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also above the law, and there would have been nothing to prevent him from marrying
Wallis in secret. This he was honourably determined not to do and, as it began to dawn
upon him that the people might not be willing to accept Wallis as Queen, he
contemplated a morganatic marriage by which she would be his wife, but not Queen,
nor would any children she might have succeed to the throne. But to do this would
require parliamentary legislation and, therefore, the consent of the Government to an
alteration to the royal succession and title, and not only of the British Government but
of the Commonwealth Governments as well. Once he had asked the Government’s
advice as to the marriage, he was constitutionally bound to take it or provoke a crisis of
the first magnitude. The Government’s answer, after consultation with the Prime
Ministers of the Dominions, was against the marriage. The King was therefore faced
with the unpalatable choice of losing his throne or losing Wallis. For a moment, urged
on by Wallis, who had fled abroad to escape public hostility, he thought he could keep
both by appealing to the people over the head of the Government.
On the morning of 3 December the story broke in the national press. This sensational
development was unwittingly caused by the innocent remarks about the King’s private
life made by the Bishop of Bradford, Dr Blunt (known thereafter as ‘the Blunt
instrument’). The Bishop, like the vast majority of the British public, had never heard of
Mrs Simpson; he was simply commenting on the King’s failure to attend church and take
communion, which as Supreme Governor it was his duty to do. First reported in the
Yorkshire Post on 2 December the Bishop’s remarks were interpreted as a reference to the
King’s affair with Wallis. The wall of silence was breached and the nation informed that
their idolized King proposed to marry a twice-divorced American. Most were appalled.
After a lecture by Harold Nicolson in Islington, the presiding vicar asked the audience to
stand and sing the national anthem. Only about ten out of four hundred did so. The
vicar told Nicolson that he never thought he would have lived to see the day when his
congregation refused to sing ‘God Save the King’. Romantics like Winston Churchill and
right-wing fanatics like Sir Oswald Mosley supported the King against the Government.
Over the weekend of 4-6 December the King dithered, incommunicado at the Fort,
talking only to his chosen advisers and refusing to see or talk to Bertie. Officially,
Elizabeth was supposed to know nothing, although the story was in all the newspapers
and Punch (if she was allowed to see it) carried a cartoon of Baldwin putting ‘The
Choice’ to the King with the Abdication document laid out between them and the
caption, ‘The Throne is Greater than the Man’. Over that weekend at the Royal Lodge,
with her mother in bed with influenza again, she must have noticed her father’s
preoccupation. Prince Paul of Yugoslavia and his wife came to tea, after which Paul told
Chips Channon that ‘the Duke of York is miserable, does not want the throne and is
imploring his brother to stay’.
On the evening of Monday, 7 December, the King called Bertie to the Fort and told
him that he intended to abdicate; that night the Duke returned to London with his
family. On the night of the 8th, worn out by family discussions and appalled by the
burden which faced him, Bertie broke down and sobbed on his mother’s shoulder. By