King Edward VII (1841 – 1910)

King Edward VII (Albert Edward) (9 November 1841 – 6 May 1910) was King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions and Emperor of India from 22 January 1901 until his death on 6 May 1910.

Edward was a close friend of Frederick Hervey Foster Quin. Edward VII consulted homeopath Sir John Weir, and he met William Tod Helmuth during his visit to England. He was also was a member of  The Savage Club Masonic Lodge alongside Wilkie Collins, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Francis Wyatt Truscott, Mark Twain,

Edward of course knew ‘everybody’ in England and many influential people from his trip to America, including Benjamin Disraeli, William Gladstone, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Sarah Bernhardt,

Edward donated a portrait of himself to hang in the Edward VII memorial ward at the London Homeopathic Hospital.

When Frederick Hervey Foster Quin became ill at the end of his life Edward VII was at his bedside when he died. As a measure of the respect and affection with which he regarded Frederick Hervey Foster Quin, Edward VII sent four empty horse drawn royal carriages to join the cortege at his funeral: probably the highest honour ever paid by a Royal to a commoner.

Before his accession to the throne, Edward held the title of Prince of Wales and was heir apparent to the throne for longer than anyone else in history.During the long widowhood of his mother, Queen Victoria, he was largely excluded from political power and came to personify the fashionable, leisured elite.

The Edwardian period, which covered Edward’s reign and was named after him, coincided with the start of a new century and heralded significant changes in technology and society, including powered flight and the rise of socialism and the Labour movement. Edward played a role in the modernisation of the British Home Fleet, the reform of the Army Medical Services, and the reorganisation of the British army after the Second Boer War.

His work in fostering good relations between Great Britain and other European countries, especially France, for which he was popularly called “Peacemaker”, was unable to prevent the outbreak of World War I in 1914….

At a time of widespread anti Semitism, Edward attracted criticism for openly socialising with Jews….

Edward had been afraid that his nephew, the German Emperor William II, would tip Europe into war. Four years after his death, World War I broke out. The naval reforms and the Anglo French alliance he had supported, as well as the relationships between his extended royal family, were put to the test.

World War I marked the end of the Edwardian way of life.