and Duchess visited Germany, against the advice of the British government, and met Hitler at his Obersalzberg retreat. The visit was much publicised by the German media. During the visit the Duke gave full Nazi salutes.  In an article for the New York Daily News and Chicago Tribune of 13 December 1966 the Duke wrote that in 1937 Hitler persuaded him "it was in Britain's interest and in Europe's too, that Germany be encouraged to strike east and smash Communism forever ... I thought the rest of us could be fence-sitters while the Nazis and the Reds slogged it out."  

After the outbreak of World War II in September 1939, Edward was assigned to the British Military Mission in France.  In February 1940, the German ambassador in The Hague, Count Julius von Zech-Burkersroda, claimed that Edward had leaked the Allied war plans for the defence of Belgium.  When Germany invaded the north of France in May 1940, the Duke and Duchess fled to Lisbon. 

Under the code name Operation Willi, Nazi agents, principally Walter Schellenberg, plotted unsuccessfully to persuade the Duke to leave Portugal, and contemplated kidnapping him.  Lord Caldecote warned Churchill that the Duke "is well-known to be pro-Nazi and he may become a centre of intrigue".  Churchill threatened the Duke with a court-martial if he did not return to British soil. 

In July 1940, Edward was appointed Governor of the Bahamas.    Edward reportedly told an acquaintance, "After the war is over and Hitler will crush the Americans ... we'll take over ... They [the British] don't want me as their king, but I'll be back as their leader." He was reported as saying that "it would be a tragic thing for the world if Hitler was overthrown". Comments like these reinforced the belief that the Duke and Duchess held Nazi sympathies and the effect of the abdication crisis of 1936 was to force off the throne a man with extreme political opinions.  Claims that Edward would have been a threat or that he was removed by a political conspiracy to dethrone him remain speculative and "persist largely because since 1936 the contemporary public considerations have lost most of their force and so seem, wrongly, to provide insufficient explanation for the King's departure". 

Notes

Sources Edward VIII (Edward Albert Christian George Andrew Patrick David; 23 June 1894 – 28 May 1972) was King of the United Kingdom and the Dominions of the British Empire, and Emperor of India, from 20 January 1936 until his abdication on 11 December the same year.

Edward was the eldest son of King George V and Queen Mary. He was created Prince of Wales on his sixteenth birthday, nine weeks after his father succeeded as king. As a young man, he served in the British Army during the First World War and undertook several overseas tours on behalf of his father.

Edward became king on his father's death in early 1936. He showed impatience with court protocol, and caused concern among politicians by his apparent disregard for established constitutional conventions. Only months into his reign, he caused a constitutional crisis by proposing marriage to Wallis Simpson, an American who had divorced her first husband and was seeking a divorce from her second. The prime ministers of the United Kingdom and the Dominions opposed the marriage, arguing that the people would never accept a divorced woman with two living ex-husbands as queen consort. Additionally, such a marriage would have conflicted with Edward's status as the titular head of the Church of England, which at the time opposed the remarriage of divorced people if their former spouses were still alive. Edward knew that the British government, led by Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, would resign if the marriage went ahead, which could have forced a general election and would ruin his status as a politically neutral constitutional monarch. Choosing not to end the relationship, Edward abdicated. He was succeeded by his younger brother Albert, who chose George VI as his regnal name. With a reign of 326 days, Edward was one of the shortest-reigning monarchs in British history.

After his abdication, he was created Duke of Windsor. He married Simpson in France on 3 June 1937, after her second divorce became final. Later that year, the couple toured Germany. During the Second World War, he was at first stationed with the British Military Mission to France but, after private accusations that he held Nazi sympathies, he was appointed Governor of the Bahamas. After the war, Edward spent the rest of his life in retirement in France.

Early life

Edward was born on 23 June 1894 at White Lodge, Richmond Park, on the outskirts of London during the reign of his great-grandmother Queen Victoria.  He was the eldest son of the Duke and Duchess of York (later King George V and Queen Mary). His father was the son of the Prince and Princess of Wales (later King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra). His mother was the eldest daughter of the Duke and Duchess of Teck (Francis and Mary Adelaide). At the time of his birth, he was third in the line of succession to the throne, behind his grandfather and father. As a great-grandson of the monarch in the male line, Edward was styled His Highness Prince Edward of York at birth.

He was baptised Edward Albert Christian George Andrew Patrick David in the Green Drawing Room of White Lodge on 16 July 1894 by Edward White Benson, Archbishop of Canterbury.His twelve godparents were:
Queen Victoria (his paternal great-grandmother); the King and Queen of Denmark (his paternal great-grandparents, for whom his maternal uncle Prince Adolphus of Teck and his paternal aunt the Duchess of Fife stood proxy); the King of Württemberg (his mother's distant cousin, for whom his granduncle the Duke of Connaught stood proxy); the Queen of Greece (his grandaunt, for whom his paternal aunt Princess Victoria of Wales stood proxy); the Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (his granduncle, for whom Prince Louis of Battenberg stood proxy); the Prince and Princess of Wales (his paternal grandparents); the Tsarevich (his father's cousin); the Duke of Cambridge (his maternal granduncle and Queen Victoria's cousin); and the Duke and Duchess of Teck (his maternal grandparents).  The names were chosen in honour of Edward's late uncle, who was known to his family as "Eddy" or Edward, and his great-grandfather King Christian IX of Denmark. The name Albert was included at the behest of Queen Victoria for her late husband Albert, Prince Consort, and the last four names – George, Andrew, Patrick and David – came from the Patron Saints of England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales.  He was always known to his family and close friends by his last given name, David. 

As was common practice with upper-class children of the time, Edward and his younger siblings were brought up by nannies rather than directly by their parents. One of Edward's early nannies often abused him by pinching him before he was due to be presented to his parents. His subsequent crying and wailing would lead the Duke and Duchess to send him and the nanny away.  The nanny was discharged after her mistreatment of the children was discovered.

Edward's father, though a harsh disciplinarian,  was demonstrably affectionate,  and his mother displayed a frolicsome side with her children that belied her austere public image. She was amused by the children making tadpoles on toast for their French master,  and encouraged them to confide in her. 

Education

Initially Edward was tutored at home by Helen Bricka. When his parents travelled the British Empire for almost nine months following the death of Queen Victoria in 1901, young Edward and his siblings stayed in Britain with their grandparents, Queen Alexandra and King Edward VII, who showered their grandchildren with affection. Upon his parents' return, Edward was placed under the care of two men, Frederick Finch and Henry Hansell, who virtually brought up Edward and his brothers and sister for their remaining nursery years. 

Edward was kept under the strict tutorship of Hansell until nearly 13. He was taught German and French by private tutors. Edward took the examination to enter Osborne Naval College, and began there in 1907. Hansell had wanted Edward to enter school earlier, but his father disagreed.  Following two years at Osborne College, which he did not enjoy, Edward moved on to the Royal Naval College at Dartmouth. A course of two years followed by entry into the Royal Navy was planned. When his father ascended the throne on 6 May 1910, following the death of Edward VII, Edward automatically became Duke of Cornwall and Duke of Rothesay, and he was created Prince of Wales a month later on 23 June 1910, his 16th birthday. Preparations began in earnest for his future duties as king. He was withdrawn from his naval course before his formal graduation, served as midshipman for three months aboard the battleship Hindustan, then immediately entered Magdalen College, Oxford, for which, in the opinion of his biographers, he was underprepared intellectually. A keen horseman, he learned how to play polo with the university club.  He left Oxford after eight terms without any academic qualifications. 

Prince of Wales

Edward was officially invested as Prince of Wales in a special ceremony at Caernarvon Castle on 13 July 1911.  The investiture took place in Wales, at the instigation of the Welsh politician David Lloyd George, Constable of the Castle and Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Liberal government.  Lloyd George invented a rather fanciful ceremony in the style of a Welsh pageant, and coached Edward to speak a few words in Welsh. 

When the First World War broke out in 1914, Edward had reached the minimum age for active service and was keen to participate.  He had joined the Grenadier Guards in June 1914, and although 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. 

Despite this, Edward witnessed trench warfare first-hand and attempted to visit the front line as often as he could, for which he was awarded the Military Cross in 1916. His role in the war, although limited, made him popular among veterans of the conflict.  Edward undertook his first military flight in 1918, and later gained a pilot's licence. 

Throughout the 1920s, Edward, as Prince of Wales, represented his father, King George V, at home and abroad on many occasions. 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.  He took a particular interest in science and in 1926 was  president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science when his alma mater, Oxford University, hosted the society's annual general meeting. 

He also visited the poverty-stricken areas of the country,  and undertook 16 tours to various parts of the Empire between 1919 and 1935. On 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.  From January to April 1931, he and his brother, Prince George, travelled 18,000 miles on a tour of South America, voyaging out on the ocean liner ,  and returning via Paris and an Imperial Airways flight from Paris–Le Bourget Airport that landed specially in Windsor Great Park.  

His attitudes towards many of the Empire's subjects and various foreign peoples, both during his time as Prince of Wales and later as Duke of Windsor, were little commented upon at the time, but have soured his reputation subsequently.  In 1920, he wrote of Indigenous Australians "they are the most revolting form of living creatures I've ever seen!! They are the lowest known form of human beings & are the nearest thing to monkeys." 

In 1919 the Prince agreed to be President of the organising committee for the proposed British Empire Exhibition at Wembley Park, north-west London. The Prince wished the Exhibition to include "a great national sports ground", and so played a part in the creation of Wembley Stadium. 

Romances

In 1917, during the First World War, Edward began a love affair with Parisian courtesan Marguerite Alibert, who kept a collection of his indiscreet letters after he broke off the affair in 1918 to begin one with an English married woman, Freda Dudley Ward, a textile heiress. In 1923, Alibert was acquitted in a spectacular murder trial after she shot her husband in the London Savoy. 

Edward's womanising and reckless behaviour during the 1920s and 1930s worried Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, King George V, and those close to the prince. Alan Lascelles, Edward's private secretary for eight years during this period, believed that "for some hereditary or physiological reason his normal mental development stopped dead when he reached adolescence".  George V was disappointed by Edward'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," George said, "the boy will ruin himself in 12 months." 

In 1929, Time magazine reported that Edward teased his sister-in-law, Elizabeth, the wife of his younger brother Albert, by calling her "Queen Elizabeth". The magazine asked if "she did not sometimes wonder how much truth there is in the story that he once said he would renounce his rights upon the death of George V – which would make her nickname come true".  Edward's brother and sister-in-law had two children, including Princess Elizabeth, the future Queen Elizabeth II. George V favoured his son Albert ("Bertie"), and granddaughter Elizabeth ("Lilibet"), and told a courtier, "I pray to God that my eldest son [Edward] will never marry and have children, and that nothing will come between Bertie and Lilibet and the throne." 

In 1930, George V gave Edward the lease of Fort Belvedere, in Windsor Great Park.  There, Edward continued his relationships with a series of married women, including Freda Dudley Ward and Lady Furness, the American wife of a British peer, who introduced the prince to her friend and fellow American Wallis Simpson. Simpson had divorced her first husband, U.S. naval officer Win Spencer, in 1927.  Her second husband, Ernest Simpson, was a British-American businessman. Wallis Simpson and the Prince of Wales, it is generally accepted, became lovers while Lady Furness travelled abroad, though Edward adamantly insisted to his father that he was not intimate with her, and that it was not appropriate to describe her as his mistress.  Edward's relationship with Simpson, however, further weakened his poor relationship with his father. Although King George V and Queen Mary met Simpson at Buckingham Palace in 1935,  they later refused to receive her. 

Edward's affair with an American divorcee led to such grave concern that the couple were followed by members of the Metropolitan Police Special Branch, who examined in secret the nature of their relationship. An undated report detailed a visit by the couple to an antique shop, where the proprietor later noted "that the lady seemed to have POW [Prince of Wales] completely under her thumb."  The prospect of having an American divorcee with a questionable past having such sway over the heir apparent led to anxiety among government and establishment figures. 

Reign

King George V died on 20 January 1936, and Edward ascended the throne as King Edward VIII. The next day, he broke royal protocol by watching the proclamation of his own accession from a window of St James's Palace in the company of the then still-married Simpson.  He became the first monarch of the British Empire to fly in an aircraft when he flew from Sandringham to London for his Accession Council. 

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 an attempt to guide government policy, though it has never been clear what sort of remedy he had in mind. 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 it was feared that Simpson and other house guests might read them, improperly or inadvertently disclosing information that could be detrimental to the national interest. 

Edward's unorthodox approach to his role also extended to the currency which bore his image. He broke with the tradition that on coinage each successive monarch faced in the opposite direction to his or her predecessor. Edward insisted that he face left (as his father had done),  to show the parting in his hair.  Only a handful of test coins were struck before the abdication, and when George VI succeeded to the throne he also faced left, to maintain the tradition by suggesting that, had any coins been minted featuring Edward's portrait, they would have shown him facing right. 

On 16 July 1936, an Irish fraudster called Jerome Bannigan, alias George Andrew McMahon, produced a loaded revolver as Edward rode on horseback at Constitution Hill, near Buckingham Palace. Police spotted the gun and pounced on him; he was quickly arrested. At Bannigan's trial, he alleged that "a foreign power" had approached him to kill Edward, that he had informed MI5 of the plan, and that he was merely seeing the plan through to help MI5 catch the real culprits. The court rejected the claims and sent him to jail for a year for "intent to alarm".  It is now thought that Bannigan had indeed been in contact with MI5, but the veracity of the remainder of his claims remains open. 

In August and September, Edward and Simpson cruised the Eastern Mediterranean on the steam yacht Nahlin. By October it was becoming clear that the new king planned to marry Simpson, especially when divorce proceedings between the Simpsons were brought at Ipswich Assizes.  Preparations for all contingencies were made, including the prospect of the coronation of King Edward and Queen Wallis. Because of the religious implications of any marriage, plans were made to hold a secular coronation ceremony, not in the traditional religious location of Westminster Abbey, but in the Banqueting House in Whitehall. 

Although gossip about his affair was widespread in the United States, the British media kept voluntarily silent, and the public knew nothing until early December. 

Abdication

On 16 November 1936, Edward invited British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin to Buckingham Palace and expressed his desire to marry Wallis Simpson when she became free to remarry. Baldwin informed him that his subjects would deem the marriage morally unacceptable, largely because remarriage after divorce was opposed by the Church of England, and the people would not tolerate Simpson as queen.  As king, Edward was the titular head of the Church of England, and the clergy expected him to support the Church's teachings.

Edward proposed an alternative solution of a morganatic marriage, in which he would remain king but Simpson would not become queen. She would enjoy some lesser title instead, and any children they might have would not inherit the throne. This too was rejected by the British Cabinet  as well as other Dominion governments,  whose views were sought pursuant to the Statute of Westminster 1931, which provided in part that "any alteration in the law touching the Succession to the Throne or the Royal Style and Titles shall hereafter require the assent as well of the Parliaments of all the Dominions as of the Parliament of the United Kingdom."  The Prime Ministers of Australia (Joseph Lyons), Canada (Mackenzie King) and South Africa (J. B. M. Hertzog) made clear their opposition to the king marrying a divorcee;  their Irish counterpart (Éamon de Valera) expressed indifference and detachment, while the Prime Minister of New Zealand (Michael Joseph Savage), having never heard of Simpson before, vacillated in disbelief.  Faced with this opposition, Edward at first responded that there were "not many people in Australia" and their opinion did not matter. 

Edward informed Baldwin that he would abdicate if he could not marry Simpson. Baldwin then presented Edward with three choices: give up the idea of marriage; marry against his ministers' wishes; or abdicate.  It was clear that Edward was not prepared to give up Simpson, 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 instrumentsThere were fifteen separate copies – one for each Dominion, the Irish Free State, India, the House of Commons, the House of Lords and the Prime Minister, among others. of abdication at Fort Belvedere on 10 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. 

On the night of 11 December 1936, Edward, now reverted to the title and style of a prince, explained his decision to abdicate in a worldwide radio broadcast. 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."  Edward departed Britain for Austria the following day; he was unable to join Simpson until her divorce became absolute, several months later.  His brother, Prince Albert, Duke of York, succeeded to the throne as George VI. George VI's elder daughter, Princess Elizabeth, became first in the line of succession, as heiress presumptive.

Duke of Windsor

On 12 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 8 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. 

Letters Patent dated 27 May 1937 re-conferred the "title, style, or attribute of Royal Highness" upon the Duke of Windsor, but specifically stated that "his wife and descendants, if any, shall not hold said title or attribute". Some British ministers advised that the reconfirmation was unnecessary since Edward had retained the style automatically, and further that Simpson would automatically obtain the rank of wife of a prince with the style Her Royal Highness; others maintained that he had lost all royal rank and should no longer carry any royal title or style as an abdicated king, and be referred to simply as "Mr Edward Windsor". On 14 April 1937, Attorney General Sir Donald Somervell submitted to Home Secretary Sir John Simon a memorandum summarising the views of Lord Advocate T. M. Cooper, Parliamentary Counsel Sir Granville Ram, and himself:
# We incline to the view that on his abdication the Duke of Windsor could not have claimed the right to be described as a Royal Highness. In other words, no reasonable objection could have been taken if the King had decided that his exclusion from the lineal succession excluded him from the right to this title as conferred by the existing Letters Patent.
# The question however has to be considered on the basis of the fact that, for reasons which are readily understandable, he with the express approval of His Majesty enjoys this title and has been referred to as a Royal Highness on a formal occasion and in formal documents. In the light of precedent it seems clear that the wife of a Royal Highness enjoys the same title unless some appropriate express step can be and is taken to deprive her of it.
# We came to the conclusion that the wife could not claim this right on any legal basis. The right to use this style or title, in our view, is within the prerogative of His Majesty and he has the power to regulate it by Letters Patent generally or in particular circumstances. 

The Duke of Windsor married Simpson, who had changed her name by deed poll to Wallis Warfield, in a private ceremony on 3 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  to the lasting resentment of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. Edward had particularly wanted his brothers the Dukes of Gloucester and Kent and his second cousin Louis Mountbatten to attend the ceremony. 

The denial of the style Her Royal Highness to the Duchess of Windsor caused further conflict, as did the financial settlement – 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, which 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, Queen Mary, writing to her in 1939: "[your last letter]She had asked Alec Hardinge to write to the Duke explaining that he could not be invited to his father's memorial. destroy[ed] 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 Queen Mary and his wife Queen Elizabeth) threatened to cut off Edward's allowance if he returned to Britain without an invitation.

Second World War

In October 1937, the Duke and Duchess visited Germany, against the advice of the British government, and met Adolf Hitler at his Obersalzberg retreat. The visit was much publicised by the German media. During the visit the Duke gave full Nazi salutes.  The former Austrian ambassador, Count Albert von Mensdorff-Pouilly-Dietrichstein, who was also a second cousin once removed and friend of George V, believed that Edward favoured German fascism as a bulwark against communism, and even that he initially favoured an alliance with Germany.  According to the Duke of Windsor himself, the experience of "the unending scenes of horror"  during the First World War led him to support appeasement. Hitler considered Edward to be friendly towards Nazi Germany and thought that Anglo-German relations could have been improved through Edward if it were not for the abdication. Albert Speer quoted Hitler directly: "I am certain through him permanent friendly relations could have been achieved. If he had stayed, everything would have been different. His abdication was a severe loss for us." 

The Duke and Duchess settled in France. In May 1939, the Duke was commissioned by NBC to give a radio broadcast (his first since abdicating) during a visit to the battlefields of Verdun. In it he appealed for peace, saying "I am deeply conscious of the presence of the great company of the dead, and I am convinced that could they make their voices heard they would be with me in what I am about to say. I speak simply as a soldier of the Last War whose most earnest prayer it is that such cruel and destructive madness shall never again overtake mankind. There is no land whose people want war." The broadcast was heard across the world and by millions in America.   It was widely seen as supporting appeasement,  and the BBC refused to broadcast it.Bradford, p. 285; Ziegler, pp. 398–399 It was broadcast outside the United States on shortwave radio  and was reported in full by British broadsheet newspapers. 

On the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939, they were brought back to Britain by Louis Mountbatten on board HMS Kelly, and the Duke, although an honorary field marshal, was made a major-general attached to the British Military Mission in France. In February 1940, the German ambassador in The Hague, Count Julius von Zech-Burkersroda, claimed that the Duke had leaked the Allied war plans for the defence of Belgium,  which the Duke later denied.  When Germany 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, where they lived at first in the home of Ricardo de Espírito Santo, a Portuguese banker with both British and German contacts. 

Under the code name Operation Willi, Nazi agents, principally Walter Schellenberg, plotted unsuccessfully to persuade the Duke to leave Portugal and return to Spain, kidnapping him if necessary.  Lord Caldecote wrote a warning to Winston Churchill: "[the Duke] is well-known to be pro-Nazi and he may become a centre of intrigue."  Churchill threatened the Duke with a court-martial if he did not return to British soil.  In July 1940, Edward was appointed Governor of the Bahamas and on 1 August the Duke and Duchess left Lisbon on the American Export Lines steamship Excalibur, which was specially diverted from its usual direct course to New York City so that they could be dropped off at Bermuda on the 9th.  They left Bermuda for Nassau on the Canadian steamship Lady Somers on 15 August, arriving two days later. 

The Duke did not enjoy being governor, and referred to the islands as "a third-class British colony".  The British Foreign Office strenuously objected when the Duke and Duchess planned to cruise aboard a yacht belonging to a Swedish magnate, Axel Wenner-Gren, whom American intelligence wrongly believed to be a close friend of Luftwaffe commander Hermann Göring.  The Duke was praised for his efforts to combat poverty on the islands, although he was as contemptuous of the Bahamians as he was of most non-white peoples of the Empire. He said of Étienne Dupuch, the editor of the Nassau Daily Tribune: "It must be remembered that Dupuch is more than half Negro, and due to the peculiar mentality of this Race, they seem unable to rise to prominence without losing their equilibrium." He was praised, even by Dupuch, for his resolution of civil unrest over low wages in Nassau in 1942, even though he blamed the trouble on "mischief makers – communists" and "men of Central European Jewish descent, who had secured jobs as a pretext for obtaining a deferment of draft".  He resigned the post on 16 March 1945.

Many historians have suggested that Hitler was prepared to reinstate Edward as king in the hope of establishing a fascist Britain.  It is widely believed that the Duke and Duchess sympathised with fascism before and during the Second World War, and were moved to the Bahamas to minimise their opportunities to act on those feelings. In 1940 he said: "In the past 10 years Germany has totally reorganised the order of its society ... Countries which were unwilling to accept such a reorganisation of society and its concomitant sacrifices should direct their policies accordingly."  During the occupation of France, the Duke asked the German forces to place guards at his Paris and Riviera homes; they did so.  In December 1940, the Duke gave Fulton Oursler of Liberty magazine an interview at Government House in Nassau. The interview was published on 22 March 1941 and in it the Duke was reported to have said that "Hitler was the right and logical leader of the German people" and that the time was coming for President Franklin D. Roosevelt to mediate a peace settlement. Oursler conveyed the content of the interview to the President in a private meeting at the White House on 23 December 1940.  The Duke protested that he had been misquoted and misinterpreted. 

The Allies became sufficiently disturbed by German plots revolving around the Duke that President Roosevelt ordered covert surveillance of the Duke and Duchess when they visited Palm Beach, Florida, in April 1941. Duke Carl Alexander of Württemberg (then a monk in an American monastery) had told the Federal Bureau of Investigation that the Duchess had slept with the German ambassador in London, Joachim von Ribbentrop, in 1936, had remained in constant contact with him, and had continued to leak secrets. 

Author Charles Higham claimed that Anthony Blunt, an MI5 agent, acting on orders from the British Royal Family, made a successful secret trip to Schloss Friedrichshof in Germany towards the end of the war to retrieve sensitive letters between the Duke of Windsor and Adolf Hitler and other leading Nazis.  What is certain is that George VI sent the Royal Librarian, Owen Morshead, accompanied by Blunt, then working part-time in the Royal Library as well as for British intelligence, to Friedrichshof in March 1945 to secure papers relating to the German Empress Victoria, the eldest child of Queen Victoria. Looters had stolen part of the castle's archive, including surviving letters between daughter and mother, as well as other valuables, some of which were recovered in Chicago after the war. The papers rescued by Morshead and Blunt, and those returned by the American authorities from Chicago, were deposited in the Royal Archives. 

After the war, the Duke admitted in his memoirs that he admired the Germans, but he denied being pro-Nazi. Of Hitler he wrote: "[the] Führer struck me as a somewhat ridiculous figure, with his theatrical posturings and his bombastic pretensions."  In the 1950s, journalist Frank Giles heard the Duke blame British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden for helping to "precipitate the war through his treatment of Mussolini ... that's what [Eden] did, he helped to bring on the war ... and of course Roosevelt and the Jews". 

Later life

At the end of the war, the couple returned to France and spent the remainder of their lives essentially in retirement as the Duke never occupied another official role after his wartime governorship of the Bahamas. The Duke's allowance was supplemented by government favours and illegal currency trading.  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, Bradford, p. 446 and the couple were able to buy goods duty-free through the British embassy and the military commissary. In 1951, the Duke produced a ghost-written memoir, A King's Story, in which he expresses disagreement with liberal politics. The royalties from the book added to their income. Nine years later, he penned a relatively unknown book, A Family Album, chiefly about the fashion and habits of the Royal Family throughout his life, from the time of Queen Victoria to that of his grandfather and father, and his own tastes.

The Duke and Duchess effectively took on the role of celebrities and were regarded as part of café society in the 1950s and 1960s. They hosted parties and shuttled between Paris and New York; Gore Vidal, who met the Windsors socially, reported on the vacuity of the Duke's conversation.  The couple doted on the pug dogs they kept. 

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 Duke was paid to write articles on the ceremony for the Sunday Express and Woman's Home Companion, as well as a short book, The Crown and the People, 1902–1953. 

In 1955, they visited President Dwight D. Eisenhower at the White House. The couple appeared on Edward R. Murrow's television interview show Person to Person in 1956,  and a 50-minute BBC television interview in 1970. That year, they were invited as guests of honour to a dinner at the White House by President Richard Nixon. 

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 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 the 1960s, the Duke's health deteriorated. In December 1964, he was operated on by Michael E. DeBakey in Houston for an aneurysm of the abdominal aorta, and in February 1965 a detached retina in his left eye was treated by Sir Stewart Duke-Elder. In late 1971, 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.

Death and legacy

On 28 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 5 June in the presence of the Queen, the Royal Family, and the Duchess of Windsor, who stayed at Buckingham Palace during her visit. He was buried in the Royal Burial Ground behind the Royal Mausoleum of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert at Frogmore.  Until a 1965 agreement with Queen Elizabeth II, the Duke and Duchess had planned for a burial in a cemetery plot they had purchased at Green Mount Cemetery in Baltimore, where the Duchess's father was interred.  Frail, and suffering increasingly from dementia, the Duchess died 14 years later, and was buried alongside her husband as "Wallis, Duchess of Windsor". 

In the view of historians such as Philip Williamson, the popular perception today that the abdication was driven by politics rather than religious morality is false, and arises because divorce has become much more common and socially acceptable. To modern sensibilities, the religious restrictions that prevented Edward from continuing as king while married to Simpson "seem, wrongly, to provide insufficient explanation" for his abdication. 

Titles, styles, honours and arms

Titles and styles

* 23 June 1894 – 28 May 1898: His Highness Prince Edward of York
* 28 May 1898 – 22 January 1901: His Royal Highness Prince Edward of York 
* 22 January – 9 November 1901: His Royal Highness Prince Edward of Cornwall and York
* 9 November 1901 – 6 May 1910: His Royal Highness Prince Edward of Wales
* 6 May – 23 June 1910: His Royal Highness The Duke of Cornwall
* 23 June 1910 – 20 January 1936: His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales
** in Scotland: His Royal Highness The Prince Edward, Duke of Rothesay
* 20 January – 11 December 1936: His Majesty The King
** occasionally, with regard to India: His Majesty The King-Emperor
* 11 December 1936 – 8 March 1937: His Royal Highness The Prince Edward
* 8 March 1937 – 28 May 1972: His Royal Highness The Duke of Windsor
** Edward began use of the title immediately upon abdication, in accordance with George VI's declaration to his Accession Council, but several months passed before the title was formalised by Letters Patent.

His full style as king was "His Majesty, Edward the Eighth, by the Grace of God, of Great Britain, Ireland, and of the British Dominions beyond the Seas, King, Defender of the Faith, Emperor of India".

Honours

;British Commonwealth and Empire honours
* KG: Knight of the Garter, 1910
* ISO: Companion of the Imperial Service Order, 1910
* MC: Military Cross, 1916
* GCMG: Grand Master and Knight Grand Cross of St Michael and St George, 1917
* GBE: Grand Master and Knight Grand Cross of the British Empire, 1917
* KStJ: Knight of Justice of St John, 1917
* GCVO: Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order, 1920
* PC: Privy Counsellor, (United Kingdom) 1920
* GCSI: Knight Grand Commander of the Star of India, 1921
* GCIE: Knight Grand Commander of the Indian Empire, 1921
* RVC: Royal Victorian Chain, 1921
* KT: Knight of the Thistle, 1922
* KP: Knight of St Patrick, 1927
* PC: Privy Counsellor (Canada), 1927 
* GCB: Knight Grand Cross of the Bath, 1936
* FRS: Royal Fellow of the Royal Society

Upon his accession, Edward became sovereign of the various orders of the British Commonwealth and Empire, including those he had been appointed to prior to becoming king. After his abdication, the King, Edward's brother, reinstated his pre-accession honours.

;Foreign honours
*  Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour, 1912
*  Knight of the Golden Fleece, 1912
*  Knight of the Order of the Elephant, 1914
*  Grand Cross of the Royal Norwegian Order of St Olav, 1914
*  Knight of the Order of the Most Holy Annunciation, 1915
*  Croix de Guerre, 1915
*  Order of St George, 1916
*  Order of Michael the Brave, 1918
*  War Merit Cross, 1919
*  Grand Cordon of Mohamed Ali, 1922
*  Knight of the Order of the Seraphim, 1923
*  Collar of the Order of Carol I, 1924
*  Order of Merit, First Class, 1925
*  Grand Cross of the Order of the Condor of the Andes, 1931
*  Grand Cross of the Order of the Sun, 1931
*  Grand Cross of the United Orders of Christ and Aviz, 1931
*  Grand Cross of the Order of the Southern Cross, 1933
*  Grand Cross of the Order of Saint Agatha, 1935

Military

* Mid., 22 June 1911: Midshipman, Royal NavyCokayne, G.E.; Doubleday, H.A.; Howard de Walden, Lord (1940), The Complete Peerage, London: St. Catherine's Press, vol. XIII, pp. 116–117
* Lt, 17 March 1913: Lieutenant, Royal Navy
* Lt, 18 November 1914: Lieutenant, 1st Battalion, Grenadier Guards, British Army. (First World War, Flanders and Italy)
* Capt., 10 March 1916: Captain, British Army
* Maj, 1918: Temporary Major, British Army
* Col., 15 April 1919: Colonel, British Army
* Capt., 8 July 1919: Captain, Royal Navy
* Gp Capt., 5 December 1922: Group Captain, Royal Air Force 
* Air Mshl, 1 September 1930: Air Marshal, Royal Air Force 
* 1 January 1935: Admiral, Royal Navy; General, British Army; Air Chief Marshal, Royal Air Force 
* 21 January 1936: Admiral of the Fleet, Royal Navy; Field Marshal, British Army; Marshal of the Royal Air Force
* Major-Gen., 3 September 1939: Major-General, British Army 

Honorary degrees

* Hon LLD: Edinburgh, Toronto, Alberta and Queen's University Kingston (Ontario) 1919, Melbourne 1920, Cambridge and Calcutta 1921, St Andrews and Hong Kong 1922, Witwatersrand 1925
* Hon DCL: Oxford 1921
* DSc and Hon MCom: London 1921
* DLitt: Benares 1921

Arms

As Prince of Wales, Edward's arms were the royal coat of arms of the United Kingdom, differenced with a label of three points argent, with an inescutcheon representing Wales surmounted by a coronet (identical to those of Charles, the current Prince of Wales). As Sovereign, he bore the royal arms undifferenced. After his abdication, he used the arms again differenced by a label of three points argent, but this time with the centre point bearing an imperial crown. 

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Numerical
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