King Edward VII (r.1901-1910)
On the death of Queen Victoria on the 22nd of January 1901, the question what title the new king would assume was speedily set at rest by the popular announcement that he would be called Edward the Seventh. The new reign began auspiciously by the holding of a privy council at St James's Palace, at which the king announced his intention to follow in his predecessor's footsteps and to govern as a constitutional sovereign, and received the oaths of allegiance. On the 14th of February the king and queen opened parliament in state.
Shortly afterwards it was announced that the visit of the duke and duchess of York to Australia, in order to inaugurate the new Commonwealth, which had been sanctioned by Queen Victoria, would be proceeded with; and on the 16th of March they set out on board the "Ophir " with a brilliant suite. The tour lasted till November 1, the duke and duchess having visited Australia, New Zealand, the Cape and Canada; and on their return the king, on November 9, created the duke prince of Wales and earl of Chester. Meanwhile parliament had settled the new civil list at £470,000 a year.
The royal title had been enlarged to include the colonial empire by an act enabling the king to style himself "Edward VII, by the grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and of all the British Dominions beyond the Seas, King, Defender of the Faith, Emperor of India."
At the end of May 1902 the long-drawn-out war in South Africa came at last to an end, and the coronation was fixed for the 26th of June. But on the 24th, amid general consternation, the king was announced to be suffering from perityphlitis [Appendicitis], necessitating the immediate performance of an operation; and the coronation, for which unprecedented preparations had been made, had to be postponed. The operation — performed by Sir Frederick Treves — was, however, so marvelously successful, and the king's progress towards recovery so rapid and uninterrupted, that within a fortnight he was pronounced out of danger, and soon afterwards it was decided to hold the coronation service on August 9.
Though shorn of much of the magnificence which would have been added to it in June by the presence of foreign royalties and the preparations for a great procession through London, the solemnity duly took place on that date in Westminster Abbey amid great rejoicings. The king spent several weeks (partly in a yachting trip round the coast and up to Stornoway) in recruiting his health, and on the 25th of October he went in procession through the main streets of south London, when he was most enthusiastically received. Next day the king and queen attended St Paul's cathedral in state to return thanks for his restoration to health. On New Year's day 1903 the coronation was proclaimed in India at a magnificent durbar at Delhi.
At home the king opened parliament in person in February 1903, and on the 31st of March he sailed from Portsmouth to pay a visit to the king of Portugal at Lisbon, leaving Lisbon for Gibraltar on the 7th of April. On the nth he held a review of the garrison troops and next day left for Malta, and the tour was continued to Naples (23rd of April). On the 27th of April he was received at Rome by the king of Italy — the first time an English king as such had been there; and two days later he paid a visit to Leo XIII at the Vatican. On May day he was received in Paris by President Loubet.
Later in the year return visits were paid to England by President Loubet (July) and the king and queen of Italy (November). On the 11th of May His Majesty paid his first formal visit to Edinburgh, and held courts at Holyrood. In July the king and queen went to Ireland, and though the Dublin corporation refused to vote a loyal address the reception was generally cordial. In September the king took his annual "cure" at Marienbad, and paid a visit to Vienna, where he was received by the Austrian emperor. In 1904 again the king and queen went to Ireland; in June the king was cordially received by the German emperor at the yacht-races at Kiel, and he included a visit to Hamburg, where the welcome was hearty. In November the king and queen of Portugal were entertained at Windsor and at the Guildhall.
During the year 1909 the political situation at home was developing into an acute constitutional crisis, which seemed likely to involve the Crown in serious difficulties. Mr Lloyd George's budget convulsed the House of Commons and the country, and was eventually rejected by the House of Lords; and the Liberal government now put in the forefront of its program the abolition of the Peers' "veto." Mr Asquith was returned to office after the elections of January 1910, stating that, if necessary, guarantees would be sought from the Crown for the purpose of enforcing the will of the representative chamber. A remarkable sign of the king's discomfort was his insertion, in the official "King's Speech" at the opening of parliament, of the words "in the opinion of my advisers," in connection with the passage dealing with the House of Lords.
As was hinted, not obscurely, later by the doctors, King Edward, although certainly not prejudiced against a Liberal ministry, was seriously disturbed in mind and health by the progress of events. The king had been far from robust for some little time, and while he was taking change and rest at Biarritz in the early spring of 1910 he had a bronchial attack which caused some anxiety, although the public heard nothing of it. When he returned to England there is no doubt that he was acutely affected by the prospect of being forcibly dragged into the political conflict. In the country at large there was indeed considerable confidence that the king's tact and experience would help to bring order out of chaos; but this was not to be.
Within two days the public heard with consternation that he was ill, and then was dead. On May 5 it was announced that he had bronchitis; and he died at 11.45 PM on the 6th, of heart failure. The shock of his sudden death, for sudden it seemed to the public who had only learned of his illness thirty-six hours before, proved the measure of his kingship. So completely had King Edward identified himself with his office that even to those in the inner circle of politics, where the guiding impulse is a buoyant, if unavowed, belief in the indispensability of self, his loss came as a National Calamity. The capital letters were Lord Fisher's, who mourned his friend as well as his sovereign. But they expressed a universal sentiment. Sir Edward Grey, the grand seigneur of the Cabinet, felt that "something like a landslide had happened."
On May 17, 18 and 19 there was an impressive lying-in-state in Westminster Hall, attended by unprecedented crowds; and on May 20 the burial took place at Windsor, after a great funeral procession through London, the coffin being followed by the new king, George V, and by eight foreign sovereigns — the German emperor, the kings of Greece, Spain, Portugal, Denmark, Norway, Belgium and Bulgaria — besides the archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria (heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary), the prince consort of Holland and many other royalties, and a number of special ambassadors, including Mr Roosevelt as representative of the United States. Mourning was as sincere as it was universal; for not only England and the British Empire, but the world, had lost a king who was both a very human man and a tried and trusted statesman.
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