After King Edward VII’s mother’s, Queen Victoria’s, long reign, the accession of Bertie, aged nearly 60, instituted a change of style, if not of substance to the monarchy. He quickly announced that he would take his second name, and not, as Victoria had wished, his first, meaning he would be known as Edward VII, not Albert I. He would continue with his 12-course dinners (he wasn’t called Tum Tum for nothing, though never to his face), his dozen daily cigars, and score of cigarettes. Also his game shooting on the Sandringham Estate in Norfolk, which he purchased for that purpose in the 1860s, his evening bridge parties, golf and horse racing jaunts and his annual round of holidays in Biarritz, Marienbad and sailing around the Mediterranean. And also with his mistresses, of whom the latest was society hostess Alice Keppel.
These were treated with discretion by the press and indulgence by the public, for Edward at least looked regal. Even when not sporting a crown, he cut an impressive figure, popularising the wearing of Homburg hats, Norfolk jackets and – mainly because of his 48-inch waistline – the leaving of the waistcoat’s bottom button undone. Although he seemed to embrace the new where fashion was concerned, he didn’t welcome it from others. He is alleged to have given his Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, a lecture for mixing a Privy Councillor’s tunic with inappropriate trousers – such punctiliousness was a trait he shared with his son George V and grandson George VI.
In public, however, the King was generally charming. Horses from Edward VII’s stable won three Derbies and a Grand National, and his was a more relaxed, popular and public reign than his mother’s. It was under Edward that the centrepieces of the capital’s royal pageantry, Admiralty Arch, the Mall, the Victoria Memorial and the frontage of Buckingham Palace were remodelled, though he did not live to see the work completed. His lavish lifestyle was underpinned by a generous civil list of £470,000 (when Queen Elizabeth II was crowned 50 years later, her annual payment was only £5,000 more) and profitable investments engineered by his advisers. As a result, Edward VII was perhaps the first modern monarch to die in credit, leaving about £2 million in modern values.
Edward VII still complained about having to pay income tax of about £18,000, and some of the costs of his staff. These included the Master of the Buckhounds and various hunt servants, prompting Edward to grouse that, in a country so devoted to sport, it was surprising that the king should have to pay for it. At the start of his reign, his successor George V would have the requirement to pay income tax rescinded as a quid pro quo for acquiescing to the Liberal government’s reform of the House of Lords. After that, no monarch would pay the tax for 80 years, until Queen Elizabeth II agreed to do so in the early 1990s. If Edward VII’s lifestyle contributed to the golden glow of upper class society before World War One, it did not increase his authority as monarch.
In 1903 he was at Balmoral when he learned that Arthur Balfour’s Tory government was planning a reshuffle, and telegraphed to say that no changes should be made until he had been consulted. The reply informed him that the changes had not only been made, but announced. The King objected, especially to the appointment of left-wing Hugh Arnold-Forster as Secretary of State for War. Now the monarch’s right to appoint the Commander-in-Chief of the British Army, a royal prerogative ever since the 17th century, was being eroded. Balfour wanted a minister in charge, and was immovable, telling the King, bluntly: “It is impossible for us to yield in a matter of this kind.” Despite such rebuffs, Edward VII could claim a pivotal role in securing the Entente Cordiale alliance with France during a formal visit to Paris in 1903. The King spoke French and had visited the city many times as Prince, and his was the first state visit made to any country by a British monarch for more than 50 years.
Despite the Government’s reservations about what Bertie might promise or agree to, it was a great success, tying British and French diplomatic and military interests together in an alliance later joined by Russia. This was fortuitous, as Edward’s relations with his nephew, Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm, were far less cordial, and they would worsen as Britain’s foreign alliances threatened to encircle the German state.
In 1909, when Herbert Asquith’s Liberal government needed royal help to secure the passage of its radical budget, Edward was placed in a dilemma which impinged directly on the monarchy’s rights. The budget contained proposals to introduce a first state old-age pension (five shillings a week for those over 70 whose weekly income had been below ten shillings) as well as extra spending on Dreadnought battleships for the Navy, all funded via a super-tax on higher incomes and death duties.
This provoked the inbuilt Conservative majority in the Lords to reject a money bill for the first time in 250 years. The Duke of Beaufort threatened to set his dogs on the Chancellor, Lloyd George and his radical colleague Winston Churchill, whilst Lord Anglesey, who had just bought himself a yacht, reduced his monthly subscription to the London Hospital from £5 to £3. The government declined to back down and Asquith demanded that the King create sufficient new Liberal peers to swamp the Lords and force the measure through. Fearful of undermining the hereditary principle, Edward told the Prime Minister that he would agree to that only after afurther general election. When that was held in January 1910, the Liberals lost their overall majority, but they retained power with the support of the first elected Labour Members and the Irish MPs, promising the latter that they would proceed with Home Rule for Ireland. The Lords subsequently passed the Finance Bill at the end of April 1910, without further peers being created, but the threat to form a Liberal majority in the upper house remained, since the government believed the King had conditionally agreed to it.
That Spring, the House adjourned for a ten-day recess, during which, on May 6, 1910, the King died, raddled with bronchitis and the effects of decades of overindulgence. His last words were apparently uttered after he’d been told that one of his horses, Witch of Air, had just won the 4.15 at Kempton Park: “I am glad of it.”
His funeral was one of the largest and last great Imperial ceremonies. Eight kings, an emperor and representatives of 70 other countries followed his coffin in procession through London, by train to Windsor and then through the town to St George’s Chapel in the castle. Within a decade, many of those rulers had been deposed. But not the British Royal Family.
Excerpted with permission from The Shortest History of the Crown, Stephen Bates, Pan MacMillan India.
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