1-630-237 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Prince of Wales planting a tree at the Kumasi Church College, Ghana, 1926. On the death of his father, King George V, in January 1936, Prince Edward (1894-1972) was proclaimed King Edward VIII. Before long, rumours circulated about his alleged romance with an American, Mrs Wallis Warfield Simpson, then married to her second husband, a London shipping broker. On October 20, 1936, Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin counselled Edward, as king and head of the Church of England, to remove all cause for the rumours. A week later Mrs. Simpson was granted a divorce, to become final in six months. In November the king confided to Baldwin that he intended to marry Mrs Simpson even if it meant his abdication. A morganatic marriage was proposed, but the cabinet was unwilling to accept this compromise. On December 11 1936, therefore, the king abdicated in favour of his brother, the duke of York, who became King George VI. Edward received the title duke of Windsor and married Mrs. Simpson in June 1937. From An Outline of Christianity, The Story of Our Civilisation, volume 3: The Rise of the Modern Church, edited by RG Parsons and AS Peake, published by the Waverley Book Club (London, 1926).