Millicent Milroy Memorial in Cambridge, Ontario
Nestled among the multifold memorials of Mount View Cemetery in historic Galt, now part of Cambridge in southern Ontario, the tombstone of Millicent Milroy stands out. It’s not for its imposing size or defining black granite construction. Rather, it is because Milroy was the onetime partner of Edward Albert Christian George Andrew Patrick David, more commonly known as King Edward VIII, Duke of Windsor. Or so she claimed.
The epitaph on her grave reads, “Millicent A.M.M.M. P. St. Daughter of James and Helen Jane Milroy 1890- wife of Edward (VIII) Duke of Windsor 1894-1972.” An inscription Millicent herself had added to the tombstone. Those oddly abbreviated letters after her first name? They stand for “Agnes Mary Maureen Marguerite, Princess of the Royal House of Stuart,” a royal title Millicent held as a result of her father having been Prince James of Scotland.
While Edward VIII did famously abdicate the British throne for his love of Wallis Simpson, his proposed partnering with Milroy, a schoolteacher, is less clear. One version of the story claims that Milroy and the Duke of Windsor were married in western Canada, where the Duke of Windsor owned the E.P. Ranch in High River, Alberta. Another version of the story credits a chance encounter between Millicent and the then Prince of Wales during his stop in Galt on a 1919 Royal tour of Canada.
The marriage is said to have resulted in two children, Edward and Andrew, though Millicent famously remained silent about the details, claiming in her later years that the Duke of Windsor took all evidence of their nuptials with him back to England.
Beyond the claims to royalty laid out in Milroy’s epitaph, the story has been immortalized in the stage drama Queen Milli of Galt, which envisions for a modern audience how the rural Ontarian Millicent married into the realm of the British monarchy.
The full story behind the epitaph of Millicent Milroy remains a mystery to this day. It’s perhaps fitting, however, that Millicent’s later years were spent in the “Royal City” of Guelph, Ontario.
