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Mrs. Simpson had secret lover
LONDON, England -- Wallis Simpson -- the American divorcee for whom King Edward VIII abdicated the throne -- had a secret lover while they were courting, documents revealed on Thursday show. The previously top-secret government files on Britain's 1936 abdication crisis also show how the late Queen Mother was instrumental in preventing Edward and Simpson from returning to England after leaving for France. Edward abdicated in December 1936 to marry Simpson after he was on the throne for less than a year. The event produced one of the enduring love stories of the 20th century -- and a full-blown constitutional crisis in Britain. The British government ordered the abdication files sealed for a century in 1967. But subsequent 1999 guidelines require that most files not containing security secrets be released. The release of the abdication file follows the death of the Queen Mother in 2001. The files disclose how officers from the Special Branch of the Metropolitan Police spied on Edward and Simpson and discovered that she was having a secret affair while she was being courted by Edward, then Prince of Wales. Edward is referred to as "P.O.W." in the files. "Mrs. Simpson is apprehensive of losing the affection of P.O.W. which she is very anxious to avoid for financial reasons," a police superintendent wrote in June 1935. "She is therefore extremely careful and is spending as much time as possible with P.O.W. and keeping her secret lover in the background." Police later determined that the lover was a married Ford car engineer and salesman named Guy Trundle. According to a Special Branch report, Simpson paid Trundle money and bought him expensive gifts. "Trundle is described as a very charming adventurer, very good looking, well bred and an excellent dancer," the report said.
"He meets Mrs. Simpson quite openly at informal social gatherings as a personal friend, but secret meetings are made by appointment when intimate relations take place." There is no indication in the files that she continued to keep a lover after she married the ex-king. However, the files show that Simpson's then-husband was allegedly offered £150,000 to pave the way for their divorce -- and Simpson's subsequent marriage to Edward. During the Simpsons' divorce hearing in late 1936, a lawyer accused the couple of taking part in a clever plan to end their marriage. According to the allegations, Simpson's husband, Ernest Aldrich Simpson, was to be paid the money to help stage a weekend affair at a secluded hotel. Under the laws at the time, Wallis Simpson had to prove that her husband had committed adultery -- and that she had not -- in order to obtain a divorce. Queen Mother 'did not want to meet Duchess'The files also show that the late Queen Mother tried to keep Edward and Simpson -- then the Duke and Duchess of Windsor -- from returning to England after he abdicated the throne and the two were married. The documents show that the queen told her husband, King George VI, that she had no wish to meet the Duchess. In a hand-written letter dated December 14, 1938, to the then-Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, George VI said: "I think you know that neither the Queen (Elizabeth, later the Queen Mother) nor Queen Mary (George V's widow) have any desire to meet the Duchess of Windsor, and therefore any visit made for the purpose of introducing her to members of the Royal Family obviously becomes impossible." Earlier, on December 2, 1938, George VI had written to Chamberlain saying: "The more I think about his (the Duke) coming here on a visit, the less I like the idea, especially as some sections of the press are behaving so stupidly about it." In an angry letter to Chamberlain, the Duke complained that he was being condemned to exile.
Writing from Cannes in the south of France on December 22, 1937, the Duke, signing himself "Edward," said: "When I decided to give up the throne last December, I realised that the only dignified and sensible course for me to follow was to leave the country for a period, the length of which was naturally to be determined by a number of considerations. "But I never intended, nor would I ever have agreed, to renounce my native land or my right to return to it for all time." The former king said it had been proposed to stop payment of an undisclosed allowance, agreed with George VI the day before the abdication, should he return to England without government approval. "I regard such a proposal as both unfair and intolerable, as it would be tantamount to my accepting payment for remaining in exile," the Duke told Chamberlain. Also revealed in the files: • The government banned Edward from making a radio broadcast appealing for public support during the abdication crisis. While he was still king, Edward wanted to deliver an impassioned speech in the hope of marrying Simpson and still retaining his throne. But then-Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin blocked the oration and Edward was confined to making a farewell address. The previously secret files contain the text of Edward's banned speech, in which he speaks of his love for Simpson and hints as the possibility of a marriage in which she would not have become queen. "I could not go on bearing the heavy burdens that constantly rest on me as king, unless I could be strengthened in the task by a happy married life; and so I am firmly resolved to marry the woman I love, when she is free to marry me," the speech said. "Neither Mrs. Simpson nor I have ever sought to insist that she should be queen. All we desired was that our married happiness should carry with it a proper title and dignity for her, befitting my wife." • Simpson boasted about how she would be entertained by Adolf Hitler during a visit to Germany. In a note written in 1936 to the then-Chancellor of the Exchequer, Neville Chamberlain, chief government industrial adviser Sir Horace Wilson claimed that Simpson "has been in touch with the Nazis." But the files contain no hard evidence to substantiate assertions that she or Edward were Nazi sympathisers. The Duke and Duchess visited Germany in October 1937 as guests of the Third Reich and met Hitler and other Nazi leaders. • A Downing Street media machine stage-managed Edward's abdication to avoid any criticism of the government. The files reveal traces of a ministerial strategy aimed at silencing the press as rumours of an imminent abdication swept the globe during the latter part of 1936. "The Great Silence," as some on Fleet Street termed it, was followed by a concerted effort to ensure that the publication of the prime minister's message to Parliament on the abdication was "synchronised" through "the usual channels." At one point, H.A. Gwynne, then editor of the Morning Post newspaper, wrote to Prime Minister Baldwin to express the concern of other newspaper editors. "The newspapers of the whole world are busily engaged in recording every incident of the king's friendship for Mrs. Simpson. Some have urged me ... to break what they term 'The Great Silence,'" his note said. "The fact of the subject being ventilated would inevitably open the flood gates which now hold back the sensational newspapers. The result would be a deadly blow to the monarchy. "My enquiries and conversations with other members of my profession convince me that it will be impossible to expect that this self-imposed silence will last very much longer."
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