HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS THE DUKE OF WINDSOR (Hansard, 5 June 1972)

THE LORD PRIVY SEAL (EARL JELLICOE)
My Lords, I beg to move:
That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty on the death of His Royal Highness the Duke of Windsor, expressing the deep sympathy which this House extends to Her Majesty and to all members of his family on their grievous loss, and recording grateful remembrance of his devoted service to his country and to the British Empire.
My Lords, it was my duty and my honour last Wednesday to be present at the R.A.F. Station at Benson when the body of our late King was returned in a VC 10 to these shores from France. Waiting on the tarmac at Benson on that blustery May morning, I found myself thinking of that clear, cold morning some 2 36 years ago when, at 2 a.m. on December 12, 1936, the destroyer H.M.S. "Fury" slid, in the Duke's words, "silently and unescorted out of Portsmouth Harbour" with the Duke on board. And when later the Reception Party gathered together in the small R.A.F. chapel at Benson for a short service, moving in the simplicity and the dignity of its understatement, and when the four young R.A.F. officers mounted the first vigil around the Duke's catafalque, I could not but reflect on that vigil kept in Westminster Hall around the catafalque of King George V by a young King—the man whom we mourn this afternoon—and by his three Royal brothers.
Such are the vicissitudes of fate. It was, I believe, the peculiar vicissitude of the Duke's fate to be born into a world of such change as the world and these islands have never before known. In 1894, the year of his birth, the stability and self-confidence of the Victorian era seemed unshakeable. The Empire was at its apogee—its commercial fortunes and its seapower virtually unchallenged. No one then could have forecast what the Duke lived to see—the two global wars, the transformation of Empire into Commonwealth, the challenges of advancing science, the complexities of societies in flux.
In so many ways the Duke was particularly attuned to this world of change. There was the endowment of his natural gifts—the rare blend of shyness and informality that gave that special charisma to the Prince of Wales. There was his 3 marked physical courage—as marked in the hunting field or on the point-to-point course as it was in his often frustrated desire for closer engagement as a young officer in the First World War. It seemed to me altogether right that last Saturday's ceremony of Trooping the Colour should have been especially associated with the memory of the young officer in the Grenadiers and of the former Colonel-in-Chief of the Brigade of Guards and of the Household Cavalry.
And again, there were those gifts—looks, capacity for friendship, the ability to hold his audience—which invested with such a special quality those tours in the inter-war years which His Royal Highness made around the world and within these islands. Those travels embraced the globe, at a time when travel on the world dimension was a very different matter from what it is to-day. Those travels made the young Prince a world figure in his own right. He was in truth not only a good Ambassador for the Court of St. James; he was also a very special Ambassador for British industry and, indeed, for the entire British people.
Even in a eulogy, my Lords, we should not gild the lily. That golden Prince of Wales was no great intellectual—not all of our great Princes have been—but he was, in a pre-eminent degree, able to convey a deep sense of caring for all manner and all sorts of people, not least for younger people and especially perhaps for all those who were suffering: those exposed to the horror and squalor of the trenches, those numb under the scourge of unemployment, the poor and the poorly housed. The Prince of Wales was in a very real way a man of his times, a man with imagination and, above all, a very human person. That, my Lords, was the Prince who came to the throne over 35 years ago, greatly loved and with a love of his country and its institutions. It was not a different man who slipped away from these shores in H.M.S. "Fury" as Duke of Windsor after his brief reign.
We have all been reminded these past days of the events of the Abdication. For those of us who lived—even, in my case, in my youth—through those moving yet strange days, they still retain a special pain and a special poignancy. But it is not our task to-day to pick over past history. I myself would prefer to recall 4 those events in the words of two men who stood close to them. The first are the words of the Duke himself who, in speaking of the Crown, has written: I valued it so deeply that I surrendered it rather than risk any impairment of its prestige. The second are those of Sir Winston Churchill, who, so the Duke recounts in his Memoirs, recited as he took his leave of the man who had just ceased to be his Monarch the memorable lines of Andrew Marvell: He nothing common did or mean Upon that memorable scene. And so it was. Given his sense of honour, given his attachment to our institutions, given too his conception of democratic Kingship, it could not have been otherwise. But we must count ourselves fortunate that our Monarchy, thus preserved, has been so singularly strengthened in the reigns of his late brother, King George VI, and of our present Queen, his niece. Whether King Edward VIII would have made a great King none of us will now ever know. Whether the Duke of Windsor was a great man some would dispute. Yet it is my certain belief that none will question the services rendered to his country by the man whom we mourn, his dedication to the constitutional path, his deep feeling for this land of ours and his quite extraordinary ability to associate himself with the day-to-day anxieties and yearnings of his fellow citizens.
My Lords, we send to-day a message to Her Majesty conveying our sorrow in her loss and our gratitude for the debt which we owe our former Prince and King. But, my Lords, I am sure that close to the centre of all our thoughts this afternoon must be the wife for love of whom King Edward gave up so great a heritage and who has repaid his devotion with equal loyalty, companionship and love. We extend to the Duchess our profound sympathy. My Lords, I beg to move.

§ LORD SHACKLETON
My Lords, your Lordships will be grateful to the noble Earl the Leader of the House for the words which he has used in moving this sad Motion. There is little I can add to the brief account that he has given. This is not the time to reopen old wounds. It is the time certainly to express sympathy, and the historians will no doubt now study even more closely the events that led up to the Abdication. I think there is little doubt that the Duke of Windsor—the King, as he then was—did not fully appreciate the strength of religious and other feeling on the subject of his proposed marriage; and there is little doubt also that he was deeply upset—indeed, shocked—when he found that by his actions he was endangering the Crown to which he had such great attachment and which he felt he had a duty to sustain. But equally I think it is true—and there is no doubt evidence to support this—that in handing it, as he knew he was doing, to his brother and his family he was handing it to those who, in his judgment, were perhaps more stalwart in ways than he felt himself able to be, and more willing to serve the country and the people of the country, as we all know that in the event King George VI did and his daughter, the Queen, has subsequently done.
At no time did the Duke of Windsor do anything to embarrass, to compete with, even to seek popularity at the expense of, a brother who he knew was carrying a heavy task. At the same time, his willingness to serve his country in any capacity, albeit a humble one, and to identify himself with his country, has never been in doubt. He had 35 years of happy marriage. It was perhaps one of the most devoted marriages of which we know. It was a marriage—and I have heard this from those who knew it at the beginning and from those who knew it at the end—of two people who were completely wrapped up in one another. They were perhaps too wrapped up in one another; but that was a reality which perhaps it is not given to us all to understand.
There is no doubt, as the noble Earl has said, that the Duke was a man of his times; but although he was a man of his times he was also, like many other people, in a sense out of step with those times. 6 The noble Earl referred to his deep feeling for the unemployed. Some of us will recall his broadcast and the possibility of a conflict there between his constitutional duties, upon which he felt so strongly, and his deep feelings about the conditions that existed at that time of his reign. At the funeral to-day there was a mass of flowers, some very fine, some very humble. But there was one small bunch of flowers—very small indeed—on behalf of a woman living in London, her grandparents, her father and her children, and it represented the feeling that I think many people had for the "Prince Charming" they knew many years ago. It is not inconsistent that a man who loved life and gaiety—and indeed night clubs—should also be a man of strong feeling for his fellow human beings.
We on this side of the House certainly support this Motion, despite, if I may say it, the slightly elliptical wording. I wish it had directly expressed the sympathy we feel for the Duchess of Windsor; but the noble Earl himself has expressed very clearly his own feelings and the feelings of the House. This is no time to say anything which would be embarrassing or in any way upsetting to our Queen. However, I hope the noble Earl will consider sending a special message to the Duchess of Windsor, the widow of a Member of this House, expressing our personal sympathies, our affection and our gratitude to her for her devotion and for giving so much of her life to her man.

§ LORD BYERS
My Lords, in the past week there have been many and well-deserved tributes paid to the Duke of Windsor both as a man and for his services to this country and to what was originally the British Empire. My colleagues and I on these Benches would wish to be associated very closely indeed with those tributes, and to specially endorse the sentiments of condolence which we as a House would wish to express in this Motion to Her Majesty the Queen and, following what was said by the Leader of the House and the Leader of the Opposition, to the Duchess of Windsor herself.
Looking back to the year 1936, I do not think many of us appreciated at that time that it was not just one man who was under severe strain but the whole concept and structure of the British 7 Monarchy itself and our constitutional way of life. The dignity which the Duke displayed in September of that year and the way in which the late King George VI and the present Queen Mother responded to the challenge of that situation strengthened, rather than weakened, the Monarchy and put the nation deeply in their debt. My Lords, I beg to support the Motion.

THE LORD ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY
My Lords, our emotions to-day go deep because within them are mingled both present grief and sympathy and the memories of past tragedy. We pray for the widow who mourns for the partner of 35 years, that she may be comforted; we pray for our Queen, for great indeed is her burden at this time. She has her own grief to bear while with outgoing Christian sympathy she shares the grief of the widow and shares also the feelings of so many of her people. Our Monarch bears and shares all this with us at once, and she knows that her people support her with ceaseless loyalty and love.
When tragedy occurs in our history it is natural for us to dwell upon it and to try to assess it. What matters is that while our judgments of our tragedy are fallible we have, as Christians, the certainty that any good that is done stands and has imperishable worth. Such, I believe, have been the feelings of thousands in these last days, not least among those who have been to pay their reverence at Windsor—the sense that while wrong is wrong it is not we who are the judges; the sense that reconciliation can be a great reality; the sense that goodness stands and evokes gratitude: this sense has been deeply present. So our last thought to-day can indeed be one of thankfulness: thankfulness that things are so, and thankfulness for the great service which the Prince who has died gave to the people at home and overseas, and not least his caring heart for those in need and suffering.

SEVERAL NOBLE LORDS
Hear, hear!