page_title: Wallis Simpson
section_title: Later life
hierarchical_section_title: Wallis Simpson / Later life
caption_attribution_description: English: The Duchess of Windsor, President Richard Nixon, and The Duke of Windsor.
context_page_description: Wallis, Duchess of Windsor, known as Wallis Simpson, was an American socialite and wife of the Duke of Windsor, the former British king Edward VIII. Their intention to marry and her status as a divorcée caused a constitutional crisis that led to Edward's abdication.
  Wallis grew up in Baltimore, Maryland. Her father died shortly after her birth and she and her widowed mother were partly supported by their wealthier relatives. Her first marriage, to U.S. naval officer Win Spencer, was punctuated by periods of separation and eventually ended in divorce. In 1931, during her second marriage, to Ernest Simpson, she met Edward, then Prince of Wales. Five years later, after Edward's accession as King of the United Kingdom, Wallis divorced her second husband to marry Edward.
  The King's desire to marry a woman who had two living ex-husbands threatened to cause a constitutional crisis in the United Kingdom and the Dominions, and ultimately led to his abdication in December 1936 to marry "the woman I love". After abdicating, the former king was created Duke of Windsor by his brother and successor, King George VI.
context_section_description: In 1946, when the Duchess was staying at Ednam Lodge, the home of the Earl of Dudley, some of her jewels were stolen. There were rumours that the theft had been masterminded by the royal family as an attempt to regain jewels taken from the Royal Collection by the Duke, or by the Windsors themselves as part of an insurance fraud—they made a large deposit of loose stones at Cartier the following year. However, in 1960, career criminal Richard Dunphie confessed to the crime. The stolen pieces were only a small portion of the Windsor jewels, which were either bought privately, inherited by the Duke, or given to the Duke when he was Prince of Wales.
  In 1952 they were offered the use of a house by the Paris municipal authorities. The couple lived at 4 route du Champ d'Entraînement in the Bois de Boulogne, near Neuilly-sur-Seine, for most of the remainder of their lives, essentially living a life of easy retirement. They travelled frequently between Europe and America aboard ocean liners. They bought a second house in the country, Moulin de la Tuilerie or "The Mill" in Gif-sur-Yvette, where they soon became close friends of their neighbours, Oswald and Diana Mosley. Years later, Diana Mosley claimed that the Duke and Duchess shared her and her husband's views that Hitler should have been given a free hand to destroy Communism; as the Duke wrote in the New York Daily News of 13 December 1966: "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."
  In 1965, the Duke and Duchess visited London as the Duke required eye surgery for a detached retina; Queen Elizabeth II and Princess Marina, Duchess of Kent, visited them. The Duke's sister, the Princess Royal, also visited just 10 days before her death. They attended her memorial service in Westminster Abbey. Later, in 1967, the Duke and Duchess joined the royal family in London for the unveiling of a plaque by Elizabeth II to commemorate the centenary of Queen Mary's birth. Both Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Charles visited the Windsors in Paris in the Duke's later years, the Queen's visit coming only shortly before the Duke died.
caption: The Duke and Duchess of Windsor at the White House for dinner with U.S. President Richard Nixon in 1970
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