The president of the family division has ruled that the seals of an envelope containing the will of abdicated King Edward VIII can be broken.
The case was originally brought to identify the owner of the prince’s literary works copyright, with Sir James Munby stating that to deny the Royal Archives a copy of the will would be ‘absurd’.
At the time, the will was sealed in order to comply with a traditional practice applied to royal wills. However, this policy has since been reviewed.
A request for a copy of the will and codicil was made in October to Leeds District Probate Registry. This was made by librarian and assistant keeper of the Queen’s Archives, Oliver Urquhart Irvine, who stated that the absence of the duke’s will left a gap ‘in our holdings and therefore in our knowledge’.
This was one the two justifying reasons for Munby’s ruling in favour of Irvine’s request. The second was “the practical need for the Queen’s Archives to identify those who currently hold the copyright in literary works created by the Duke of Windsor.”
After the seals on the envelope are broken, the judge ordered that just one copy of its content is to be made and “delivered to Mr Irvine in his capacity as The Librarian and Assistant Keeper of the Queen’s Archives”.
Following this, he ordered that the contents are to be resealed.
