Mature Life Features

Verena Voices choir

is presenting a short program on

April 4th at 2:30 pm 

in our Dining Room.

They will sing inspirational songs as well as an Easter favorite.

After their singing, Carol Reichert will play

seasonal and lively songs for your entertainment.

Please come and support our own choir and

director Kathy Irving, and Carol R. accompanist.

Thank you

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The Man Who Dethroned a King

By Tom Morrow

Mature Life Features

The captivating tabloid trippings around the globe of Harry and Meghan – are they going the raise Archie in Canada? the U.S.? — isn’t new. Anyone familiar with history knows that Britain’s King Edward VIII, who gained the throne when George V died in January 1936, abdicated his crown for “… the woman I love.”

But what wasn’t known until recently is how he was helped out the royal door by Cosmo Gordon Lang, the Scottish cleric who became Archbishop of Canterbury, head of the Church of England, whom he had once admired. Lang believed that, as Prince of Wales, Edward was adept at philandering and had not always been wise in his choice of friends and acquaintances, whose standards Lang was later to condemn as “alien to all the best instincts and traditions of his people.”

The archbishop had been aware for some time of the king’s relationship with the American Wallis Simpson, who was still married to her second husband, Ernest. In mid-1936 it became clear Edward intended to marry her either before or shortly after his impending coronation, depending on the timing of her divorce.

Lang agonized over whether he could, with good conscience, administer the coronation oath to the king in such circumstances, bearing in mind the Anglican Church’s teaching on marriage. It would be unthinkable to have a divorcee, especially an American, sit on the throne as Queen.

Lang confided to his recently opened diary his hopes that circumstances might change, or that he might be able to persuade the king to reconsider his actions, but the king refused to meet with him. Lang kept close contact with the king’s mother, Queen Mary: Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, and the king’s private secretary. Edward believed Lang’s influence in court was strong, recalling how from beginning to end he felt the archbishop’s “shadowy, hovering presence” in the background.

The matter became public Dec. 2, 1936, when the Bishop of Bradford made an indirect comment on the king’s “need for Divine Grace.” By then, faced with staunch opposition by the Church and Parliament, the king decided he would abdicate rather than give up Wallis Simpson. Nine days later — Dec. 11, 1936 — he gave up his throne in favor of his brother, George VI.

Two days later, Lang broadcast a speech in which he said: “From God he (Edward VIII) received a high and sacred trust. Yet by his own will he has … surrendered the trust.” Lang did not disguise his relief that the crisis was over. He wrote of George VI, “I was now sure that to the solemn words of the Coronation there would now be a sincere response.” On May 12, 1937, Lang crowned George VI, father of Queen Elizabeth II, with full pomp and ceremony in Westminster Abbey.

Time magazine recorded:

“… All through the three-hour ceremony, the most important person there was not the King, his nobles or his ministers, but a hawk-nosed old gentleman with a cream and gold cape who stood on a dais as King George approached: The Rt. Hon. and Most Reverend Cosmo Gordon Lang, D.D. Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, Primate of All England.” Supposedly the archbishop fumbled with the Crown but Lang himself was fully satisfied.”

Years later, it was revealed that Lang had placed the crown on George’s head backwards.

It wasn’t until details read in Lang’s recently discovered private diary that the world learned how he and then Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin colluded in forcing Edward to step down from the throne.