Duke of Kent honoured with trophy at Wimbledon in July

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Born to Prince George and Marina, Duchess of Kent, Prince Edward, Duke of Kent, is a first cousin of the late Queen Elizabeth II. While it may fly under the radar, Edward has long been a dedicated working royal and is involved with over 140 charities and organisations. According to the Royal Family’s website, he has undertaken over 60 overseas trips to promote British trade and exports, including to Europe, Japan, Australia and the Middle East. It was his mother who introduced Edward to a life of service when she had him accompany her on an extensive tour of the Far East. The trip came around Edward’s 17th birthday and 10 years after the Kents were struck by heartbreaking tragedy. 

In 1942, when Edward was just seven years old, his father died in a military air accident in Scotland. Circumstances surrounding the incident remain mysterious to this day and the Kents have never spoken publicly about the crash. 

Celia Lee, author of ‘HRH The Duke of Kent: A Life of Service’, claimed Marina lived in “genteel poverty” following the death of her husband. 

Writing for the Sunday Express in 2013, Ms Lee said: “Prince Edward enjoyed an idyllic childhood with his younger sister, Princess Alexandra, and his adoring parents until their lives were shattered when their father was killed in an aeroplane crash in 1942, when their new-born brother Prince Michael was only six weeks old. 

“The widowed Princess Marina was left in genteel poverty but continued with her work as Commandant of the Women’s Royal Naval Service, or Wrens, until her death in 1968.”

Marina was one of the most glamorous and best-loved members of the Royal Family. Previously a Princess of Greece and Denmark, she became the Duchess of Kent when she married Prince George in 1934. 

She was widowed in 1942 when George was killed in active service. The Duchess, according to royal biographer Hugo Vickers, was “the only war widow in Britain whose estate was forced to pay death duties”. It was the high rates of wartime taxation, unknown to the aristocracy of pre-war Britain, that would prove to be her undoing.

Papers in the National Archives in Kew show that Buckingham Palace preferred to keep the widowed Duchess of Kent in poverty rather than back Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s plan to support her from public funds, a move King George VI’s advisers feared would expose how little tax the Royal Family paid on their huge State subsidies.

Her “poverty” was considered less important than the damage that the rest of the Firm might suffer at a time when Britons were paying record rates of income tax. Lord Herbert, the Duchess’s financial adviser, wrote a letter to the Prime Minister three months after the Duke’s death, detailing her difficulties. 

When Prince George died, the £25,000 annual subsidy paid by the state to the duke (worth over £900,000 a year at today’s prices) ended and after paying death duties and all her necessary bills, the Duchess would have a disposable income of less than £1,000 (£36,000) a year, hardly enough to maintain her country home in Buckinghamshire.

Lord Herbert wrote: “It will be quite impossible for her to have a London residence, which she ought to have in order that she may be able to see the many people which a member of the Royal Family has to see, and to entertain those who entertain her.

“She is a very economical person, and has no expensive tastes or habits, but she would feel deeply hurt if she knew that the minute the duke was dead Parliament took no more interest in her, which is what it would amount to.”

He added: “Her Royal Highness will have to lead a very different life from that expected of her, and it will be a constant struggle to keep her small household and staff, even if taxation is eventually reduced.” 

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Churchill sent Lord Herbert’s letter to Sir Kenneth Wood, the Chancellor, and asked what he proposed to do about it. However, the Treasury was unmoved.

Sir Kenneth replied: “I cannot help feeling that there would be those Members of Parliament anxious, especially at the present time, to compare the grant with the sufferings of the poor and it is for serious consideration whether either the King or the Government would wish to run the gauntlet of such criticisms.”

Churchill insisted he would take the responsibility for pushing the matter through Parliament, acknowledging that it may take a change in the law so that the Duchess could get access to money tied up in the trust funds of her three children. 

In protest to Sir Kenneth, Churchill said: “It is not a matter in which the King is primarily concerned. The Duchess’s interest is separate.” 

But neither the Treasury nor the Palace was enthusiastic about the idea and the Chancellor recruited the Attorney General to oppose any idea of creating a precedent for trust funds. Churchill’s suggestion of exempting the Duchess from tax, as other members of the Royal Family already were, was also vetoed. At the time, Queen Mary, the King’s mother, received £70,000 (£2.5 million) a year, tax free. 

In March 1943, a Cabinet committee — composed of Sir Kenneth, Herbert Morrison, the Home Secretary, Sir John Anderson, the Lord President of the Council, and Viscount Simon, the Lord Chancellor reported: “In our view, the real question for decision is whether the case for the State making financial provision for the duchess outweighs the risk that as a result, the financial provision for the Royal Family as a whole might become in some degree a matter of public controversy.” 

Disappointed by their findings, Churchill responded: “I am very much grieved by the negative conclusions which you have reached in this matter.” 

When he tried to push the matter further, he was met with opposition from Buckingham Palace. His office was told, on the authority of the King, “that it would be better not to raise this matter but to let it drop”. 

The Duchess made ends meet by selling works of art that had belonged to her husband, and after the war changes were made to the Civil List so that a similar situation would not occur.

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