Great Britain (United Kingdom)
 Edward VIII – King: 20 January – 11 December 1936
Investiture of Edward (Later King Edward VIII) as Prince of Wales
1911 Silver Medal 34mm
Reference: Eimer-1925, BHM-4079
Certification: NGC  MS 64  4660813-002
Bust of Edward (VIII).
Caernarfon Castle

Designed by Sir William Goscombe John, minted by The Royal Mint, British Historical Medals Vol 3 #4079, a total of 5,441 were minted, there was an identical gold issue of 129 also produced.

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The investiture of the Prince of Wales is the ceremony marking formal acknowledgement of a newly-created Prince of Wales. During the investiture ceremony, the prince is presented and invested with the insignia of his rank and dignity, similar to a coronation. An investiture is purely ceremonial, as the title is created via letters patent.

Investitures fell into abeyance and the revival of investing the Prince of Wales in 1911 was largely due to David Lloyd George’s instigation. A similar ceremony was also held in 1969 for Queen Elizabeth II’s son and heir, Prince Charles.

Caernarfon Castle – often anglicised as Carnarvon Castle or Caernarvon Castle – is a medieval fortress in Caernarfon, Gwynedd, north-west Wales cared for by Cadw, the Welsh Government’s historic environment service. It was a motte-and-bailey castle from the late 11th century until 1283 when King Edward I of England began to replace it with the current stone structure. The Edwardian town and castle acted as the administrative centre of north Wales, and as a result the defences were built on a grand scale. There was a deliberate link with Caernarfon’s Roman past, and the Roman fort of Segontium is nearby.

While the castle was under construction, town walls were built around Caernarfon. The work cost between £20,000 and £25,000 from the start until the work ended in 1330. Although the castle appears mostly complete from the outside, the interior buildings no longer survive and many of the building plans were never finished. The town and castle were sacked in 1294 when Madog ap Llywelyn led a rebellion against the English. Caernarfon was recaptured the following year. During the Glyndŵr Rising of 1400-1415, the castle was besieged. When the Tudor dynasty ascended to the English throne in 1485, tensions between the Welsh and English began to diminish and castles were considered less important. As a result, Caernarfon Castle was allowed to fall into a state of disrepair. Despite its dilapidated condition, during the English Civil War Caernarfon Castle was held by Royalists, and was besieged three times by Parliamentarian forces. This was the last time the castle was used in war. The castle was neglected until the 19th century when the state funded repairs. The castle was used for the investiture of the Prince of Wales in 1911 and again in 1969. It is part of the World Heritage Site “Castles and Town Walls of King Edward in Gwynedd”.

Edward VIII, later Prince Edward, Duke of Windsor (Edward Albert Christian George Andrew Patrick David; 23 June 1894 – 28 May 1972), was King of the United Kingdom and the Dominions of the British Empire, and Emperor of India, from 20 January 1936 until his abdication on 11 December of that year.

Edward was born during the reign of his great-grandmother Queen Victoria as the eldest child of the Duke and Duchess of York, later King George V and Queen Mary. He was created Prince of Wales on his sixteenth birthday, nine weeks after his father succeeded as king. As a young man, Edward served in the British Army during the First World War and undertook several overseas tours on behalf of his father. While Prince of Wales, he engaged in a series of affairs that worried his father and the British Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin.

Edward became king on his father’s death. As king, he showed impatience with court protocol, and caused concern among politicians by his apparent disregard for established constitutional conventions. Only months into his reign, he caused a constitutional crisis by proposing to Wallis Simpson, an American who had divorced her first husband and was seeking a divorce from her second. The prime ministers of the United Kingdom and the Dominions opposed the marriage, arguing a divorced woman with two living ex-husbands was politically and socially unacceptable as a prospective queen consort. Additionally, such a marriage would have conflicted with Edward’s status as the titular head of the Church of England, which at the time disapproved of remarriage after divorce if a former spouse was still alive. Edward knew the Baldwin government would resign if the marriage went ahead, which could have forced a general election and would have ruined his status as a politically neutral constitutional monarch. When it became apparent he could not marry Wallis and remain on the throne, he abdicated. He was succeeded by his younger brother, George VI. With a reign of 326 days, Edward is one of the shortest-reigning monarchs in British history.

After his abdication, Edward was created Duke of Windsor. He married Wallis in France on 3 June 1937, after her second divorce became final. Later that year, the couple toured Germany. During the Second World War, Edward was at first stationed with the British Military Mission to France, but after private accusations that he was a Nazi sympathiser, he was appointed Governor of the Bahamas. After the war, Edward spent the rest of his life in retirement in France. He and Wallis remained married until his death in 1972. Wallis died 14 years later.

Great  Britain, also known as Britain, is an island in the North Atlantic off the north-west coast of continental Europe . With an area of 209,331 km²  (80,823 sq mi), it is the largest island in Europe and the ninth-largest in the world . In 2011 the island  had a population of about 61 million people, making it the third-most populous island in the world, after Java in Indonesia and Honshu in Japan . The island is the largest in the British Isles archipelago , which also includes the island of Ireland to its west and over 1,000 smaller surrounding islands .

The island is dominated by an oceanic climate with quite narrow temperature  differences between seasons. Politically, the island is part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland ,  constituting most of its territory: most of England , Scotland , and Wales are on the island, with their respective  capital cities,  London , Edinburgh , and Cardiff . The term Great Britain often extends  to include surrounding islands that form part of England, Scotland, and Wales.

A single Kingdom of Great Britain resulted from the Union of Scotland and England (which already comprised the  present-day countries of England and Wales ) in 1707. More than a hundred years  before, in 1603, King James VI , King of Scots , had inherited the throne of  England, but it was not until 1707 that the Parliaments of the two countries  agreed to form a unified state. In 1801, Great Britain united with the neighboring Kingdom of Ireland , forming the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland ,  which was renamed the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland after  the Irish Free State seceded in 1922.