King's Fortune

Edward VIII's huge properties as Britain's King were last week pouring income into the British Treasury at the rate of some $6,500,000 a year. Out of this fund the British Government annually pays its King and his family a set sum, under a contract first made by insane George III and regularly renewed by Act of Parliament. Last week the new Civil List for King Edward was submitted to the House of Commons. Smaller than that of his father by $300,000, it totaled only $2,050,000, leaving the Government $4,000,000 for profit.

To support the King the Select Committee of the Commons allotted $550,000 for the Privy Purse. Two months ago His Majesty asked Parliament to make provision for two hypothetical relatives. One was the bachelor King's future wife, to whom the Commons was last week asked to allot $200,000 a year out of the Privy Purse.* This will be kept by the Keeper of the Privy Purse until King Edward marries. The other was the hypothetical Queen's first-born son. Last week the Select Committee allotted the non-existent Prince of Wales an annual $125,000, to start accumulating at once. Thus, even if Edward VIII marries within the year, the next Prince of Wales on his 21st birthday would step into a fortune of at least $3,000,000, in addition to his income from the Duchy of Cornwall.

The new Civil List raised the King's household salaries and pensions $115,000 to $670,000; cut his household expenses $94,000 to $764,000; allowed $66,000 for charity. The usual $100,000 for repairs and $35,500 for "leeway" were abolished.

Contrary to general belief, the royal properties on which the Civil List is virtually a token payment of income belong not to the British Government but solely and legally to the head of the Royal House of England. They include mines, forests, farmlands, beaches and rivers the length & breadth of Britain as well as the King's "rights" on fish taken from his rivers, coal from his Welsh mines. To him belong London's New Gallery and His Majesty's Theatres, Holborn and Criterion restaurants, Carlton Hotel, the southern side of Piccadilly Circus and both sides of Regent Street, pieces of Kennington slums, Finchley, Hampstead, Dalston and swank Carlton House Terrace.

To the King also belong the draughty palaces of Buckingham, Windsor, Sandringham, Balmoral, St. James's and livable little Fort Belvedere, all valued at about $25,000,000; their collections of old paintings valued at $5,000,000; books and documents worth $2,000,000; George V's stamp collection appraised at $2,000,000; the late Queen Alexandra's $3,000,000 jewelry collection; and the 1,000-piece gold dinner set in the vaults of Buckingham Palace ($10,000,000). Total: $47,000,000.

The King's income-producing properties are managed by what is in effect a holding company, the Crown Lands Office. Its unsalaried front man is the Minister for Agriculture, now 36-year-old Herbrand Edward Dundonald Brassey Sackville, Earl De La Warr and Viscount Cantelupe. The Commission's two potent drudges are Permanent Commissioner Charles Lancelot Stocks and Assistant Commissioner G. P. Best. They pay the Crown Lands monies to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who pays out the Civil List in turn to His Majesty's Keeper of the Privy Purse.

Present Keeper of the Privy Purse is George V's old friend and private secretary, Lord Wigram, who will presently be replaced by one of the new King's men, probably Admiral Sir Lionel Halsey.

The Keeper of the Privy Purse will have the job of investing the unborn Prince of Wales's $125,000 a year, banking the unwed Queen's $200,000, paying off to the King's 150 needy kin their minimum allowances of some $125 a week, meeting household salaries, expenses, repairs.

Kings' fortunes vanish into the realm of the mysterious because what a King saves up and bequeaths to his heirs is subject to no probate, no inheritance tax. Queen Victoria, having ascended the throne practically penniless, saved at least $9,000,000. Edward VII was a spendthrift. George V was as thrifty as his grandmother. How big a fortune he passed on to King Edward VIII nobody except the Royal family now knows.

King Edward moreover has two aces in the hole. One is the King's regular Duchy of Lancaster with an income of $425,000 a year. The other is the Prince of Wales's Duchy of Cornwall, which nets some $330,000 a year. Both are exempt from the Civil List contract with the Government, pay their money directly to His Majesty's Keeper of the Privy Purse. It is from these, rather than from the Civil List, that His Majesty will draw his spending money.

The royal Duchy of Cornwall, Britain's southwesternmost point of land, was given in 1337 by Edward III to his beloved warrior son, the Black Prince Edward, and to the Black Prince's "heirs, the first-begotten sons of the kings of England." Having no first-begotten son, Edward VIII will administer the Duchy as heretofore. Furthermore, as King, he no longer pays the income tax of $215,000 a year on this property, since his late father contracted with the Government to pay for the visits of foreign royalties in return for tax exemption.

It was Victoria's Prince Consort Albert who put the Duchy of Cornwall into profitable shape at a time when its copper mines, with those of Devonshire, produced one-third of Europe's supply. Now the profitable veins have largely run out. There remain a fine fish and oyster business, some mines and quarries, farmlands and a huge piece of South London. These monies go directly to the office of the Duchy of Cornwall in London's Buckingham Gate, only 200 yards from the back door of the Palace. The new King and Admiral Halsey may sometimes be seen scuttling down the narrow street to look over the accounts of the profitable Duchy of Cornwall.

*Hearstpapers last week engaged Edward to his second cousin, thin-lipped Princess Alexandrine-Louise, 21, niece of Denmark's King Christian X. Said Alexandrine's father: "Pure nonsense!"

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