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On This Day: Duke of Windsor, formerly King Edward VIII, marries Wallis Simpson
His insistence on marrying Mrs Simpson triggered a constitutional crisis because the Government threatened to resign if he did
June 3, 1937: The Duke of Windsor controversially married divorcee Wallis Simpson on this day after sparking a constitutional crisis and abdicating as King Edward VIII.
Edward, then 43, wed the 40-year-old American socialite after agreeing to pass the throne on to his younger brother Albert, who reigned as George VI.
His insistence on marrying Mrs Simpson triggered a constitutional crisis because the Government threatened to resign if he did.
[On This Day: Queen Elizabeth II crowned]
This could have dragged him into a general election and would ruin his status as a politically neutral, constitutional monarch.
Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin believed that people would not accept a divorced woman with two living ex-husbands as queen.
Marrying Mrs Simpson would also have conflicted with Edward being head of the Church of England, which opposed the remarriages of divorced people with former spouses still alive.
So, just 326 days into his short reign, he abdicated on December 11, 1936 in order to marry the woman he loved. Six months later they finally wed.
Following the private ceremony, British Pathé footage showed the couple emerging from Chateau de Cande in Monts, central France.
Reporters outnumbered guests at the thinly-attended wedding, which George VI had forbade any members of the Royal Family from going to.
Among the former monarch’s friends there were Herman Rogers and Major Edward ‘Fruity’ Metcalfe, who served as best man.
In contrast to the small number of British attendees, the event attracted the attention of many local well-wishers, who – being French – admired his Edward’s romanticism.
An elderly female villager is filmed breaking a bottle of champagne on the gates to bless the bride and groom, while others gathered to drink a toast.
Back home, however, the wedding was barely reported in accordance with the formidable deference of the time to the Royal Family, who were deeply embarrassed.
Later, due to rumours that the Duke was a Nazi sympathiser, the Duke was sent to the Bahamas during the Second World War to serve as its governor.
Edward was never given another official role and he and Wallis - the Duchess of Windsor - lived in France until their deaths in 1972 and 1986 respectively.
