Prime Ministers · 19th century

Viscount Melbourne

1779–1848 · British

Whig

In office: 1834; 1835–1841

William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne, was Home Secretary under Grey and then Prime Minister in 1834, when William IV dismissed him, and again from 1835 to 1841. He became the trusted political mentor of the young Queen Victoria after her accession in 1837, and the Bedchamber Crisis of 1839 kept him in office. His private life was famously turbulent: his wife, Lady Caroline Lamb, had a notorious affair with Lord Byron.

How to spot them

▸Mentor to the young Queen Victoria; the Bedchamber Crisis, 1839
▸Husband of Lady Caroline Lamb, Byron's lover
▸The last PM to be dismissed by a monarch (William IV, 1834)
▸Melbourne, Australia, is named after him

In office

Political mentor to the young Queen Victoria (1837–1841)

Guided the new queen through her first years on the throne

The Bedchamber Crisis (1839)

Victoria refused Peel's request to replace Whig ladies of the bedchamber, so he returned

Dismissed by William IV (1834)

The last time a British monarch dismissed a Prime Minister

Transportation of the Tolpuddle Martyrs while Home Secretary (1834)

Dorset farm labourers sentenced for swearing an oath to a union

Introduction of the Uniform Penny Post (1840)

Rowland Hill's reform and the Penny Black stamp

Quick-fire facts

•His wife Lady Caroline Lamb described Byron as 'mad, bad and dangerous to know'
•Named in the Norton divorce case of 1836 over Caroline Norton, and cleared
•Melbourne in Victoria, Australia, was named after him in 1837
•The Chartist movement, the Newport Rising (1839) and the First Opium War all fell in his premiership
•The Treaty of Waitangi with New Zealand's Maori chiefs was signed in 1840 during his government

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Sources

GOV.UK History of Government — William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne
David Cecil — Lord M.