Read "His most Gracious Majesty King Edward VII" by Marie Belloc Lowndes online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Sandringham is so closely associated in the public mind with King Edward and Queen Alexandra, whose country home it was for so many years, and is still to be from time to time, that no apology is needed for devoting to it a special chapter.
When King Edward was about to set up a separate establishment, Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort instructed some of their most trusted friends to look out for a suitable country estate for the Heir-Apparent. At one moment it was proposed to buy Newstead Abbey, but its Byronic associations caused it to be purchased as soon as it came into the market. Eynsham, in Oxfordshire, an estate belonging to Lord Macclesfield, also came under consideration, as well as Elveden, in Suffolk, and Hatherop, in Gloucestershire. Lord Palmerston seems to have suggested Sandringham, which at that time belonged to his stepson, Mr. Spencer Cowper, and accordingly the Norfolk estate was bought for £220,000.