There’s so much talk of Wallis Simpson these days. Surprisingly, the Telegraph’s latest history lesson isn’t a desperate attempt to force a comparison between Wallis and the Duchess of Sussex. A short primer: Wallis Simpson was the American divorcee who had several torrid affairs in the 1930s, and one of her lovers was with the then-Prince of Wales and then King Edward VIII. Historian Christopher Wilson has done a new deep dive into all of the government papers from 1936, the Year of Three Kings. The year King George V died, King Edward VIII ascended the throne and then abdicated, leaving his younger brother to be king (King George VI, Elizabeth II’s father). The big headline from Wilson’s research: Wallis Simpson’s lawyer suggested that the government buy her off to end her relationship with the king.
As the Abdication crisis reached boiling-point in the dying days of 1936, was Wallis Simpson ready and willing to be bought out of her forthcoming marriage to King Edward VIII? Newly viewed Cabinet documents indicate that, at the height of the crisis, the question of a cash settlement to get rid of the twice-divorced American was actually proposed by her lawyer.
Had the deal been struck it could have had far-reaching consequences lasting down to the present day, 88 years later, resulting in a different monarch occupying the throne – not King Charles. The proposal mercifully came to nothing. But for a fleeting moment it looked as if, in return for a large sum of money, “The woman I love” would abandon the hapless king to his fate and disappear over the horizon.
The evidence comes in the contemporary account of Sir Horace Wilson, the senior Whitehall mandarin entrusted by prime minister Stanley Baldwin to collate the avalanche of information coming in as the crisis grew. Though it came to the outside world as a seismic shock, the hurried exit of an errant king and installation of a reliable substitute appeared a seamless process administered with professionalism and dignity. But according to Wilson’s papers, nothing could be further from the truth – the whole thing was a shambles, one which could have ended with the present Duke of Kent, 88, being crowned king.
What I uncovered was a picture of panic and despair as the clock ticked down to December 11, the day King Edward signed the Instrument of Abdication – among people who should have been better prepared. In all, it took just 25 short days from the moment Edward loftily told the prime minister he was going to marry Mrs Simpson until his ignominious flight to obscurity.
Despite being told that a marriage between the head of the Church of England and a divorcee would precipitate a constitutional crisis, the king was confident he could have his cake and eat it – “you’ll be Queen, Empress of India, the whole bag of tricks” he promised Wallis. And meantime, over in Whitehall, there was a shockingly misplaced confidence that Edward could easily be deflected by financial sanction from taking what seemed an impossible step.
Those in the know were aware from the moment Edward inherited the throne in January 1936 that there was a problem over his relationship with Mrs Simpson. That he had caved in to her superior will was well-known. So too was King George V’s prediction that his son and heir would not last the course as sovereign. Yet no formal preparations were made – no Plan B formulated. And so in Wilson’s papers we see the first signs of the wheels falling off…
Horace Wilson receives a visit from Theodore Goddard, Wallis’s solicitor. Wilson notes, incredulously: “After some further talk, I discovered that what Mr Goddard was really saying, in effect, was what price could be paid to Mrs Simpson for clearing out.”
The civil servant, veteran of many cabinet crises, finds himself speechless at the thought of providing a massive pay-off to get rid of the problem. Goddard drops the idea like a hot potato when he realises he’s overstepped the mark.
It’s funny that the prime minister balked at the idea of paying Wallis to leave the king? Like… that might have actually been the solution to all of their problems, if they had more imagination. But it’s also clear that Edward VIII freaked out all of the British power players, he was too weak-willed and too compromised across the board. What’s also funny about these newly-discovered papers is that the government had next to no faith in King George VI, then the Duke of York. They saw him as a scared mama’s boy who wasn’t up to the job.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.