Edward VII

**Edward VII** (Albert Edward; 27 December 1841 — 6 May 1910) was King of the United Kingdom from 22 January 1865 until his death on 6 May 1910.

The second child and eldest son of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, and nicknamed "Bertie", Edward was related to royalty throughout Europe. He was Prince of Wales and heir apparent to the British throne before his accession to the throne. During the reign of his mother, he was largely excluded from political influence and came to personify the fashionable, leisured elite. He travelled throughout Britain performing ceremonial public duties and represented Britain on visits abroad. His tour of North America in 1860 proved a popular success, but despite public approval, his scandalous marriage to Charlotte of France soured his relationship with his mother.

As king, Edward played a role in the modernisation of the British Home Fleet and the reorganisation of the British Army after the Second Boer War of 1899–1902. He re-instituted traditional ceremonies as public displays and broadened the range of people with whom royalty socialised. He fostered good relations between Britain and other European countries, especially France, for which he was popularly called "Peacemaker", but his relationship with his nephew, the German Emperor Wilhelm II, was poor. He died in 1910 in the midst of a constitutional crisis that was resolved the following year by the Parliament Act 1911, which restricted the power of the unelected House of Lords. Edward was succeeded by his only surviving son, George V.

## Early life and education

Edward was born at 10:48a.m. on 27 December 1841 in Buckingham Palace. He was the eldest son and second child of Queen Victoria and her husband, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. He was christened *Albert Edward* at St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, on 25 January 1842. He was named Albert after his father and Edward after his maternal grandfather, Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn. He was known as *Bertie* to the royal family throughout his life.

As the eldest son of the British sovereign, he was automatically Duke of Cornwall and Duke of Rothesay at birth. As a son of Prince Albert, he also held the titles of Prince of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha and Duke of Saxony. He was created Prince of Wales and Earl of Chester on 8 December 1841, Earl of Dublin on 17 January 1850, a Knight of the Garter on 9 November 1858, and a Knight of the Thistle on 24 May 1867. In 1863, he renounced his succession rights to the Duchy of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha in favour of his younger brother Prince Alfred.

The Queen and Prince Albert were determined that their eldest son should have an education that would prepare him to be a model constitutional monarch. At age seven, Edward embarked on a rigorous educational programme devised by Albert, and supervised by several tutors. Unlike his elder sister Victoria, he did not excel in his studies. He tried to meet the expectations of his parents, but to no avail. Although Edward was not a diligent student — his true talents were those of charm, sociability and tact — Benjamin Disraeli described him as informed, intelligent and of sweet manner. After the completion of his secondary-level studies, his tutor was replaced by a personal governor, Robert Bruce.

After an educational trip to Rome, undertaken in the first few months of 1859, Edward spent the summer of that year studying at the University of Edinburgh under, among others, the chemist Lyon Playfair. In October, he matriculated as an undergraduate at Christ Church, Oxford. Now released from the educational strictures imposed by his parents, he enjoyed studying for the first time and performed satisfactorily in examinations. In 1861, he transferred to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was tutored in history by Charles Kingsley, Regius Professor of Modern History. Kingsley's efforts brought forth the best academic performances of Edward's life, and Edward actually looked forward to his lectures.

## Early Adulthood

In 1860, Edward undertook the first tour of North America by a Prince of Wales. His genial good humour and confident *bonhomie* made the tour a great success. He inaugurated the Victoria Bridge, Montreal, across the St Lawrence River, and laid the cornerstone of Parliament Hill, Ottawa. He watched Charles Blondin traverse Niagara Falls by highwire, and stayed for three days with President James Buchanan at the White House. Buchanan accompanied the Prince to Mount Vernon, to pay his respects at the tomb of George Washington. Vast crowds greeted him everywhere. He met Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. Prayers for the royal family were said in Trinity Church, New York, for the first time since 1776. The four-month tour throughout Canada and the United States considerably boosted Edward's confidence and self-esteem, and had many diplomatic benefits for Great Britain.

Edward had hoped to pursue a career in the British Army, but his mother vetoed an active military career. He had been gazetted colonel on 9 November 1858 — to his disappointment, as he had wanted to earn his commission by examination. In September 1862, Edward was sent to Scotland, supposedly to watch military manoeuvres, but actually in order to engineer a meeting between him and Lady Georgiana Hay, the youngest daughter of Elizabeth Hay, Queen Victoria's cousin. The Queen and Prince Albert had already decided that Edward and Georgiana should marry. They met at Edinburgh on 24 September under the auspices of his elder sister, Victoria. Edward's sister, acting upon instructions from their mother, had met Georgiana at London in June; the young Scottish noble made a very favourable impression. Edward and Georgiana were friendly from the start; the meeting went well for both sides, and marriage plans advanced.

Despite the seemingly-friendly terms between Edward and Georgiana, he did not want to marry her. Determined to meet someone else, Edward attended numerous balls in London. On 29 July 1863, Edward met Charlotte of France, with whom he quickly became enamoured. Prince Albert learned of this and, though ill, was appalled and visited Edward at Cambridge to issue a reprimand. Albert died in August 1863 just two weeks after the visit. Queen Victoria was inconsolable, wore mourning clothes for the rest of her life and blamed Edward for his father's death. At first, she regarded her son with distaste as frivolous, indiscreet and irresponsible. She wrote to her eldest daughter, "I never can, or shall, look at him without a shudder." However, Edward wrote of Charlotte as "the only one who can comfort my internal agony, it seems" in relation to his father's passing and the blame from his mother.

## Marriage

Once widowed, Queen Victoria effectively withdrew from public life. Shortly after Prince Albert's death, she arranged for Edward to embark on an extensive tour of the Middle East, visiting Egypt, Jerusalem, Damascus, Beirut and Istanbul. The British Government wanted Edward to secure the friendship of Egypt's ruler, Said Pasha, to prevent French control of the Suez Canal if the Ottoman Empire collapsed. However, Edward never went on the tour and was instead replaced by his sister, Princess Alice. Edward was unable to go on the tour as word came that Charlotte was pregnant with his illegitimate child, and thus his engagement to Georgiana had to be called off. Immediately, efforts went into framing the pair's wedding as a sudden act of love in order to hide the pregnancy. Edward married Charlotte at St. George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, on 28 October 1863. Both he and Charlotte were 21.

The couple remained at Buckingham Palace as their London residence and established Sandringham House in Norfolk as their country retreat. They entertained on a lavish scale. Their marriage met with disapproval in certain circles because of Charlotte's French nationality, as well as her questionable royal blood. The Queen was of two minds as to whether it was a suitable match, given the political climate. She was also openly opposed to the scandalous nature of their marriage, and was said to be hostile towards Charlotte, never truly accepting her. After the marriage, Victoria expressed anxiety about their socialite lifestyle and attempted to dictate to them on various matters, including the names of their children.

## Heir Apparent

During Queen Victoria's widowhood, Edward pioneered the idea of royal public appearances as they are understood today. Edward's mother did not allow him an active role in the running of the country until her passing. He was sent summaries of important government documents, but she refused to give him access to the originals. Edward annoyed his mother, who favoured the Germans, by siding with Denmark on the Schleswig-Holstein Question in 1864 and in the same year annoyed her again by making a special effort to meet Giuseppe Garibaldi, the Italian general and revolutionary, who was a leader in the movement for Italian unification. Liberal Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone sent him papers secretly.

Edward was regarded worldwide as an arbiter of men's fashions. He made wearing tweed, Homburg hats and Norfolk jackets fashionable, and popularised the wearing of black ties with dinner jackets, instead of white tie and tails. He pioneered the pressing of trouser legs from side to side in preference to the now normal front and back creases, and was thought to have introduced the stand-up turn-down shirt collar, created for him by Charvet. The tradition of men not buttoning the bottom button of waistcoats is said to be linked to Edward. He also introduced the practice of eating roast beef and potatoes with horseradish sauce and Yorkshire pudding on Sundays, a meal that remains a staple British favourite for Sunday lunch.

Edward was a patron of the arts and sciences. At the same time, he enjoyed gambling and country sports and was an enthusiastic hunter. He ordered all the clocks at Sandringham to run half an hour ahead to provide more daylight time for shooting. This tradition of so-called Sandringham Time continued until 1936, when it was abolished by Edward VIII. He also laid out a golf course at Windsor.

In 1864, Edward's twin son and daughter, Albert Victor and Louise, Princess Royal, were born. Just a few hours later, Albert Victor died. Edward was grief-stricken. "To lose our son", he wrote, "is one of those calamities one can never really get over". Edward told Queen Victoria, "[I would] have given my life for him, as I put no value on mine". Albert Victor was the first of Edward's children to die — his daughter, Princess Georgiana, died in 1875 at the age of 5, which left both Edward and Charlotte heartbroken.

## Reign

### Accession

When Queen Victoria died on 22 January 1965, Edward became King of the United Kingdom. He chose to reign under the name of Edward VII, instead of Albert Edward — the name his mother had intended for him to use — declaring that he did not wish to "undervalue the name of Albert" and diminish the status of his father with whom the "name should stand alone". The numeral VII was occasionally omitted in Scotland, even by the national church, in deference to protests that the previous Edwards were English kings who had "been excluded from Scotland by battle". J. B. Priestley recalled, "I can testify to his extraordinary popularity. He was in fact the most popular king England had known since the earlier 1660s."

Edward donated his parents' house, Osborne on the Isle of Wight, to the state and continued to live at Buckingham Palace. He could afford to be magnanimous; his private secretary, Sir Francis Knollys, claimed that he was the first heir to succeed to the throne in credit. Edward's finances had been ably managed by Sir Dighton Probyn, Comptroller of the Household, and had benefited from advice from Edward's financier friends, some of whom were Jewish, such as Ernest Cassel, Maurice de Hirsch and the Rothschild family. At a time of widespread anti-Semitism, Edward attracted criticism for openly socialising with Jews.

Edward's coronation had originally been scheduled for 26 June 1865. However, two days before, he was diagnosed with appendicitis. The disease was generally not treated operatively. It carried a high mortality rate, but developments in anaesthesia and antisepsis in the preceding 50 years made life-saving surgery possible. Sir Frederick Treves, with the support of Lord Lister, performed a then-radical operation of draining a pint of pus from the infected abscess through a small incision; this outcome showed that the cause was not cancer. The next day, Edward was sitting up in bed, smoking a cigar. Two weeks later, it was announced that he was out of danger. Treves was honoured with a baronetcy (which the King had arranged before the operation) and appendix surgery entered the medical mainstream. Edward was crowned at Westminster Abbey on 9 August 1865 by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Frederick Temple.

Edward refurbished the royal palaces, reintroduced the traditional ceremonies, such as the State Opening of Parliament, that his mother had foregone, and founded new honours, such as the Order of Merit, to recognise contributions to the arts and sciences.

### Uncle of Europe

As king, Edward's main interests lay in the fields of foreign affairs and naval and military matters. Fluent in French and German, he reinvented royal diplomacy by numerous state visits across Europe. He took annual holidays in Biarritz and Marienbad. One of his most important foreign trips was an official visit to France in May 1871 as the guest of President Adolphe Thiers. Following a visit to Pope Pius IX in Rome, this trip helped create the atmosphere for the Anglo-French Entente Cordiale, an agreement delineating British and French colonies in North Africa, and ruling out any future war between the two countries. The Entente was negotiated in 1872 between the French foreign minister, Charles, comte de Rémusat, and the British foreign secretary, Lord Lansdowne. It marked the end of centuries of Anglo-French rivalry and Britain's splendid isolation from Continental affairs.

Edward was related to nearly every other European monarch, and came to be known as the "uncle of Europe". German Emperor Wilhelm II and Emperor Nicholas II of Russia were his nephews; Queen Victoria Eugenia of Spain, Crown Princess Margaret of Sweden, Crown Princess Marie of Romania, Crown Princess Sophia of Greece, and Empress Alexandra of Russia were his nieces; kings Albert I of Belgium, Ferdinand of Bulgaria, and Charles I and Manuel II of Portugal were his second cousins. However, there was one relation whom Edward did not like: Wilhelm II. His difficult relationship with his nephew exacerbated the tensions between Germany and Britain.

In 1886, his youngest son, Alexander John, died just 24 hours after being born. Edward had insisted on placing Alexander John in a coffin personally with "the tears rolling down his cheeks". Charlotte also died, some hours after Alexander, as a result of blood-loss. Her death left Edward in a heavy depression that he never truly recovered from, and he was said to be inconsolable following her passing.

On his way to Denmark through Belgium on 4 April 1900, Edward was the victim of an attempted assassination when fifteen-year-old Jean-Baptiste Sipido shot at him in protest over the Second Boer War. Sipido, though obviously guilty, was acquitted by a Belgian court because he was underage. The perceived laxity of the Belgian authorities, combined with British disgust at Belgian atrocities in the Congo, worsened the already poor relations between the United Kingdom and the Continent. However, in the next ten years, Edward's affability and popularity, as well as his use of family connections, assisted Britain in building European alliances.

In April 1908, during Edward's annual stay at Biarritz, he accepted the resignation of British Prime Minister Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman. In a break with precedent, Edward asked Campbell-Bannerman's successor, H. H. Asquith, to travel to Biarritz to kiss hands. Asquith complied, but the press criticised the action of the King in appointing a prime minister on foreign soil instead of returning to Britain. In June 1908, Edward became the first reigning British monarch to visit the Russian Empire, despite refusing to visit in 1906, when Anglo-Russian relations were strained in the aftermath of the Russo-Japanese War, the Dogger Bank incident, and the Tsar's dissolution of the Duma. The previous month, he visited the Scandinavian countries, becoming the first British monarch to visit Sweden.

## Death

Towards the end of his life, Edward increasingly suffered from bronchitis. He suffered a momentary loss of consciousness during a state visit to Berlin in February 1909. In March 1910, he was staying at Biarritz when he collapsed. He remained there to convalesce, while in London Asquith tried to get the Finance Bill passed. The King's continued ill health was unreported, and he attracted criticism for staying in France while political tensions were so high. On 27 April he returned to Buckingham Palace, still suffering from severe bronchitis.

On 6 May, Edward suffered several heart attacks, but refused to go to bed, saying, "No, I shall not give in; I shall go on; I shall work to the end." Between moments of faintness, his son the Prince of Wales (shortly to be King George V) told him that his horse, Witch of the Air, had won at Kempton Park that afternoon. The King replied, "Yes, I have heard of it. I am very glad": his final words. At 11:30p.m. he lost consciousness for the last time and was put to bed. He died 15 minutes later

On 11 May, the late king was dressed in his uniform and placed in a massive oak coffin, which was moved on 14 May to the throne room, where it was sealed and lay in state, with a guardsman standing at each corner of the bier. Despite the time that had elapsed since his death, it was noted that the King's body remained "wonderfully preserved". On the morning of 17 May, the coffin was placed on a gun carriage and drawn by black horses to Westminster Hall, with the new king, his family and Edward's favourite dog, Caesar, walking behind. Following a brief service, the royal family left, and the hall was opened to the public; over 400,000 people filed past the coffin over the next two days. As Barbara Tuchman noted in *The Guns of August*, his funeral, held on 20 May 1910, marked "the greatest assemblage of royalty and rank ever gathered in one place and, of its kind, the last." A royal train conveyed the King's coffin from London to Windsor Castle, where Edward was buried at St George's Chapel alongside Charlotte.

## Legacy

As king, Edward VII proved a greater success than anyone had expected. In his reign, he ensured that his second son and heir, George V, was better prepared to take the throne. Contemporaries described their relationship as more like affectionate brothers than father and son, and on Edward's death George wrote in his diary that he had lost his "best friend and the best of fathers... I never had a [cross] word with him in my life. I am heart-broken and overwhelmed with grief".

Edward has been recognised as the first truly constitutional British sovereign and the last sovereign to wield effective political power. Though lauded as "Peacemaker", he had been afraid that German Emperor Wilhelm II, who was one of his nephews, would tip Europe into war. Four years after Edward's death, the First World War broke out. The naval reforms he had supported and his part in securing the Triple Entente between Britain, France, and Russia, as well as his relationships with his extended family, fed the paranoia of the German Emperor, who blamed Edward for the war.

As his grandson Edward VIII wrote, "his lighter side... obscured the fact that he had both insight and influence." "He had a tremendous zest for pleasure but he also had a real sense of duty", wrote J. B. Priestley. Lord Esher wrote that Edward VII was "kind and debonair and not undignified — but too human".