THE Royal family threatened to quit Windsor Castle, dismiss its staff and turn up to the state opening of Parliament in a taxi to embarrass the government after running into severe financial difficulties in the depression-hit 1920s.
Restricted files seen by Scotland on Sunday show that King George V went cap in hand to the Prime Minister demanding more than £100,000, the equivalent of more than £3m today, in a bid to alleviate his desperate economic circumstances.
In a move
that reveals that conflict between the monarchy and the government over the Civil List is nothing new, King George said that unless he received an immediate and sizeable rise in public payments to the Crown, pageantry would be "abolished forever" in Britain and he would be reduced to the status of a French president.
Unlike the present Royal Family, however, which has had to endure cuts in the Civil List, the King persuaded politicians to agree to his demands.
The extraordinary constitutional showdown has been revealed for the first time in the private papers of the Scots-born prime minister Arthur Balfour, who acted as an intermediary between the King and David Lloyd George's government.
The revelations were described as a "bombshell" by a leading Royal expert, who described the monarch's demands as little more than an attempt to "blackmail the country's elected representatives".
Arthur James Balfour, born in Whittingehame, East Lothian, in 1848, was PM between 1902 and 1905, before becoming Foreign Secretary, the role in which he later authored the hugely influential Balfour Declaration of 1917, recommending the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine.
Another Cabinet role as chair of the Privy Council, which saw him advise the sovereign on policy issues, made him the ideal Downing Street-Buckingham Palace go-between.
On June 28, 1921, the Privy Purse Office at Buckingham Palace wrote to Balfour advising him of the monarch's financial woes.
Fritz Ponsonby, a Royal private secretary, enclosed a copy of a letter that the King approved to be sent to Sir Robert Stevenson Horne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
The correspondence states:
"The King thought that before taking any steps to reduce expenditure it would be well to make sure the Prime Minister understood all that this would entail.
"These proposals would not be achieved by mere desultory economies, but would involve a recasting of the whole framework of the Royal Household."
The letter claims that unless extra public money was directed immediately towards the Royal family, it would result in "the sale of all horses and carriages and the substitution of motor cars, the dismissal of 80 men in the stables and an equivalent number of indoor servants and the shutting up of Windsor Castle."
It warns the Chancellor to expect a public backlash if the Royal demands are not met.
"Would not the British public resent the abolition of so popular and important a feature as court pageants?
"There would be no inherent difficulty in the King going to open Parliament in a taxi-cab, but whether it would be consonant with the dignity of the British Empire is quite another matter.
"His Majesty feels sure that the Prime Minister would recognise the importance of making the present situation perfectly clear to the people of the country so they should be aware of the adoption of a course to which it may turn out they are bitterly opposed."
Ponsonby then "suggests" on behalf of the King that the government approve the granting of an additional sum of £110,000, plus a lump sum of £5,000, adding: "It must be remembered that in 1916 the King made a gift of £100,000 to the Exchequer."
Later letters between Balfour and the Palace show other solutions were being aired other than granting the money from the Exchequer, but the King strongly rejected a suggestion that he put Royal property up for sale to address his financial shortcomings.
Instead, Ponsonby suggested selling public-administered land to address the monarch's "financial difficulties".
Eventually, Balfour's lobbying and the Palace's pugnacious stance held sway and the government quietly and privately agreed to the King's demands.
Charles Mosley, royal expert and editor of Burke's Peerage & Baronetage,
said: "This is nothing short of an absolute bombshell. It is amazing to learn that the King was able to effectively blackmail the government in this way.
"The very idea of the King being forced to vacate Windsor Castle and turning up to Parliament in a taxi is extraordinary."
Mosley added: "King George V could be blunt in a naval fashion, but to put his case to the government in such stark, dramatic terms was most unstatesmanlike, to put it mildly."
Graham Smith, of Republic, which campaigns for an elected head of state, said: "The Civil List was a secretive and grubby stitch-up in 1921 and unfortunately that remains the case today."
According to Buckingham Palace, current Civil List expenditure exceeds £11m, so an equivalent increase of £3m today would represent a rise of almost a quarter.
Balfour's private collection of documents is guarded by the Brander family, who are still based in Whittinghame.
Cona
n Doyle's spiritual plea to the PM
TH
E creator of Sherlock Holmes badgered a former prime minister to publicly endorse his eccentric views on life after death, the Balfour documents show.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle found solace in spiritualism after the deaths of his son Kingsley, his brother, his two brothers-in-law and his two nephews in the First World War.
On Halloween 1919, the Edinburgh-born author wrote to Arthur Balfour stating: "You may have seen in the papers that I and others have been asserting the fact of personal survival and of the possibility of spiritual communication after death.
"I need not say that a word from you which I could use would be a great help to us in our struggle."
In response, Balfour indicated that although he shared Conan Doyle's views on spiritualism he was "reluctant" to become embroiled in a public controversy on an issue related to the supernatural.
Vict
oria's censor
Qu
een Victoria discussed the "horrid" Irish and Russians in private correspondence with one of her prime ministers, according to the Balfour Papers.
Britain's longest reigning monarch also told Benjamin Disraeli she wished she was a man so she could go and fight enemies of her empire.
In November 1919, a Buckingham Palace aide wrote to Balfour, then in the Cabinet as Lord President of the Council, asking for advice about the proposed publication of letters between the Queen and Disraeli.
The following month Balfour wrote back suggesting that a number of the Queen's remarks be removed from the letters, dating between 1875 and 1878, to protect her reputation.
Balfour wrote: "There is a phrase used by the Queen in which she talks about giving the 'horrid Russians such a beating'.
"I rather like the Queen's passionate wish 'to be a man and go out and fight her country's enemies'.
"All the same, these are expressions which rather degrade sentiments which are in themselves wholly admirable."
Balfour also called for the passage where the Queen referred to "these horrid Irish" to be removed before publication.
He wrote: "No doubt the Irish party of obstruction in the House of Commons was horrible, but I cannot help feeling that this colloquial commentary might, with advantage, be omitted.
"It is somewhat schoolgirlish.
"If I have seemed to cavil at words, it is not because they are too vehement, but because I think they will be misunderstood and will injure rather than improve the general effort of this remarkable piece of political portraiture."
Balfour added: "Without being in the least clever, Queen Victoria was certainly a most remarkable personality.
"Unfortunately she wrote like a schoolgirl, incapable of seeing the reality behind the form."
The full article contains 1305 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
