William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne

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The English statesman William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne (1779-1848), served as prime minister in 1834 and from 1835 to 1841. He was the stern suppressor of early trade unionism and the political mentor of the young Queen Victoria.

Lord Melbourne was a member of the small aristocratic oligarchy which dominated English society and politics in the 18th and early 19th centuries. By taking a leading part in reforming the oligarchical system in 1832 and afterward, the great aristocrats preserved much of their power and influence for most of the century.

William Lamb was born on March 15, 1779, at Brocket Hall, the family's Hertfordshire seat. He was generally believed to be the son of the Earl of Egremont. The Lambs were relative newcomers to aristocratic society, but their great wealth and Lady Melbourne's beauty and charm gave them a place in the highest circles. William grew up among the flower of the Whig aristocracy. The Prince of Wales, the Duchess of Devonshire, and Charles James Fox were some of his mother's close friends.

William was educated at Eton, Trinity College, Cambridge, and the University of Glasgow. Like most young men of the period, he profited little from his formal education; but he read widely in history and literature. An extraordinarily good-looking and brilliant young man, William was eagerly welcomed by society. Early on he displayed that good-natured cynicism which was to mark the rest of his career. He liked people, but he never expected much good to come from human endeavor. For a couple of years after completing his education in 1801, he did little but enjoy himself. However, as a younger son, William had to have a career. He finally settled on the law and in 1804 was admitted to the bar.

Early Career and Marriage

Lamb's legal career did not last long. His elder brother died in 1805, and Lamb became the future Lord Melbourne. As a prospective peer, he was expected to pursue a career in politics. He soon found himself a seat and entered Parliament in 1806. Just before this, in 1805, he had married Lady Caroline Ponsonby.

For the next 20 years Lamb was not to make a great success of his new career. He entered politics as Fox's devoted follower, but Fox died after a brief period in office, and the Whigs went out of power in 1807. Lamb soon found himself uncomfortable with Whiggery. He agreed with the Whigs on Catholic emancipation, but he found them too critical of the war against Napoleonic France. He also thought them soft toward parliamentary reform and popular radicalism. Lamb's closest sympathies were with a parliamentary group led by George Canning. But the Whigs were his friends, and he firmly rejected opportunities to advance his own career at their expense. This was not very satisfying, and in 1812 he retired from politics for a time.

Lamb's marriage was not a happy one. Lady Caroline was romantic to the point of mental imbalance, as she showed in her notorious affair with Lord Byron. The whole drama of the stormy romance was played in public from 1812 to 1816. Then, rejected by both Byron and society, she sank deeper into mental disorder until her death in 1828. Lamb remained loyal to his wife to the end.

Political Career

Lamb returned to Parliament in 1816. But it was not until 1827 that his career began to prosper. Then Canning finally came to power, and some of the Whigs joined his government. Lamb became chief secretary for Ireland. Canning soon died, but Lamb remained with the Canningites in two successive governments until 1828.

In 1829 Lamb succeeded to the Melbourne peerage, and in the following year he joined Lord Grey's great reform ministry. Melbourne still did not really believe in parliamentary reform. But now the great popular agitation for change seemed to make the choice one between reform and national convulsion. With such a choice, Melbourne chose reform.

But Melbourne believed that riotousness must be suppressed and, as home secretary, he was responsible for maintaining order. It was generally assumed that any kind of working-class organization was aimed at political revolution. Melbourne revived some old legislation against trade unions and encouraged its strict enforcement. The most famous sufferers were the "Tolpuddle Martyrs," agricultural laborers in Dorset who seem to have been innocent of any object other than the improvement of their miserable working conditions.

Prime Minister

Melbourne's reputation for firmness did him no harm among the upper classes. When Lord Grey resigned in 1834, Melbourne seemed the man most likely to be able to hold a Whig government together, and the King asked him to take Grey's place. Melbourne's reaction was typical. "I think it's a damned bore," he said. But he accepted.

With the exception of the brief Tory government of 1834-1835, Melbourne was to remain in office until 1841. He had a difficult task. His government, Parliament, and the country were deeply divided on the necessity for further reform and on its nature. Melbourne always greeted change without enthusiasm, but he was a realist and had a great talent for conciliation. Somehow he kept the government together and did what seemed necessary and practicable.

It was not until 1837, with the accession of Queen Victoria, that Melbourne began to enjoy office. Her innocent, straightforward character deeply appealed to him, and she responded with hero worship. It became the main object of Melbourne's life to educate the young queen for her role, and of hers to learn from "dear Lord M." On occasion, Melbourne's devotion may have got the better of his judgment, but his role as mentor was generally applauded. When he finally left office, he left a confident queen, with a competent new adviser in Prince Albert. For Melbourne his parting from the Queen was the beginning of the end. He died at Brocket Hall on Nov. 24, 1848.

Further Reading

A superb biography of Melbourne is the two volumes by Lord David Cecil: The Young Melbourne (1939) and Lord M. (1954). An interesting supplement to Cecil's books is Elizabeth Jenkins, Lady Caroline Lamb (1932), a biography of Melbourne's wife, who became known less for the novels she wrote than for her love affair with Lord Byron. Asa Briggs, The Age of Improvement (1959; 2d rev. ed. 1960), is recommended for general historical background.

Additional Sources

Cecil, David, Lord, Melbourne, New York: Harmony Books, 1979, 1954.

Marshall, Dorothy, Lord Melbourne, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1975?.

Ziegler, Philip, Melbourne: a biography of William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne, New York: Knopf, 1976.

Melbourne, William Lamb, 2nd Viscount (1779-1848). Prime minister. In some respects Melbourne was an essentially 18th-cent. figure: his idea of government was static, if not negative—the maintenance of law and order, conduct of foreign relations, and the implementation of those changes that could neither be postponed nor avoided.

To appearances he was an archetypal old-fashioned Whig—lounging, aristocratic, amiable, amateurish. But appearances were deceptive. Though Melbourne's attitude of ironic unconcern was not a pose, he was capable of hard and sustained application. At the age of 26 he was unlucky enough to marry Lady Caroline Ponsonby, whose indiscretions, scenes, and tantrums reinforced Melbourne's horror of unpleasantness and confrontation, which she adored. Their only child was retarded.

He grew up in a large, high-spirited cliquish family, went to Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge, and spent a year at Glasgow under Professor John Millar. His fortunes changed abruptly in 1805 when the death of his elder brother left him as heir to the peerage. He abandoned the legal career upon which he had started and began a political one. He joined the Whig opposition but was on the right of the party, and had much in common with Peel, Huskisson, and the liberal Tories. He was 48 before, in 1827, he held office in Canning's ministry as chief secretary for Ireland, and within a year he was out again, resigning with the Huskissons.

This limited service was of consequence since the Whigs, when they took office in 1830, were short of experience and Melbourne became home secretary in Grey's government. He showed unexpected firmness in dealing with the Swing riots in 1831 and the Tolpuddle martyrs in 1834. He was the obvious choice to succeed Grey in 1834. William IV mistrusted the government, and after six months, the king turned out the ministry, bringing in the Tories. Peel dissolved, failed to win a majority, and Melbourne returned, taking the opportunity to drop Brougham, one of the more impossible ministers.

It cannot be said that Melbourne's second administration made much of a mark. It was dependent upon Irish and radical votes and the Tory House of Lords killed off several of its measures. Melbourne soldiered on, swearing, jesting, despairing. But the succession of Victoria in 1837 changed everything. He experienced an Indian summer in which he basked in royal favour, the young queen hanging on every word, enjoying every joke. She and Melbourne were hissed at the races and ‘Mrs Melbourne’ was a vulgar taunt. The Bedchamber crisis of 1839, when Peel failed to form a ministry in the face of the queen's evident hostility, gave Melbourne's government two more years. But in 1841 he went to the country and was defeated. The following year he suffered a stroke and well before his death in 1848 he was a figure from the past. ‘Not a good or firm minister, ’ was Victoria's cool judgement on a man she had once adored.

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The Right Honourable  The Viscount Melbourne  PC FRS
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
In office 18 April 1835 – 30 August 1841
Monarch	William IV Victoria
Preceded by	Sir Robert Peel, Bt
Succeeded by	Sir Robert Peel, Bt
In office 16 July 1834 – 14 November 1834
Monarch	William IV
Preceded by	The Earl Grey
Succeeded by	The Duke of Wellington
Born	15 March 1779(1779-03-15) London, England
Died	24 November 1848 (aged 69) Brocket Hall, Hertfordshire
Political party	Whig
Alma mater	Trinity College, Cambridge

William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne, PC, FRS (15 March 1779 – 24 November 1848) was a British Whig statesman who served as Home Secretary (1830–1834) and Prime Minister (1834 and 1835–1841), and was a mentor of Queen Victoria. The city of Melbourne in Australia was named after him.

Contents 1 Biography 2 Wrongful execution of Dic Penderyn 3 Political philosophy 4 Legacy 5 Melbourne's Governments 6 References 7 External links

Biography

Born in London to an aristocratic Whig family and educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge,^[1] he fell in with a group of Romantic Radicals that included Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron. In 1805 he succeeded his elder brother as heir to his father's title and he married Lady Caroline Ponsonby. The next year he was elected to the British House of Commons as the Whig MP for Leominster.

He first came to general notice for reasons he would rather have avoided: his wife had a public affair with Lord Byron — she coined the famous characterisation of him as "mad, bad, and dangerous to know". The resulting scandal was the talk of Britain in 1812. Eventually the two reconciled and though they separated in 1825, her death (1828) affected him considerably.

Lamb's hallmark was finding the middle ground. Though a Whig, he accepted the post of Irish Secretary (1827) in the moderate Tory governments of George Canning and Lord Goderich. Upon the death of his father in 1828 and his becoming Viscount Melbourne, he moved to the House of Lords, but when the Whigs came to power under Lord Grey in November 1830 he became Home Secretary in the new government. One of his first acts was to insist on harsh punishments for the impoverished agricultural labourers involved in the machine-breaking Swing Riots. Sentences of hanging, transportation and imprisonment followed.

Wrongful execution of Dic Penderyn

After the Merthyr Rising of 1831, the British government, led by Lord Melbourne, was determined that at least one rebel should die as an example. A 23 year-old miner named Dic Penderyn was accused of stabbing a soldier in the leg with a seized bayonet. The people of Merthyr Tydfil were convinced that he was innocent, and 11,000 signed a petition demanding his release. The government refused, and Penderyn was hanged at Cardiff market on 13 August 1831. In 1874 it was discovered that another man named Ianto Parker, not Dic Penderyn, had stabbed the soldier and then fled to America fearing capture by the authorities, and also that witness James Abbott, who had testified at Penderyn's trial, admitted that he had lied under oath, under the orders of Lord Melbourne, in order to secure a conviction.^{[citation needed]}

Political philosophy

Compromise was the key to many of Melbourne's actions. He was opposed in theory to the radical governmental reforms proposed by the Whigs, but reluctantly accepted that they were necessary to forestall the threat of revolution. While he was less radical than many, when Lord Grey resigned (July 1834), Melbourne was widely seen as the most acceptable replacement among the Whig leaders, and became Prime Minister.

King William IV's opposition to the Whigs' reforming ways led him to dismiss Melbourne in November. He then gave the Tories under Robert Peel an opportunity to form a government. Peel's failure to win a House of Commons majority in the resulting general election (January 1835) made it impossible for him to govern, and the Whigs returned to power under Melbourne in April 1835. This was the last time a British monarch attempted to dismiss a prime minister.

The next year, Melbourne was once again involved in a sex scandal. This time he was the victim of attempted blackmail from the husband of a close friend, society beauty and author Caroline Norton. The husband demanded £1400, and when he was turned down he accused Melbourne of having an affair with his wife. In the early 19th century even one sexual scandal (like the one two decades earlier involving Lord Byron) would be enough to finish off the career of most men, so it is a measure of the respect contemporaries had for his integrity that Melbourne's government did not fall. After Mr. Norton was unable to produce any evidence of an affair, the scandal died away.

Nonetheless, as a recent historian records, "it is irrefutable that Melbourne's personal life was problematic":

Spanking sessions with aristocratic ladies were harmless, not so the whippings administered to orphan girls taken into his household as objects of charity ....^[2]

Melbourne was Prime Minister when Queen Victoria came to the throne (June 1837). Barely eighteen, she was only just breaking free from the domineering influence of her mother, the Duchess of Kent, and her mother's advisor, John Conroy. Over the next four years Melbourne trained her in the art of politics and the two became friends: Victoria was quoted as saying she considered him like a father (her own had died when she was only eight months old), and Melbourne's daughter had died at a young age. Melbourne was given a private apartment at Windsor Castle, and unfounded rumours circulated for a time that Victoria would marry Melbourne, forty years her senior.

In May 1839 the Bedchamber Crisis occurred when Melbourne tried to resign and Victoria rejected the request of prospective Tory prime minister Robert Peel that she dismiss some of the wives and daughters of Whig MPs who made up her personal entourage. As monarch she was expected to avoid any hint of favouritism to a party out of power, so her action (which was supported by the Whigs) led to Peel's refusal to form a new government. Melbourne was eventually persuaded to stay on as Prime Minister. On 25 February 1841, he was admitted a Fellow of the Royal Society.^[3]

Even after Melbourne resigned permanently in August 1841, Victoria continued writing to him. This too was forbidden, however, for the same reasons as before, and eventually the correspondence was forced to an end. Melbourne's role faded away as Victoria came to rely on her new husband Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha as well as on herself.

Melbourne left a considerable list of reforming legislation - not as long as that of Lord Grey, but worthy nonetheless. Among his administration's acts were a reduction in the number of capital offences, and reforms of local government. The reform of the Poor laws, however was a severely reactionary measure, restricting the terms on which the poor were allowed relief and establishing compulsory admission to workhouses for the impoverished poor.

Melbourne's most visible memorial is the city of Melbourne, Australia, which was named after him in 1837.

Another lasting memorial is his favourite, and most famous, dictum in politics: "Why not leave it alone?", quoted by those who object to change for change's sake.

Legacy

The city of Melbourne, Australia, was named in his honour in March 1837, as he was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom at the time. (For further information see Melbourne)

Melbourne's Governments

• First Melbourne Ministry (1834)
• Second Melbourne Ministry (1835–1839)
• Third Melbourne Ministry (1839–1841)

References

1. ^ Lamb, the Hon. Henry William in Venn, J. & J. A., Alumni Cantabrigienses, Cambridge University Press, 10 vols, 1922–1958.
2. ^ Boyd Hilton, A Mad, Bad, and Dangerous People? England 1783-1846 (Oxford 2006).
3. ^ "Lists of Royal Society Fellows". http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/page.asp?id=1727. Retrieved 2006-12-15. 

• Ziegler, Philip Melbourne: A Life of William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne, (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1976), 410p.

External links

• William Lamb, 2nd viscount Melbourne in the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica.
• More about William Lamb, Viscount Melbourne on the Downing Street website.
• Historica’s Heritage Minute video docudrama “Responsible Government.” (Adobe Flash Player.)

Political offices
Preceded by Henry Goulburn	Chief Secretary for Ireland 1827 – 1828	Succeeded by The Lord Francis Leveson-Gower
Preceded by Sir Robert Peel, Bt	Home Secretary 1830 – 1834	Succeeded by Viscount Duncannon
Preceded by The Earl Grey	Prime Minister of the United Kingdom 16 July 1834 – 14 November 1834	Succeeded by The Duke of Wellington (caretaker, followed by) Sir Robert Peel, Bt
	Leader of the House of Lords 1834	Succeeded by The Duke of Wellington
Preceded by Sir Robert Peel, Bt	Prime Minister of the United Kingdom 18 April 1835 – 30 August 1841	Succeeded by Sir Robert Peel, Bt
Preceded by The Duke of Wellington	Leader of the House of Lords 1835 – 1841	Succeeded by The Duke of Wellington
Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by John Lubbock Charles Kinnaird	Member of Parliament for Leominster with John Lubbock 1806	Succeeded by John Lubbock Henry Bonham
Preceded by Sir Oswald Mosley	Member of Parliament for Portarlington 1807 – 1812	Succeeded by Arthur Shakespeare
Preceded by William Elliot George Ponsonby	Member of Parliament for Peterborough with William Elliot 1816–1819 Sir James Scarlett 1819 1816 – 1819	Succeeded by Sir James Scarlett Sir Robert Heron
Preceded by Thomas Brand Sir John Saunders Sebright	Member of Parliament for Hertfordshire with Sir John Saunders Sebright 1819 – 1826	Succeeded by Sir John Saunders Sebright Nicolson Calvert
Preceded by George Canning William Henry John Scott	Member of Parliament for Newport (Isle of Wight) with William Henry John Scott 1827	Succeeded by William Henry John Scott Spencer Perceval
Preceded by William Russell Charles Tennyson	Member of Parliament for Bletchingley with Charles Tennyson 1827 – 1828	Succeeded by Charles Tennyson William Ewart
Peerage of the United Kingdom
Preceded by Peniston Lamb	Baron Melbourne 1829 – 1848	Succeeded by Frederick Lamb
Peerage of Ireland
Preceded by Peniston Lamb	Viscount Melbourne 1829 – 1848	Succeeded by Frederick Lamb

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