by Staff at Britain’s National Archives have censored documents showing how the late Queen Elizabeth II hid details of her relatives’ wealth from the public.
They recently withdrew the papers, removed parts of them and then returned them to public land.
The Guardian has discovered, however, that there is a request from the late queen to keep the will of one of her relatives secret in the suppressed parts.
The serial concealment of the Windsor family’s wills is a contentious issue for the monarchy.
For more than a century, the Windsors have been able to keep the contents of wills relating to 33 members of their family secret. They received a special carve-out from a law that normally requires the wills of British citizens to be made public.
This immunity allowed the royal family to prevent the public from knowing what types of assets – such as real estate and treasures – the Windsors acquired and how they were distributed to, for example, relatives, friends or on staff members.
The censored documents contain a direct request from the late queen to keep one of these wills secret more than five decades ago. Buckingham Palace declined to say whether it had asked other wills to be withheld from the public.
The Windsors have for many years shielded the scale of their wealth from the public. The family does not reveal how wealthy they are. Last year, the Guardian estimated that King Charles III had a personal fortune of £1.8bn.
Related: British royalty used an obscure legal procedure to conceal the wills of distant relatives
One of the ways they kept details of their wealth secret was by using an obscure legal procedure to obtain court orders to keep the wills of family members secret after they died. This was used even for remote members of their family. In 1987, the will of a Danish prince was closed; Prince George Valdemar Carl Axel was only distantly related to the Windsors as a second cousin to the Queen’s husband, Philip.
Since 1911, the Windsors’ personal lawyers have received orders from high court judges at secret hearings. Lawyers for Prince Philip, the queen mother and Princess Margaret have managed to keep their wills secret since 2002.
The secrecy of this practice has recently been challenged, however, amid controversy that the discreet procedure gave the royal family rights not afforded to other citizens of Wales. There was also criticism that the wills were being kept secret to cover up the amount of money the Windsors collected from public funds.
Two years ago, staff at the National Archives in Kew, south-west London, the official repository of government documents dating back more than 1,000 years, removed a file detailing official discussions about royal wills between 1957 and 1970. It was opened to the public. in 2018.
When the file was returned to the public domain last year, parts of two documents, and a letter, were withheld. The Guardian was able to find out what was censored because it photographed the entire file in 2021.
One of the documents was a report written by a senior judicial officer, Robert Bayne-Powell, in 1970. The censors have removed a section which said: “I find that Her Majesty has asked the executors’ solicitors to apply for the will sealing. the Princess Royal, the Countess of Harewood. I suggest that any royal will should be sealed if the royal so requests.”
Countess Harewood – the queen’s aunt and daughter of George V – died in 1965, having amassed a fortune worth £5.6m in today’s money.
In a second act of censorship, archive staff removed from the file a letter dated June 1970 in which a Whitehall official recorded a conversation with Lord Tryon, the courtier in charge of the Queen’s finances.
Tryon told the official: “Buckingham Palace lawyers consider that, except in special circumstances (for example a will containing something that should not be made public) “fringe members” of the royal family do not need to have their wills sealed. This should only be for HRHs.”
The passage is significant because it suggests that even royal courtiers were uncertain whether minor members of the royal family should be allowed to keep their wills secret.
Other published official documents revealed that senior government officials privately believed the practice was dubious, saying the legal basis for the court orders was “a bit thin” and “a bit random”.
In a third case of censorship, the National Archives removed a seemingly innocuous item from an official memo in 1970 which recorded that Lord Tryon and Michael Adeane, the Queen’s private secretary, discussed with a Whitehall official whether a junior member was willing. of the royal family should be closed.
The National Archives said the documents were removed, in consultation with the Ministry of Justice, because they contained information relating to communications with the monarch. Such information was kept confidential under a section of the Freedom of Information Act, they said.
