A genealogical survey of the peerage of Britain as well as the royal families of Europe

Victoria, Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and Empress of India 1819-1901, was granddaughter of George III, and only child of George III's fourth son Edward, duke of Kent, K.G., G.C.B., field-marshal.
I.

The succession to the crown in 1817

Princess Charlotte Augusta of Wales, only child of the Prince Regent (George III's heir), having married Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg on 2 May 1816, died after the birth of a stillborn son on 6 Nov. 1817. The crown was thereby deprived of its only legitimate representative in the third generation. Of the seven sons of George III who survived infancy three, at the date of Princess Charlotte's death, were bachelors, and the four who were married were either childless or without lawful issue. With a view to maintaining the succession it was deemed essential after Princess Charlotte's demise that the three unmarried sons—William, duke of Clarence, the third son; Edward, duke of Kent, the fourth son; and Adolphus Frederick, duke of Cambridge, the seventh and youngest son—should marry without delay. All were middle-aged. In each case the bride was chosen from a princely family of Germany. The weddings followed one another with rapidity. On 7 May 1818 the Duke of Cambridge, who had long resided in Hanover as the representative of his father, George III, in the government there, married, at Cassel, Augusta, daughter of Frederick, Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel. On 11 June 1818 the Duke of Clarence married in his fifty-third year Adelaide, eldest daughter of George Frederick Charles, reigning duke of Saxe-Meiningen. In the interval, on 29 May, the Duke of Kent, who was in his fifty-first year, and since 1816 had mainly lived abroad, took to wife a widowed sister of Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, the widowed husband of that Princess Charlotte whose death had induced so much matrimonial activity in the English royal house.

The Duke of Kent's bride.

Her family connections.
The Duke of Kent's bride, who was commonly known by the Christian name of Victoria, although her full Christian names were Mary Louisa Victoria, was nearly thirty-two years old. She was fourth daughter and youngest of the eight children of Francis Frederick Antony (1750-1806), reigning duke of Saxe-Coburg and Saalfeld. (In 1825 Saalfeld, by a family arrangement, was exchanged for Gotha.) Her first husband was Ernest Charles, reigning prince of Leiningen, whose second wife she became on 21 Sept. 1803, at the age of seventeen; he died on 4 July 1814, leaving by her a son and a daughter. For the son, who was born on 12 Sept. 1804, she was acting as regent and guardian when the Duke of Kent proposed marriage to her. Her responsibilities to her first family and to the principality of Leiningen made her somewhat reluctant to accept the duke's offer. But her father's family of Saxe-Coburg was unwilling for her to neglect an opportunity of reinforcing those intimate relations with the English reigning house which the Princess Charlotte's marriage had no sooner brought into being than her premature death threatened to extinguish. The Dowager Princess of Leiningen consequently married the Duke of Kent, and the ceremony took place at the ducal palace of Coburg. The princess was a cheerful woman of homely intellect and temperament, with a pronounced love of her family and her fatherland. Her kindred was exceptionally numerous; she maintained close relations with most of them, and domestic interests thus absorbed her attention through life. Besides the son and daughter of her first marriage, she had three surviving brothers and three sisters, all of whom married, and all but one of whom had issue. Fifteen nephews and three nieces reached maturity, and their marriages greatly extended her family connections. Most of her near kindred allied themselves in marriage, as she in the first instance had done, with the smaller German reigning families. Her eldest brother, Ernest, who succeeded to the duchy of Saxe-Coburg, and was father of Albert, prince consort of Queen Victoria, twice married princesses of small German courts. A sister, Antoinette Ernestina Amelia, married Alexander Frederick Charles, duke of Würtemberg. At the same time some matrimonial unions were effected by the Saxe-Coburg family with the royal houses of Latin countries—France and Portugal. One of the Duchess of Kent's nephews married the queen of Portugal, while there were no fewer than five intermarriages on the part of her family with that of King Louis Philippe: two of her brothers and two of her nephews married the French king's daughters, and a niece married his second son, the Duc de Nemours. Members of the Hanoverian family on the English throne had long been accustomed to seek husbands or wives at the minor courts of Germany, but the private relations of the English royal house with those courts became far closer than before through the strong family sentiment which the Duchess of Kent not merely cherished personally but instilled in her daughter, the queen of England. For the first time since the seventeenth century, too, the private ties of kinship and family feeling linked the sovereign of England with rulers of France and Portugal.

The Duke of Kent's bride.

Her family connections.
The Duke of Kent brought his bride to England for the first time in July 1818, and the marriage ceremony was repeated at Kew Palace on the 11th of that month. The duke received on his marriage an annuity of 6,000l. from parliament, but he was embarrassed by debt, and his income was wholly inadequate to his needs. His brothers and sisters showed no disposition either to assist him or to show his duchess much personal courtesy. He therefore left the country for Germany and accepted the hospitality of his wife, with whom and with whose children by her former marriage he settled at her dower-house at Amorbach in her son's principality of Leiningen. In the spring of 1819 the birth of a child grew imminent. There was a likelihood, although at the moment it looked remote, that it might prove the heir to the English crown; the duke and duchess hurried to England so that the birth might take place on English soil. Apartments were allotted them in the palace at Kensington, in the south-east wing, and there on Monday, 24 May 1819, at 4.15 in the morning, was born to them the girl who was the future Queen Victoria. A gilt plate above the mantelpiece of the room still attests the fact. The Duke of Kent, while describing his daughter as a fine healthy child, modestly deprecated congratulations which anticipated her succession to the throne, for while I have three brothers senior to myself, and one (ie. the Duke of Clarence) possessing every reasonable prospect of having a family, I should deem it the height of presumption to believe it probable that a future heir to the crown of England would spring from me. Her mother's mother, the Duchess of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, wrote of her as a Charlotte—destined perhaps to play a great part one day. The English like queens, she added, and the niece [and also first cousin] of the ever-lamented beloved Charlotte will be most dear to them. Her father remarked that the infant was too healthy to satisfy the members of his own family, who regarded her as an unwelcome intruder. The child held, in fact, the fifth place in the succession. Between her and the crown there stood her three uncles, the Prince Regent, the Duke of York, and the Duke of Clarence, besides her father the Duke of Kent. Formal honours were accorded the newly born princess as one in the direct line. The privy councillors who were summoned to Kensington on her birth included her uncle, the Duke of Sussex, the Duke of Wellington, the Marquis of Lansdowne, and two leading members of Lord Liverpool's tory ministry, Canning and Vansittart. On 24 June her baptism took place in the grand saloon at Kensington Palace. The gold font, which was part of the regalia of the kingdom, was brought from the Tower, and crimson velvet curtains from the chapel at St. James's. There were three sponsors, of whom the most interesting was the tsar, Alexander I, the head of the Holy Alliance and the most powerful monarch on the continent of Europe. The regent and the tory prime minister, Lord Liverpool, desired to maintain friendly relations with Russia, and the offer of Prince Lieven, Russian ambassador in London, that his master should act as sponsor was accepted with alacrity. The second sponsor was the child's eldest aunt, the queen of Würtemberg (princess royal of England), and the third her mother's mother, the Duchess of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld. The three were represented respectively by the infant's uncle, the Duke of York, and her aunts, the Princess Augusta and the Duchess of Gloucester. The rite was performed by Dr. Manners Sutton, archbishop of Canterbury, assisted by the bishop of London. The prince regent, who was present, declared that the one name of Alexandrina, after the tsar, was sufficient. The Duke of Kent requested that a second name should be added. The prince regent suggested Georgina. The Duke of Kent urged Elizabeth. Thereupon the regent brusquely insisted on the mother's name of Victoria, at the same time stipulating that it should follow that of Alexandrina. The princess was therefore named at baptism Alexandrina Victoria, and for several years was known in the family circle as Drina. But her mother was desirous from the first to give public and official prominence to her second name of Victoria. When only four the child signed her name as Victoria to a letter which is now in the British Museum (Addit. MS. 18204, fol. 12). The appellation, although it was not unknown in England [see Clarke, Mrs. Mary Victoria Cowden-, Suppl.], had a foreign sound to English ears, and its bestowal on the princess excited some insular prejudice.
When the child was a month old her parents removed with her to Claremont, the residence which had been granted for life to her uncle, Prince Leopold, the widowed husband of the Princess Charlotte, and remained his property till his death in 1865. In August the princess was vaccinated, and the fact of her being the first member of the royal family to undergo the operation widely extended its vogue. Before the end of the month the Duchess of Kent learned from her mother of the birth on the 26th, at Rosenau in Coburg, of the second son (Albert) of her eldest brother, the reigning Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld (afterwards Gotha). Madame Siebold, the German accoucheuse, who had attended Princess Victoria's birth, was also present at Prince Albert's, and in the Saxe-Coburg circle the names of the two children were at once linked together. In December 1819 the Duke and Duchess of Kent went with their daughter to Sidmouth, where they rented a small house called Woolbrook Cottage. The sojourn there did not lack incident. The discharge of an arrow by a mischievous boy at the window of the room which the infant was occupying went very near ending her career before it was well begun. After a few weeks at Sidmouth, too, the child's position in the state underwent momentous change.

Deaths of Duke of Kent and George III, Jan. 1820.
On 29 Jan. 1820 her grandfather, King George III, who had long been blind and imbecile, passed away, and the prince regent became king at the age of fifty-eight. Nine days earlier, on 20 Jan. 1820, her father, the Duke of Kent, fell ill of a cold contracted while walking in wet weather; inflammation of the lungs set in, and on the 23rd he died. Thus the four lives that had intervened between the princess and the highest place in the state were suddenly reduced to two—those of her uncles, the Duke of York, who was fifty-seven, and the Duke of Clarence, who was fifty-five. Neither duke had a lawful heir, or seemed likely to have one. A great future for the child of the Duchess of Kent thus seemed assured.

Position of Duchess of Kent.
The immediate position of mother and daughter was not, however, enviable. The Duke of Kent appointed his widow sole guardian of their child, with his friends General Wetherall and Sir John Conroy as executors of his will. Conroy thenceforth acted as major-domo for the duchess, and lived under the same roof until the accession of the princess, by whom he was always cordially disliked. The duchess was obnoxious to her husband's brothers, especially to the new king, to the Duke of Clarence, and to their younger brother, the Duke of Cumberland, the next heir to the throne after her daughter. Speaking later of her relations with the heads of the royal family, she said that on her husband's death she stood with her daughter friendless and alone. Not the least of her trials was her inability to speak English. Although the duke had made a will, he left no property. He only bequeathed a mass of debts, which the princess, to her lasting credit, took in course of time on her own shoulders and discharged to the last penny. Parliament had granted the duchess in 1818 an annuity of 6,000l. in case of her widowhood; apartments were allowed her in Kensington Palace, but she and her daughter had no other acknowledged resources. Her desolate lot was, however, not without private mitigation. She had the sympathy of her late husband's unmarried sisters, Sophia and Augusta, who admired her self-possession at this critical period; and the kindly Duchess of Clarence, who, a German princess, like herself, conversed with her in her mother-tongue, paid her constant visits. But her main source of consolation was her brother Leopold, who proved an invaluable adviser and a generous benefactor. As soon as the gravity of the duke's illness declared itself he had hurried to Sidmouth to console and counsel her. Deprived by death some four years before of wife and child, he had since led an aimless career of travel in England and Scotland, without any recognised position or influence. It was congenial to him to assume informally the place of a father to the duke's child. Although his German education never made him quite at home in English politics, he was cautious and far-seeing, and was qualified for the rôle of guardian of his niece and counsellor of his sister. He impressed the duchess with the destiny in store for her youngest child. Her responsibilities as regent of the principality of Leiningen in behalf of her son by her first marriage weighed much with her. But strong as was her affection for her German kindred, anxious as she was to maintain close relations with them, and sensitive as she was to the indifference to her manifested at the English court, she, under Leopold's influence, resigned the regency of Leiningen, and resolved to reside permanently in England. After deliberating with her brother, she chose as the whole object of her future life the education of her younger daughter, in view of the likelihood of her accession to the English throne. Until the princess's marriage, when she was in her twenty-first year, mother and daughter were never parted for a day.
Of her father the princess had no personal remembrance, but her mother taught her to honour his memory. Through his early life he had been an active soldier in Canada and at Gibraltar, and he was sincerely attached to the military profession. When his daughter, as Queen Victoria, presented new colours to his old regiment, the royal Scots, at Ballater on 26 Sept. 1876, she said of him: He was proud of his profession, and I was always told to consider myself a soldier's child. Strong sympathy with the army was a main characteristic of her career. Nor were her father's strong liberal, even radical, sympathies concealed from her. At the time of his death he was arranging to visit New Lanark with his wife as the guests of Robert Owen, with whose principles he had already declared his agreement (Owen, Autobiography, 1857, p. 237). The princess's whiggish proclivities in early life were part of her paternal inheritance.

The princess's education.
It was in the spring of 1820 that the Duchess of Kent took up her permanent abode in Kensington Palace, and there in comparative seclusion the princess spent most of her first eighteen years of life. Kensington was then effectually cut off from London by market gardens and country lanes. Besides her infant daughter the duchess had another companion in her child by her first husband, Princess Féodore of Leiningen, who was twelve years Princess Victoria's senior, and inspired her with deep and lasting affection. Prince Charles of Leiningen, Princess Victoria's stepbrother, was also a frequent visitor, and to him also she was much attached. Chief among the permanent members of the Kensington household was Louise Lehzen, the daughter of a Lutheran clergyman of Hanover, who had acted as governess of the Princess Féodore from 1818. Princess Victoria's education was begun in 1824, when Fräulein Lehzen transferred her services from the elder to the younger daughter. Voluble in talk, severe in manner, restricted in information, conventional in opinion, she was never popular in English society; but she was shrewd in judgment and whole-hearted in her devotion to her charge, whom she at once inspired with affection and fear, memory of which never wholly left her pupil. Long after the princess's girlhood close intimacy continued between the two. At Lehzen's death in 1870 the queen wrote of her: She knew me from six months old, and from my fifth to my eighteenth years devoted all her care and energies to me with most wonderful abnegation of self, never even taking one day's holiday. I adored, though I was greatly in awe of her. She really seemed to have no thought but for me.

Her youthful devotion to music and art.
The need of fittingly providing for the princess's education first brought the child to the formal notice of parliament. In 1825 parliament unanimously resolved to allow the Duchess of Kent an additional 6,000l. a year for the purpose of making an adequate provision for the honourable support and education of her highness Princess Alexandrina Victoria of Kent (Hansard, new ser. xiii. 909-27). English instruction was needful, and Fräulein Lehzen, whose position was never officially recognised, was hardly qualified for the whole of the teaching. On the advice of the Rev. Thomas Russell, vicar of Kensington, the Rev. George Davys, at the time vicar of a small Lincolnshire parish—from which he was soon transferred to the crown living of All Hallows-on-the-Wall, in the city of London—became the princess's preceptor. He was formally appointed in 1827, when he took up his residence at Kensington Palace. To reconcile Fräulein Lehzen to the new situation, George IV in 1827, at the request of his sister, Princess Sophia, made her a Hanoverian baroness. Davys did his work discreetly. He gathered round him a band of efficient masters in special subjects of study, mainly reserving for himself religious knowledge and history. Although his personal religious views were decidedly evangelical, he was liberal in his attitude to all religious opinions, and he encouraged in his pupil a singularly tolerant temper, which in after life served her in good stead. Thomas Steward, the writing-master of Westminster school, taught her penmanship and arithmetic. She rapidly acquired great ease and speed in writing, although at the sacrifice of elegance. As a girl she was a voluble correspondent with her numerous kinsfolk, and she maintained the practice till the end of her life. Although during her girlhood the duchess conscientiously caused her daughter to converse almost entirely in English, German was the earliest language she learned, and she always knew it as a mother-tongue. She studied it and German literature grammatically under M. Barez. At first she spoke English with a slight German accent; but this was soon mended, and in mature years her pronunciation of English was thoroughly natural, although refined. As a young woman she liked to be regarded as an authority on English accent (Lady Lyttelton, Letters). She was instructed in French by M. Grandineau, and came to speak it well and with fluency. At a later period, when she was fascinated by Italian opera, she studied Italian assiduously, and rarely lost an opportunity of speaking it. Although she was naturally a good linguist, she showed no marked aptitude or liking for literary subjects of study. She was not permitted in youth to read novels. First-rate literature never appealed to her. Nor was she endowed with genuine artistic taste. But to the practical pursuit of the arts she applied herself as a girl with persistency and delight. Music occupied much time. John Bernard Sale, organist of St. Margaret's, Westminster, and subsequently organist of the Chapel Royal, gave her her first lessons in singing in 1826. She developed a sweet soprano voice, and soon both sang and played the piano with good effect. Drawing was first taught her by Richard Westall the academician, who in 1829 painted one of the earliest portraits of her, and afterwards by (Sir) Edwin Landseer. Sketching in pencil or water-colours was a lifelong amusement, and after her marriage she attempted etching. In music and the pictorial arts she sought instruction till comparatively late in life. To dancing, which she was first taught by Mdlle. Bourdin, she was, like her mother, devoted; and like her, until middle age, danced with exceptional grace and energy. She was also from childhood a skilful horsewoman, and thoroughly enjoyed physical exercise, taking part in all manner of indoor and outdoor games.

Sir Walter Scott's visit.
The princess grew up an amiable, merry, affectionate, simple-hearted child—very considerate for others' comfort, scrupulously regardful of truth, and easily pleased by homely amusement. At the same time she was self-willed and often showed impatience of restraint. Her memory was from the first singularly retentive. Great simplicity was encouraged in her general mode of life. She dressed without ostentation. Lord Albemarle watched her watering, at Kensington, a little garden of her own, wearing a large straw hat and a suit of white cotton, her only ornament being a coloured fichu round the neck. Charles Knight watched her breakfasting in the open air when she was nine years old, enjoying all the freedom of her years, and suddenly darting from the breakfast table to gather a flower in an adjoining pasture. Leigh Hunt often met her walking at her ease in Kensington Gardens, and although he was impressed by the gorgeous raiment of the footman who followed her, noticed the unaffected playfulness with which she treated a companion of her own age. The Duchess of Kent was fond of presenting her at Kensington to her visitors, who included men of distinction in all ranks of life. William Wilberforce describes how he received an invitation to visit the duchess at Kensington Palace in July 1820, and how the duchess received him with her fine animated child on the floor by her side with its playthings, of which I soon became one. On 19 May 1828 Sir Walter Scott dined with the duchess and was presented to the little Princess Victoria—I hope they will change her name (he added)—the heir apparent to the crown as things now stand. — This little lady is educating with much care, and watched so closely, that no busy maid has a moment to whisper, You are heir of England. But Sir Walter suggested I suspect, if we could dissect the little heart, we should find that some pigeon or other bird of the air had carried the matter.
According to a story recorded many years afterwards by Baroness Lehzen, the fact of her rank was carefully concealed from her until her twelfth year, when after much consultation it was solemnly revealed to her by the baroness, who cunningly inserted in the child's book of English history a royal genealogical tree in which her place was prominently indicated. The princess, the baroness stated, received the information, of which she knew nothing before, with an ecstatic assurance that she would be good thenceforth. But there were many opportunities open to her previously of learning the truth about her position, and on the story in the precise form that it took in the Baroness Lehzen's reminiscence the queen herself threw doubt. Among the princess's childish companions were the daughters of Heinrich von Bülow, the Prussian ambassador in London, whose wife was daughter of Humboldt. When, on 28 May 1829, they and some other children spent an afternoon at Kensington at play with the princess, each of them on leaving was presented by her with her portrait—an act which does not harmonise well with the ignorance of her rank with which Baroness Lehzen was anxious to credit her (Gabriele von Bülow, a memoir, English transl. 1897, p. 163).

Country excursions.
The most impressive of the princess's recreations were summer and autumn excursions into the country or to the seaside. Visits to her uncle Leopold's house at Claremont, near Esher, were repeated many times a year. There, she said, the happiest days of her youth were spent (Grey, p. 392). In the autumn of 1824 she was introduced at Claremont to Leopold's mother, who was her own godmother and grandmother, the Duchess Dowager of Saxe-Coburg, who stayed at Claremont for more than two months. The old duchess was enthusiastic in praise of her granddaughter¾‘the sweet blossom of May’ she called her¾and she favoured the notion, which her son Leopold seems first to have suggested to her, that the girl might do worse than marry into the Saxe-Coburg family. Albert, the younger of the two sons of her eldest son, the reigning Duke of Saxe-Coburg¾a boy of her own age¾was seriously considered as a suitor. Thenceforth the princess's uncle Leopold was as solicitous about the well-being of his nephew Albert as about that of his niece Victoria. A little later in the same year (1824) the child and her mother paid the first of many visits to Ramsgate, staying at Albion House. Broadstairs was also in early days a favourite resort with the duchess and her daughter, and on returning thence on one occasion they paid a first visit to a nobleman, the Earl of Winchilsea, at Eastwell Park, Ashford.

Visit to George IV.
In 1826 the princess and her mother were invited for the first time to visit the king, George IV, at Windsor. He was then residing at the royal lodge in the park while the castle was undergoing restoration, and his guests were allotted quarters at Cumberland Lodge. The king was gracious to his niece, and gave her the badge worn by members of the royal family. Her good spirits and frankness made her thoroughly agreeable to him. On one occasion she especially pleased him by bidding a band play ‘God save the King’ after he had invited her to choose the tune. On 17 Aug. 1826 she went with him on Virginia Water, and afterwards he drove her out in his phaeton.
Next year there died without issue her uncle the Duke of York, of whom she knew little, although just before his death, while he was living in the King's Road, Chelsea, he had invited her to pay him a visit, and had provided a punch-and-judy show for her amusement. His death left only her uncle the Duke of Clarence between herself and the throne, and her ultimate succession was now recognised. On 28 May 1829 she attended, at St. James's Palace, a court function for the first time. The queen of Portugal, Maria II (da Gloria), who was only a month older than the princess, although she had already occupied her throne three years, was on a visit to England, and a ball was given in her honour by George IV. Queen Maria afterwards (9 April 1836) married Princess Victoria's first cousin, Prince Ferdinand Augustus of Saxe-Coburg, and Queen Victoria always took an extremely sympathetic interest in her career, her descendants, and her country.

Heir-presumptive to the crown, 1830.
In June 1830 the last stage but one in the princess's progress towards the crown was reached. Her uncle George IV died on 26 June, and was succeeded by his brother William, duke of Clarence. The girl thus became heir-presumptive. Public interest was much excited in her, and in November 1830 her status was brought to the notice of parliament. A bill was introduced by the lord chancellor, Lord Lyndhurst, and was duly passed, which conferred the regency on the Duchess of Kent, in case the new king died before the princess came of age. This mark of confidence was a source of great satisfaction to the duchess. Next year William IV invited parliament to make further ‘provision for Princess Alexandrina Victoria of Kent, in view of recent events.’ The government recommended that 10,000l. should be added to the Duchess of Kent's allowance on behalf of the princess. Two influential members, Sir Matthew White Ridley and Sir Robert Inglis, while supporting the proposal, urged that the princess should as queen assume the style of Elizabeth II, and repeated the old complaint that the name Victoria did not accord with the feelings of the people. The princess had, however, already taken a violent antipathy to Queen Elizabeth, and always deprecated any association with her. An amendment to reduce the new allowance by one half was lost, and the government's recommendation was adopted (Hansard, 3rd ser. v. 591, 654 seq.). Greater dignity was thus secured for the household of the Duchess of Kent and her daughter, although the duchess regarded the addition to her income as inadequate to the needs of her position. The Duchess of Northumberland (a granddaughter of Clive) was formally appointed governess of the princess, and her preceptor Davys was made dean of Chester. She was requested to attend court functions. On 20 July 1830, dressed in deep mourning with a long court train and veil reaching to the ground (Bülow, p. 191), she followed Queen Adelaide at a chapter of the order of the Garter held at St. James's Palace. A few months later she was present at the prorogation of parliament. On 24 Feb. 1831 she attended her first drawing-room, in honour of Queen Adelaide's birthday. The king complained that she looked at him stonily, and was afterwards deeply offended by the irregularity of her attendances at court. She and her mother were expected to attend his coronation on 8 Sept. 1831, but they did not come, and comment on their absence was made in parliament.
With the apparent access of prosperity went griefs and annoyances which caused passing tears, and permanently impressed the princess's mind with a sense of the ‘sadness’ of her youth. In 1828 her constant companion, the Princess Féodore of Leiningen, left England for good, on her marriage, 18 Feb., to Prince von Hohenlohe-Langenburg, and the separation deeply pained Victoria. In 1830 alarm was felt at Kensington at the prospect of Prince Leopold's permanent removal to the continent. Both mother and daughter trusted his guidance implicitly. The princess was almost as deeply attached to him as to her mother. Although he declined the offer of the throne of Greece in 1830, his acceptance next year of the throne of Belgium grieved her acutely. As king of the Belgians, he watched her interests with no less devotion than before, and he was assiduous in correspondence; but his absence from the country and his subsequent marriage with Louis Philippe's daughter withdrew him from that constant control of her affairs to which she and her mother had grown accustomed. Two deaths which followed in the Saxe-Coburg family increased the sense of depression. The earlier loss did not justify deep regrets. The Duchess of Kent's sister-in-law, the mother of Prince Albert, who soon after his birth had been divorced, died in August 1831. But the death on 16 Nov. of the Duchess Dowager of Saxe-Coburg, the Duchess of Kent's mother and the princess's godmother and grandmother, who took the warmest interest in the child's future, was a lasting sorrow.

William IV's treatment of her and her mother.
The main cause of the Duchess of Kent's anxieties at the time was, however, the hostile attitude that William IV assumed towards her. She had no reason to complain of the unconventional good humour which he extended to her daughter, nor would it be easy to exaggerate the maternal solicitude which the homely Duchess of Clarence, now become Queen Adelaide, showed the princess. But the king resented the payment to the duchess of any of the public consideration which the princess's station warranted. The king seems to have been moved by a senile jealousy of the duchess's influence with the heiress presumptive to the crown, and he repeatedly threatened to remove the girl from her mother's care. When the two ladies received, in August 1831, a royal salute from the ships at Portsmouth on proceeding for their autumn holiday to a hired residence, Norris Castle, Isle of Wight, William IV requested the duchess to forego such honours, and, when she refused, prohibited them from being offered. Incessant wrangling between him and the duchess continued throughout the reign.
From a maternal point of view the duchess's conduct was unexceptionable. She was indefatigable in making her daughter acquainted with places of interest in England. On 23 Oct. 1830 the princess opened at Bath the Royal Victoria Park, and afterwards inaugurated the Victoria Drive at Malvern. From 1832 onwards the duchess frequently accompanied her on extended tours, during which they were the guests of the nobility, or visited public works and manufacturing centres, so that the princess might acquire practical knowledge of the industrial and social conditions of the people. William IV made impotent protests against these ‘royal progresses,’ as he derisively called them. The royal heiress was everywhere well received, took part for the first time in public functions, and left in all directions a favourable impression. Municipal corporations invariably offered her addresses of welcome; and the Duchess of Kent, in varying phraseology, replied that it was ‘the object of her life to render her daughter deserving of the affectionate solicitude she so universally inspires, and to make her worthy of the attachment and respect of a free and loyal people.’

The tour of 1832.

At Oxford.
The first tour, which took place in the autumn of 1832, introduced the princess to the principality of Wales. Leaving Kensington in August, the party drove rapidly through Birmingham, Wolverhampton, and Shrewsbury to Powis Castle, an early home of her governess, the Duchess of Northumberland; thence the princess went over the Menai Bridge to a house at Beaumaris, which she rented for a month. She presented prizes at the Eisteddfod there; but an outbreak of cholera shortened her stay, and she removed to Plas Newydd, which was lent them by the Marquis of Anglesea. She laid the first stone of a boys' school in the neighbourhood on 13 Oct., and made so good an impression that ‘the Princess Victoria’ was the topic set for a poetic competition in 1834 at the Cardiff Bardic Festival. The candidates were two hundred, and the prize was won by Mrs. Cornwell Baron Wilson. Passing on to Eaton Hall, the seat of Lord Grosvenor, she visited Chester on 17 Oct., and opened a new bridge over the Dee, which was called Victoria Bridge. From 17 to 24 Oct. she stayed with the Duke of Devonshire at Chatsworth, and made many excursions in the neighbourhood, including a visit to Strutt's cotton mills at Belper. Subsequently they stayed at a long series of noblemen's houses¾Shugborough, the house of Lord Lichfield; Pitchford, the seat of the third earl of Liverpool, half-brother of the tory statesman, and himself a politician of ability and insight, for whom the queen cherished affection; Hewell Grange, the seat of Lord Plymouth; and Wytham Abbey, the seat of the Earl of Abingdon. From Wytham she and her mother twice went over to Oxford (8-9 Nov.), where they received addresses from both town and university; Dean Gaisford conducted them over Christ Church; they spent some time at the Bodleian Library and at the buildings of the university press. Robert Lowe (afterwards Viscount Sherbrooke), then an undergraduate, described the incidents of the visit in a brilliant macaronic poem (printed in Patchett Martin's Life of Lord Sherbrooke, i. 86-90). Leaving Oxford the royal party journeyed by way of High Wycombe and Uxbridge to Kensington. Throughout this tour the princess dined with her mother and her hosts at seven o'clock each evening.
Every year now saw some increase of social occupation. Visitors of all kinds grew numerous at Kensington. In November 1832 Captain Back came to explain his projected polar expedition. In January 1833 the portrait painters David Wilkie and George Hayter arrived to paint the princess's portrait. On 24 April the Duchess of Kent, with a view to mollifying the king, elaborately entertained him at a large dinner party; the princess was present only before and after dinner. In June two of her first cousins, Princes Alexander and Ernest of Würtemberg, and her half-brother, the prince of Leiningen, were her mother's guests. On 24 May 1833 the princess's fourteenth birthday was celebrated by a juvenile ball given by the king at St. James's Palace.

The tour of 1833.
A summer and autumn tour was arranged for the south coast in July 1833. The royal party went a second time to Norris Castle, Isle of Wight, and made personal acquaintance with those parts of the island with which an important part of the princess's after-life was identified. She visited the director of her mother's household, Sir John Conroy, at his residence, Osborne Lodge, on the site of which at a later date Queen Victoria built Osborne Cottage, and near which she erected Osborne House. She explored Whippingham Church and East Cowes; but the main object of her present sojourn in the island was to inspect national objects of interest on the Hampshire coast. At Portsmouth she visited the Victory, Nelson's flagship. Crossing to Weymouth on 29 July she spent some time at Melbury, Lord Ilchester's seat. On 2 Aug. she and her mother arrived at Plymouth to inspect the dockyards. Next day the princess presented on Plymouth Hoe new colours to the 89th regiment (royal Irish fusiliers), which was then stationed at Devonport. Lord Hill, the commander-in-chief, who happened to be at the barracks, took part in the ceremony. The Duchess of Kent on behalf of her daughter addressed the troops, declaring that her daughter's study of English history had inspired her with martial ardour. With the fortunes of the regiment the princess always identified herself thenceforth. It was at a later date named the Princess Victoria's Royal Irish Fusiliers, and twice again, in 1866 and 1889, she presented it with new colours (cf. Rowland Brinckman's Hist. Records of the Eighty-ninth (Princess Victoria's) Regiment, 1888, pp. 83-4). The princess afterwards made a cruise in the yacht Emerald to Eddystone lighthouse, to Torquay, whence she visited Exeter, and to Swanage.

Her delight in music and the drama.
While she was responding to the calls of public duty she was enjoying enlarged opportunities of recreation. She frequently visited the theatre, in which she always delighted. But it was the Italian opera that roused her highest enthusiasm. She never forgot the deep impressions that Pasta, Malibran, and Grisi, Tamburini and Rubini made on her girlhood. Grisi was her ideal vocalist, by whom she judged all others. All forms of music, competently rendered, fascinated her. Her reverence for the violinist Paganini, after she had once heard him, never waned. In June 1834 she was a deeply interested auditor at the royal musical festival that was given at Westminster Abbey. During her autumn holiday in the same year, when she first stayed at Tunbridge Wells, and afterwards at St. Leonards-on-Sea, she spent much of her time in playing and singing, and her instrument was then the harp (cf. Memoirs of Georgiana Lady Chatterton, by E. H. Dering, 1901, p. 29). In 1836 Lablache became her singing master, and he gave her lessons for nearly twenty years, long after her accession to the throne.

Her confirmation, 1835.

The tour of 1835.
During 1835, when she completed her sixteenth year, new experiences crowded on her. In June she went for the first time to Ascot, and joined in the royal procession. The American observer, N. P. Willis, watched her listening with unaffected delight to an itinerant ballad singer, and thought her ‘quite unnecessarily pretty and interesting,’ but he regretfully anticipated that it would be the fate of ‘the heir to such a crown of England’ to be sold in marriage for political purposes without regard to her personal character or wishes (Willis, Pencillings by the Way, 1835, iii. 115). On 30 July 1835 the princess was confirmed at Chapel Royal, St. James's. The archbishop of Canterbury's address on her future responsibilities affected her. She ‘was drowned in tears and frightened to death.’ Next Sunday, at the chapel of Kensington Palace, the princess received the holy sacrament for the first time. The grim archbishop (Howley) again officiated, together with her preceptor, Davys, the dean of Chester. After a second visit to Tunbridge Wells, where she stayed at Avoyne House, she made a triumphal northern progress. At York she remained a week with Archbishop Harcourt at Bishopsthorp, and visited Lord Fitzwilliam at Wentworth House, whence she went over to the races at Doncaster. She was the guest of the Duke of Rutland at Belvoir House, was enthusiastically received by the people of Stamford, and was next entertained by the Marquis of Exeter at Burghley. A great ball at Burghley was opened by a dance in which the marquis was the princess's partner. When she reached Lynn on her way to Holkham, the Earl of Leicester's seat, navvies yoked themselves to her carriage and drew it round the town. Her last sojourn on this tour was at Euston Hall, the residence of the Duke of Grafton. After returning to Kensington, she spent the month of September at Ramsgate, making excursions to Walmer Castle and to Dover.

First meeting with Prince Albert, 1836.
In 1836, when the princess was seventeen, her uncle Leopold deemed that the time had arrived to apply a practical test to his scheme of uniting her in marriage with her first cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg. Accordingly, he arranged with his sister, the Duchess of Kent, that Albert and his elder brother Ernest, the heir-apparent to the duchy, should in the spring pay a visit of some weeks' duration to aunt and daughter at Kensington Palace. In May Princess Victoria met Prince Albert for the first time. William IV and Queen Adelaide received him and his brother courteously, and they were frequently entertained at court. They saw the chief sights of London, and lunched with the lord mayor at the Mansion House. But the king looked with no favour on Prince Albert as a suitor for his niece's hand. At any rate, he was resolved to provide her with a wider field of choice, and he therefore invited the prince of Orange and his two sons and Duke William of Brunswick to be his guests at the same period that the Saxe-Coburg princes were in England, and he gave the princess every opportunity of meeting all the young men together. His own choice finally fell on Alexander, the younger son of the prince of Orange. On 30 May the Duchess of Kent gave a brilliant ball at Kensington Palace, and found herself under the necessity of inviting Duke William of Brunswick and the prince of Orange with his two sons as well as her own protégés. Among the general guests was the Duke of Wellington. Some days later the Saxe-Coburg princes left England. Albert had constantly sketched and played the piano with his cousin; but her ordinary language, like that of those about her, was English which placed him at a disadvantage, for he had but recently begun to learn it. The result of their visit was hardly decisive. Prince Albert wrote of his cousin as ‘very amiable,’ and astonishingly self-possessed, but parted with her heart-whole. The princess, however, had learned the suggested plan from her uncle Leopold, whose wishes were law for her, and on 7 June, after Albert had left England, she wrote ingenuously to Leopold that she commended the youth to her uncle's special protection, adding, ‘I hope and trust that all will go on prosperously and well on this subject, now of so much importance to me.’ Her views were uncoloured by sentiment. It was natural and congenial to obey her uncle.
In the early autumn of 1836 she paid a second visit to the retired tory statesman, Lord Liverpool, who was then living at Buxted Park, near Uckfield, and afterwards spent a quiet month at Ramsgate. The old king was at the moment causing the Duchess of Kent renewed disquietude. The princess had consequently absented herself from court, and the king complained that he saw too little of her. On 20 Aug. 1836, the king's birthday, mother and daughter dined with him at a state banquet, when he publicly expressed the hope that he might live till his niece came of age, so that the kingdom might be spared the regency which parliament had designed for the Duchess of Kent. He described his sister-in-law as a ‘person’ ‘surrounded by evil counsellors,’ and unfitted ‘to the exercise of the duties of her station.’ He asserted that, contrary to his command, she was occupying an excessive number of rooms¾seventeen¾at Kensington Palace. He would not ‘endure conduct so disrespectful to him.’ The princess burst into tears. The breach between the king and her mother was complete.

Coming of age, 24 May 1837.
William IV's hope of living long enough to prevent a regency was fulfilled. Although his health was feeble, no serious crisis was feared when, on 24 May 1837, the princess celebrated her eighteenth birthday, and thus came of age. At Kensington the occasion was worthily celebrated, and the hamlet kept holiday. The princess was awakened by an aubade, and received many costly gifts. Addresses from public bodies were presented to her mother. To one from the corporation of London the duchess made, on behalf of her daughter, an elaborate reply. She pointed out that the princess was in intercourse with all classes of society, and, after an indiscreet reference to the slights put on herself by the royal family, spoke volubly of the diffusion of religious knowledge, the preservation of the constitutional prerogatives of the crown, and the protection of popular liberties as the proper aims of a sovereign. The king was loth to withdraw himself from the public rejoicing. He sent his niece a grand piano, and in the evening gave a state ball in her honour at St. James's Palace. Neither he nor the queen attended it, owing, it was stated, to illness. The princess opened the entertainment in a quadrille with Lord FitzAlan, grandson of the Duke of Norfolk, and afterwards danced with Nicholas Esterhazy, son of the Austrian ambassador. In the same month she paid two visits to the Royal Academy, which then for the first time held its exhibition in what is now the National Gallery, Trafalgar Square. She was the centre of attraction. On the first visit she shook hands and talked with Rogers the poet, and, hearing that the actor, Charles Kemble, was in the room, desired that he should be introduced to her. A few days later the king, in a letter addressed personally to her, offered to place 10,000l. a year at her own disposal, independently of her mother. She accepted the offer to her mother's chagrin.

II.
No sooner had the celebrations of the princess's majority ended than death put her in possession of the fullest rights that it could confer. Early in June it was announced that the king's health was breaking. On Tuesday, 20 June 1837, at twelve minutes past two in the morning, he died at Windsor Castle. The last barrier between Princess Victoria and the crown was thus removed.

Accession, 20 June 1837.
The archbishop of Canterbury, who had performed the last religious rites, at once took leave of Queen Adelaide and with Lord Conyngham, the lord chamberlain, drove through the early morning to Kensington to break the news to the new sovereign. They arrived there before 5 a.m. and found difficulty in obtaining admission. The porter refused to rouse the princess. At length the Baroness Lehzen was sent for, and she reluctantly agreed to warn the princess of their presence. The girl came into the room with a shawl thrown over her dressing-gown, her feet in slippers, and her hair falling down her back. Lord Conyngham dropped on his knee, saluted her as queen, and kissed the hand she held towards him. The archbishop did the like, addressing to her ‘a sort of pastoral charge.’ At the same time she was informed of the king's peaceful end. The princess clasped her hands and anxiously asked for news of her aunt (Bunsen, i. 272).

The first council.
The prime minister, Lord Melbourne, arrived before nine o'clock, and was at once received in audience. The queen's uncle, the Duke of Sussex, and the Duke of Wellington, the most popular man in the state, also visited her. But, in accordance with the constitution, it was from the prime minister, Lord Melbourne, alone that she could receive counsel as to her official duties and conduct. The privy council was hastily summoned to meet at Kensington at 11 a.m. on the day of the king's death. On entering the room the queen was met by her uncles, the Dukes of Cumberland and Sussex, and having taken her seat at once read the speech which Lord Melbourne had written for her some days before in consultation with Lord Lansdowne, the veteran president of the council. She was dressed very plainly in black and wore no ornaments. She was already in mourning for the death of Queen Adelaide's mother. She spoke of herself as ‘educated in England under the tender and enlightened care of a most affectionate mother; she had learned from her infancy to respect and love the constitution of her native country.’ She would aim at securing the enjoyment of religious liberty and would protect the rights of all her subjects. She then took the oath, guaranteeing the security of the church of Scotland; the ministers gave up their seals to her and she returned them; they then kissed hands on reappointment, and the privy councillors took the oaths. Although she was unusually short in stature (below five feet), and with no pretensions to beauty, her manner and movement were singularly unembarrassed, modest, graceful, and dignified, while her distinct and perfectly modulated elocution thrilled her auditors. ‘She not merely filled her chair,’ said the Duke of Wellington, ‘she filled the room.’ Throughout the ceremony she conducted herself as though she had long been familiar with her part in it (cf. Poole, Life of Stratford Canning, 1888, ii. 45; Croker Papers, ii. 359; Ashley, Life of Palmerston, i. 340).

The proclamation.
The admirable impression she created on this her first public appearance as queen was fully confirmed in the weeks that followed. Next day she drove to St. James's Palace to attend the formal proclamation of her accession to the throne. While the heralds recited their announcement she stood in full view of the public between Lord Melbourne and Lord Lansdowne, at the open window of the privy council chamber, looking on the quadrangle nearest Marlborough House. The crowd cheered vociferously, and prominent in the throng was Daniel O'Connell, who waved his hat with conspicuous energy. ‘At the sound of the first shouts the colour faded from the queen's cheeks,’ wrote Lord Albemarle, her first master of the horse, who was also an onlooker, ‘and her eyes filled with tears. The emotion thus called forth imparted an additional charm to the winning courtesy with which the girl-sovereign accepted the proffered homage’ (Albemarle, Fifty Years of my Life, p. 378).
After the proclamation the queen saw Lord Hill, the commander-in-chief, the lord-chancellor, and other great officers of state. At noon her second council was held at St. James's Palace, and all the cabinet ministers were present. Later in the day the proclamation was repeated at Trafalgar Square, Temple Bar, Wood Street, and the Royal Exchange.

Her name as sovereign.
Although the queen signed the privy council register at her first council in the name of Victoria only, in all the official documents which were prepared on the first day of her reign her name figured with the prefix of Alexandrina. In the proclamation she was called ‘Her Royal Majesty Alexandrina Victoria, Queen of the United Kingdom.’ But, despite the sentiment that had been excited against the name Victoria, it was contrary to her wish to be known by any other. Papers omitting the prefix ‘Alexandrina’ were hastily substituted for those in which that prefix had been introduced, and from the second day of the new reign the sovereign was known solely as Queen Victoria. Thenceforth that name was accepted without cavil as of the worthiest English significance. It has since spread far among her subjects. It was conferred on one of the most prosperous colonies of the British empire in 1851, and since on many smaller settlements or cities, while few municipalities in the United Kingdom or the empire have failed to employ it in the nomenclature of streets, parks, railway-stations, or places of public assembly.

Public sentiment regarding her.
Abroad, and even in some well-informed quarters at home, surprise was manifested at the tranquillity with which the nation saw the change of monarch effected. But the general enthusiasm that Queen Victoria's accession evoked was partly due to the contrast she presented with those who had lately occupied the throne. Since the century began there had been three kings of England¾men all advanced in years¾of whom the first was an imbecile, the second a profligate, and the third little better than a buffoon. The principle of monarchy was an article of faith with the British people which the personal unfitness of the monarch seemed unable to touch. But the substitution for kings whose characters could not inspire respect of an innocent girl, with what promised to be a long and virtuous life before her, evoked at the outset in the large mass of the people a new sentiment¾a sentiment of chivalric devotion to the monarchy which gave it new stability and rendered revolution impossible. Although the play of party politics failed to render the sentiment universal, and some actions of the queen in the early and late years of the reign severely tried it, it was a plant that, once taking root, did not readily decay. Politicians¾of the high rank of Lord Palmerston, the foreign secretary in the whig ministry, and Sir Robert Peel, leader of the tories in the House of Commons¾deplored the young queen's inexperience and ignorance of the world; but such defects were more specious than real in a constitutional monarch, and, as far as they were disadvantageous, were capable of remedy by time. Sydney Smith echoed the national feeling when, preaching in St. Paul's Cathedral on the first Sunday of her reign, he described the new sovereign as ‘a patriot queen,’ who might be expected to live to a ripe old age and to contribute to the happiness and prosperity of her people. ‘We have had glorious female reigns,’ said Lord John Russell, the home secretary under Melbourne, a few weeks later. ‘Those of Elizabeth and Anne led us to great victories. Let us now hope that we are going to have a female reign illustrious in its deeds of peace¾an Elizabeth without her tyranny, an Anne without her weakness’ (Walpole, Life of Lord John Russell, i. 284).

The queen and Hanover.

The queen and the criminal law.
Owing to her sex, some changes in the position and duties of a British sovereign were inevitable. The Salic law rendered her incompetent to succeed to the throne of Hanover, which British sovereigns had filled since George the elector of Hanover became George I of England in 1714. Hanover had been elevated from an electorate to a kingdom by the congress of Vienna in 1814, and the kingdom now passed to the queen's uncle, the next heir after her to the English throne, Ernest, duke of Cumberland. The dissolution of the union between England and Hanover was acquiesced in readily by both countries. They had long drifted apart in political sentiments and aspirations. The new king of Hanover was altogether out of sympathy with his royal niece. He proved an illiberal and reactionary ruler; but she, in whom domestic feeling was always strong, took a lively interest in the fortunes of his family, and showed especial kindness to them in the trials that awaited them. At home the main alteration in her duty as sovereign related to the criminal law. Death was the punishment accorded to every manner of felony until William IV's parliament humanely reduced the number of capital offences to four or five, and it had been the custom of the sovereign personally to revise the numerous capital sentences pronounced in London at the Old Bailey. At the close of each session these were reported to the sovereign by the recorder for final judgment. A girl was obviously unfitted to perform this repugnant task. Accordingly the queen was promptly relieved of it by act of parliament (7 William IV and 1 Vict. cap. 77). Outside London the order of the court to the sheriff had long been sufficient to insure the execution of the death penalty. To that practice London now conformed, while the home secretary dealt henceforth by his sole authority with petitions affecting offenders capitally convicted, and was alone responsible for the grant of pardons, reprieves, or respites. Whenever capital sentences were modified by the home secretary, he made a report to that effect to the queen, and occasionally it evoked comment from her; but his decision was always acted on as soon as it was formed. Thus, although the statute of 1837 formally reserved ‘the royal prerogative of mercy,’ the accession of a woman to the throne had the paradoxical effect of practically annulling all that survived of it.

Lord Melbourne's instruction.
But, while the queen was not called on to do everything that her predecessors had done, she studied with ardour the routine duties of her station and was immersed from the moment of her accession in pressing business. The prime minister, Melbourne, approached his task of giving her political instruction with exceptional tact and consideration, and she proved on the whole an apt pupil. Melbourne was the leader of the whig party, whose constitutional principles denied the sovereign any independence; but it was with the whigs that her father had associated himself, and association with them was personally congenial to her. None the less, she was of an imperious, self-reliant, and somewhat wilful disposition; she was naturally proud of her elevation and of the dignified responsibilities which nominally adhered to the crown. While, therefore, accepting without demur Melbourne's theories of the dependent place of a sovereign in a constitutional monarchy, she soon set her own interpretation on their practical working. She was wise enough at the outset to recognise her inexperience, and she knew instinctively the need of trusting those who were older and better versed in affairs than herself. But she never admitted her subjection to her ministers. From almost the first to the last day of her reign she did not hesitate closely to interrogate them, to ask for time for consideration before accepting their decisions, and to express her own wishes and views frankly and ingenuously in all affairs of government that came before her. After giving voice to her opinion, she left the final choice of action or policy to her official advisers' discretion; but if she disapproved of their choice, or it failed of its effect, she exercised unsparingly the right of private rebuke.
The formation of her household.

The private secretaryship.
The first duty of her ministers and herself was to create a royal household. The principles to be followed differed from those which had recently prevailed. It was necessary for a female sovereign to have women and not men as her personal attendants. She deprecated an establishment on the enormous scale that was adopted by the last female sovereign in England¾Queen Anne. A mistress of the robes, eight ladies-in-waiting, and six women of the bedchamber she regarded as adequate. Her uncle Leopold wisely urged her to ignore political considerations in choosing her attendants. But she was without personal friends of the rank needed for the household offices, and she accepted Lord Melbourne's injudicious advice to choose their first holders exclusively from the wives and daughters of the whig ministers. She asked the Marchioness of Lansdowne to become mistress of the robes, and although her health did not permit her to accept that post, she agreed to act as first lady-in-waiting. The higher household dignity was filled (1 July 1837) by the Duchess of Sutherland, who was soon one of the queen's intimate associates. Others of her first ladies-in-waiting were the Countess of Mulgrave, afterwards Marchioness of Normanby, and Lady Tavistock. The Countess of Rosebery declined to join them. In accord with better established precedent, the gentlemen of her household were also chosen from orthodox supporters of the whig ministry. The queen only asserted herself by requesting that Sir John Conroy, the master of her mother's and her own household, whom she never liked, should retire from her service; she gave him a pension of 3,000l. a year, but refused his request for an order and an Irish peerage. Graver perplexities attached to the question of the appointment of a private secretary to the new sovereign. Although former occupants of the throne had found such an officer absolutely essential to the due performance of their duties, the ministers feared the influence that one occupying so confidential a relation with a young untried girl might gain over her. With admirable self-denial Melbourne solved the difficulty by taking on himself the work of her private secretary for all public business. As both her prime minister and private secretary it was thus necessary for him to be always with the court. For the first two years of her reign he was her constant companion, spending most of the morning at work with her, riding with her of an afternoon, and dining with her of an evening. The paternal care which he bestowed on her was acknowledged with gratitude by political friends and foes.

Foreign advisers.
Melbourne's acceptance of the office of private secretary best guaranteed the queen's course against pitfalls which might have involved disaster. Members of the family circle in which she had grown up claimed the right and duty of taking part in her guidance when she began the labour of her life, and, owing to their foreign birth, it was in her own interest that their influence should be permanently counterbalanced by native counsel. King Leopold, the queen's foster-father, who had hitherto controlled her career, and remained a trusted adviser till his death, had, as soon as she reached her majority, sent his confidential friend and former secretary, Baron Stockmar, to direct her political education. The baron remained in continuous attendance on her, without official recognition, for the first fifteen months of her reign, and when the question of a choice of private secretary was first raised, the queen expressed an infelicitous anxiety to appoint him. A native of Coburg, who originally came to England with Leopold in 1816 as his medical attendant, Stockmar was now fifty years old. Sincerely devoted to his master and to the Saxe-Coburg family, he sought no personal advantage from his association with them. Even Lord Palmerston, who bore him no affection, admitted that he was the most disinterested man he ever met. Intelligently read in English history, he studied with zeal the theory of the British constitution. There was genuine virtue in the substance of his reiterated advice that the queen should endeavour to maintain a position above party and above intrigue. But, although sagacious, Stockmar was a pedantic and a sententious critic of English politics, and cherished some perilous heresies. The internal working of the British government was never quite understood by him. His opinion that the sovereign was no ‘nodding mandarin’ was arguable, but his contention that a monarch, if of competent ability, might act as his own minister was wholly fallacious. The constant intercourse which he sought with Melbourne and other ministers was consequently felt by them to be embarrassing, and to be disadvantageous to the queen. An impression got abroad that he exerted on her a mysterious anti-national influence behind the throne. Abercromby, speaker of the House of Commons, threatened in very early days to bring the subject to the notice of parliament. But when it was rumoured that Stockmar was acting as the queen's private secretary, Melbourne circulated a peremptory denial, and public attention was for the time diverted. The queen's openly displayed fidelity to her old governess, the Baroness Lehzen, did not tend to dissipate the suspicion that she was in the hands of foreign advisers. But the baroness's relations with her mistress were above reproach and did credit to both. She had acted as her old pupil's secretary in private matters before she came to the throne, and she continued to perform the same functions after the queen's accession. But public affairs were never brought by the queen to her cognisance, and the baroness loyally accepted the situation. With the Duchess of Kent, who continued to reside with her daughter, although she was now given a separate suite of apartments, the queen's relation was no less discreet¾far more discreet than the duchess approved. She was excluded from all share in public business¾an exclusion in which she did not readily acquiesce. For a long time she treated her daughter's emancipation from her direction as a personal grievance (Greville). There was never any ground for the insinuation which Lord Brougham conveyed when he spoke in the House of Lords of the Duchess of Kent as ‘the queen-mother.’ Melbourne protested with just indignation against applying such a misnomer to ‘the mother of the queen,’ who was wholly outside the political sphere.

Public ceremonials.
Public ceremonials meanwhile claimed much of the queen's attention. On 27 June she held her first levee at Kensington to receive the credentials of the ambassadors and envoys. She was dressed in black, but, as sovereign of the order of the Garter, wore all its brilliant insignia¾ribbon, star, and a band bearing the motto, in place of the garter, buckled on the left arm (Bunsen, ii. 273). There followed a long series of deputations from public bodies, bearing addresses of condolence and congratulation, to all of which she replied with characteristic composure. On 17 July she went in state to dissolve parliament in accordance with the law which required a general election to take place immediately on the demise of the crown. For the first time she appeared in apparel of state¾a mantle of crimson velvet lined with ermine, an ermine cape, a dress of white satin embroidered with gold, a tiara and stomacher of diamonds, and the insignia of the garter. She read the speech with splendid effect. Fanny Kemble, who was present, wrote: ‘The queen's voice was exquisite. ¼ The enunciation was as perfect as the intonation was melodious, and I think it is impossible to hear a more excellent utterance than that of the queen's English by the English queen.’ A more disinterested visitor, the American orator, Charles Sumner, used very similar language: ‘Her voice was sweet and finely modulated. ¼ I think I have never heard anything better read in my life than her speech.’ On 19 July the queen held her first levee at St. James's Palace, and next day her first drawing-room. On both occasions the attendance was enormous.

Removal to Buckingham Palace.
A few days before (13 July) the queen left the home of her girlhood at Kensington for Buckingham Palace, the new official residence in London appointed for the sovereign. The building had been begun by the architect John Nash for George IV, but was not completed until William IV became king. He, however, disliked it, and preferred to remain at St. James's Palace. No monarch occupied Buckingham Palace before Queen Victoria, for whom it was for the first time put in order. A contemporary wag in the ‘Times’ declared it was the cheapest house ever built, having been built for one sovereign and furnished for another. But the inconvenience with which William IV credited it proved real, and it underwent radical alterations and additions at the instance of the queen and Prince Albert before it was deemed to be adapted for its purpose. An east front was erected to form a quadrangle; the ground behind the house, to the extent of forty acres, was laid out as a pleasure-garden; a conservatory was converted into a chapel, and a ballroom was added as late as 1856. One of the first entertainments which were given at Buckingham Palace was a grand concert on 17 Aug. 1837, under the direction of Signor Costa. In honour of the occasion the queen ordered the court to go out of mourning for the day. The vocalists were Madame Grisi, Madame Albertazzi, Signor Lablache, and Signor Tamburini. The queen's first official appearance in public out of doors took place on 21 Aug., when she opened the new gate of Hyde Park on the Bayswater Road, and conferred on it the name of Victoria. On 22 Aug. she drove to Windsor to assume residence at the castle for the first time. On 28 Sept. she had her earliest experience of a military review, when the guards in Windsor garrison marched before her in the Home Park. After remaining at Windsor till 4 Oct. she made acquaintance with the third and last of the royal palaces then in existence, the pretentious Pavilion at Brighton, which George IV had erected in a foolish freak of fancy. Lord John Russell, the home secretary, together with his wife, stayed with her there. On 4 Nov. she returned to Buckingham Palace.

Private life.
The queen took a girlish delight in the sense of proprietorship: she actively directed her domestic establishments, and the mode of life she adopted in her palaces was of her own devising. She exercised a constant and wide hospitality which had been long unknown in the royal circle. The entertainments were somewhat formal and monotonous; but, although she was zealous for rules of etiquette, she was never indisposed to modify them if she was thereby the better able to indulge the kindly feeling that she invariably extended to her guests. Most of her mornings were spent at work with Melbourne. In the early afternoon when at Windsor she rode in the park or neighbouring country with a large cavalcade often numbering thirty persons. Later she romped with children, some of whom she usually contrived to include among her guests, or played at ball or battledore and shuttlecock with ladies of the court¾a practice which she continued till middle age¾or practised singing and pianoforte playing. Dining at half-past seven, she usually devoted the evening to round games of cards, chess, or draughts, while the Duchess of Kent played whist. One of her innovations was the institution of a court band, which played music during and after dinner. When she was settled at Buckingham Palace she gave a small dance every Monday. She found time for a little serious historical reading, one of the earliest books through which she plodded as queen being Coxe's ‘Life of Sir Robert Walpole’ (Lady Lyttelton), and for the first time in her life she attempted novel-reading, making trial of three books by Sir Walter Scott, Fenimore Cooper, and Bulwer Lytton respectively (Bunsen, i. 296). A little later she struggled with Hallam's ‘Constitutional History’ and St. Simon's ‘Memoirs.’

Attitude to her kinsfolk.
Relatives from the continent of Europe were in the first days of her reign very frequent guests. With them she always seemed most at ease, and she showed them marked attention. Vacant garters were bestowed on two of her German kinsmen, who came on early visits to her¾the first on her half-brother, the Prince of Leiningen, in July 1837, the next on her uncle, Prince Albert's father, in the year following. The king of the Belgians and his gentle Queen Louise spent three weeks with her at Windsor (August-September 1837), and the visit was repeated for years every autumn. Her first cousin Victoria, daughter of Duke Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg, who in 1840 married the Duc de Nemours, was also often with her, and shared in her afternoon games. But she was not at the same time neglectful of her kinsfolk at home. Nothing could exceed the tenderness with which she treated the Dowager Queen Adelaide. On the day of her accession she wrote a letter of condolence, addressing it to ‘the Queen’ and not to ‘the Dowager Queen,’ for fear of adding to her grief. A very few days later, before the late king's funeral, she visited the widowed lady at Windsor, and she forbade, of her own motion, the lifting of the royal standard, then at half-mast, to mast-high, as was customary on the arrival of the sovereign. When Queen Adelaide removed from Windsor Castle ultimately to settle at Marlborough House, her royal niece bade her take from the castle any furniture that her residence there had especially endeared to her, and until the old queen's death the young queen never relaxed any of her attentions. To all her uncles and aunts she showed like consideration. She corresponded with them, entertained them, visited them, read to them, sang to them; and she bore with little murmuring her uncles' displays of ill-temper. The Duchess of Cambridge, the last survivor of that generation, died as late as 1889, and no cares of family or state were ever permitted by the queen to interfere with the due rendering of those acts of personal devotion to which the aged duchess had been accustomed. Even to the welfare of the FitzClarences¾William IV's illegitimate children by Mrs. Jordan¾she was not indifferent, and often exerted her influence in their interests. At the same time domestic sentiment was rarely suffered to affect court etiquette. At her own table she deemed it politic to give, for the first time, precedence to foreign ambassadors¾even to the American envoy, Mr. Stephenson¾over all guests of whatever rank, excepting only Lord Melbourne, who always sat at her left hand. For years she declined to alter the practice in favour of the royal dukes and duchesses, but ultimately made some exceptions.

The general election of 1837.
Meanwhile the first general election of the new reign had taken place, and the battle of the rival parties mainly raged round the position and prospects of the queen. The tories, who were the attacking force, bitterly complained that Melbourne and the whigs in power identified her with themselves, and used her and her name as party weapons of offence. Lord John Russell, in a letter to Lord Mulgrave, lord-lieutenant of Ireland, had written of her sympathy with the whig policy in Ireland. Croker, a tory spokesman, in an article in the ‘Quarterly Review’ (July 1837), denounced the policy of surrounding her with female relatives of the whig leaders. Sir Robert Peel argued that the monarchy was endangered by the rigour with which she was ruled by Melbourne, the chief of one political party. Release of the sovereign from whig tyranny consequently became a tory cry, and it gave rise to the epigram:
‘The Queen is with us,’ Whigs insulting say;
‘For when she found us in she let us stay.’
It may be so, but give me leave to doubt
How long she'll keep you when she finds you out.
(Annual Register, 1837, p. 239).
Whig wire-pullers, on the other hand, made the most of the recent conduct of the next heir to the throne, the new king of Hanover, the queen's uncle Ernest, who had signalised his accession by revoking constitutional government in his dominions. They spread a report that the new king of Hanover was plotting to dethrone his niece in order to destroy constitutional government in England as well as in Hanover, and a cartoon was issued entitled ‘The Contrast,’ which represented side by side portraits of the queen and her uncle, the queen being depicted as a charming ingénue, and her uncle as a grey-haired beetle-browed villain. The final result of the elections was not satisfactory to either side. The tories gained on the balance thirty-seven seats, and thus reduced their opponents' majority; but in the new House of Commons the whigs still led by thirty-eight, and Melbourne and his colleagues retained office.
At the Guildhall banquet, 9 Nov. 1837.
Before the new parliament opened, the queen made a formal progress through London, going from Buckingham Palace to the Guildhall to dine in state with the lord mayor. Her passage through the streets evoked an imposing demonstration of loyalty. Fifty-eight carriages formed the procession, in which rode many of the foreign ambassadors. The lord mayor, Sir John Cowan, with the sheriffs, George Carroll and Moses Montefiore, and members of the corporation of London, received the queen at Temple Bar. The banquet lasted from 3.30 in the afternoon till 8.30 in the evening, when the city was ablaze with illuminations. A medal was struck from a design by William Wyon, and the queen's arrival at Temple Bar was pictured in a bas-relief on the monument that now marks the site of the old gate.

The civil list.
On 20 Nov. the queen opened her first parliament, reading her own speech, as was her custom until her widowhood whenever she attended in person. The opening business of the session was a settlement of the royal civil list. Financially the queen's position since her accession had been a source of anxiety. She inherited nothing, and the crown had lost the royal revenues of Hanover. She had complained to Melbourne of her lack of money for immediate private expenses. He had done little but listen sympathetically, but Messrs. Coutts, who had been bankers to various members of the royal family, came to her rescue with temporary advances. The main question for the government to consider was not merely the amount of the income necessary to maintain the throne in fitting dignity, but the proportion of that income which might be prudently derived from the hereditary revenues of the crown, i.e. revenues from the crown lands. In return for a fixed annuity George III had surrendered a large portion of these revenues, and George IV yielded a further portion, while William IV surrendered all but those proceeding from the duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster, which were held to belong to a different category. At the same time it was arranged, on the accession of William IV, that the general expenses of civil government, which had been previously defrayed out of the king's civil list, should henceforth be discharged by the consolidated fund, and that of the income allotted to King William only a very small proportion should be applied to aught outside his household and personal expenses; the sole external calls were 75,000l. for pensions and 10,000l. for the secret service fund. On these conditions King William was content to accept 460,000l. instead of 850,000l. which had been paid his predecessor, while an annuity of 50,000l. was bestowed on his queen consort. His net personal parliamentary income (excluding pensions and the secret service fund) was thus 375,000l., with some 25,000l. from the duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall. Radical members of parliament now urged Melbourne to bring the whole of the crown lands under parliamentary control, to deprive the crown of the control and income of the duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall, and to supply the sovereign with a revenue which should be exclusively applied to her own purposes, and not to any part of the civil government. Treasury officials drew out a scheme with these ends in view, but Melbourne rejected most of it from a fear of rousing against his somewhat unstable government the cry of tampering with the royal prerogative. In the result the precedent of William IV's case was followed, with certain modifications. The queen resigned all the hereditary revenues of the crown, but was left in possession of the revenues of the duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall, of which the latter was the lawful appanage of the heir-apparent. The duchy of Cornwall therefore ceased to be the sovereign's property as soon as a lawful heir to the throne was born. It and the duchy of Lancaster produced during the first years of the reign about 27,500l. annually, but the revenues from both rose rapidly, and the duchy of Lancaster, which was a permanent source of income to the queen, ultimately produced above 60,000l. a year. (The duchy of Cornwall, which passed to the prince of Wales at his birth in 1841, ultimately produced more than 66,000l.) Parliament now granted her, apart from these hereditary revenues, an annuity of 385,000l., being 10,000l. in excess of the net personal income granted by parliament to her predecessor. Of this sum 60,000l. was appropriated to her privy purse, 131,260l. to the salaries of the household, 172,500l. to the expenses of the household, 13,200l. to the royal bounty, while 8,040l. was unappropriated. The annual payment from the civil list of 75,000l. in pensions and of 10,000l. secret service money was cancelled, but permission was given the crown to create ‘civil list’ pensions to the amount of 1,200l. annually, a sum which the treasury undertook to defray independently of the royal income; this arrangement ultimately meant the yearly expenditure of some 23,000l., but the pensions were only nominally associated with the sovereign's expenditure. Repairs to the sovereign's official residences and the maintenance of the royal yachts were also provided for by the treasury apart from the civil list revenues. Joseph Hume, on the third reading of the civil list bill, moved a reduction of 50,000l., which was rejected by 199 votes against 19. Benjamin Hawes vainly moved a reduction of 10,000l., which was supported by 41 members and opposed by 173. Lord Brougham severely criticised the settlement on the second reading of the bill in the House of Lords. He made searching inquiries respecting the incomes from the crown duchies, and objected to the arrangement being made for the queen's life. Although numerous additional grants, approaching a total of 200,000l. a year, were afterwards allotted to the queen's children, the annual sum allowed her by parliament on her accession was never altered during her reign of nearly sixty-four years, and proved amply sufficient for all her needs. At the same time as the civil list bill passed through parliament, the queen's mother, at the sovereign's instance, was granted an annuity of 30,000l.; she formerly received 22,000l. a year, of which 10,000l. was appropriated to the care of her daughter while princess. On 23 Dec. 1837 the queen went to parliament to return thanks in person for what had been done. Christmas was spent at Buckingham Palace, and next day the court withdrew to Windsor.

The queen pays her father's debts.
The liberal allowance enabled the queen to fulfil at once her resolve to pay off her father's debts. By the autumn of next year she had transferred to the late duke's creditors from her privy purse nearly 50,000l., and on 7 Oct. 1839 she received their formal thanks. Meanwhile the queen's sympathy with her ministers increased. Through 1838-9 she followed their parliamentary movements with keen anxiety lest their narrow majority might prove inadequate to maintain them in office. Disturbances in Canada during the early months of 1838 roused differences of opinion in the House of Commons, which imperilled their position, but the crisis passed. ‘The queen is as steady to us as ever,’ wrote Palmerston on 14 April 1838, ‘and was in the depth of despair when she thought we were in danger of being turned out. She keeps well in health, and even in London takes long rides into the country, which have done her great good’ (Ashley, Life of Palmerston, i. 344). Under Melbourne's guidance, and in agreement with her own wish, she daily perused masses of despatches and correspondence with exemplary diligence.
The coronation, 28 June 1838.
Outside politics her chief interest lay in the preparations that were in progress for her coronation and for the festivities accompanying it. Three state balls¾one on 18 June, the day of Waterloo, a choice of date which offended the French¾two levees, a drawing-room, a state concert, a first state visit to Ascot, and attendance at Eton ‘montem’ immediately preceded the elaborate ceremonial, which took place on 28 June 1838, eight days after the anniversary of her accession. The ministers resolved to endow it with exceptional splendour. For the expenses of William IV's coronation 50,000l. had been allowed. No less a sum than 200,000l. was voted by parliament for the expenses of Queen Victoria's coronation. Westminster Abbey was elaborately decorated in crimson and gold. The royal procession to the abbey was revived for the first time since the coronation of George III in 1761, and four hundred thousand persons came to London to witness it, many bivouacking in the streets the night before. At 10 a.m. on the appointed day, in magnificent weather, the queen left Buckingham Palace in full panoply of state, passing up Constitution Hill, along Piccadilly, down St. James's Street, and across Trafalgar Square, which had just been laid out in Nelson's memory. The abbey was reached by way of Parliament Street at 11.30. Among foreign visitors, who went thither in advance of the queen, was Marshal Soult, the representative of France, whom the crowds received with hardly less enthusiasm than her majesty. The great company of her German relatives included her uncle the Duke of Saxe-Coburg and her half-brother and half-sister of Leiningen. When the queen entered the abbey, ‘with eight ladies all in white, floating about her like a silvery cloud, she paused, as if for breath, and clasped her hands’ (Stanley). A ray of sunlight fell on her head as she knelt to receive the crown, and the Duchess of Kent burst into tears. The brilliance of the scene impressed every one, but there were some drawbacks. Harriet Martineau, who was present, wrote: ‘The brightness, vastness, and dreamy magnificence produced a strange effect of exhaustion and sleepiness.’ The queen, too, suffered not only from natural emotion and fatigue, but from the hesitation of the officiating clergy as to the exact part she was to play in many parts of the long ritual, and from the insufficient training that had been accorded her. ‘Pray tell me what I am to do, for they [i.e. the clergy] don't know,’ she said at one solemn point to a lay official who stood near her. She complained that the orb which was unexpectedly put into her hand was too heavy for her to hold; and when the ruby ring, which had been made for her little finger, was forced by the archbishop on to her fourth, she nearly cried out with the pain. For the first time at a coronation, the commons were allowed to acclaim her after the peers. The latter had enjoyed the privilege from time immemorial. The commons now cheered their sovereign nine times (Gent. Mag. 1838, ii. 198); but Dean Stanley, who, then a boy, sat in a gallery, thought all the responses and acclamations were feebly given. Towards the close of the ceremony a singular accident befell Lord Rolle, a peer, eighty years old, as he was endeavouring to offer his homage. He ‘fell down as he was getting up the steps of the throne.’ The queen's ‘first impulse was to rise, and when afterwards he came again to do homage she said, “May I not get up and meet him?” and then rose from the throne and advanced down one or two of the steps to prevent his coming up, an act of graciousness and kindness which made a great sensation’ (Greville, 2nd ser. i. 107). While the peers were doing homage, the lord-chamberlain and his officers flung medals, specially designed by Pistrucci, for the spectators to scramble for, and the confusion was not dignified. At length the ceremonial, which lasted more than five hours, ended, and at a quarter past four the queen returned to Buckingham Palace. She then wore her crown and all her apparel of state, but she looked to spectators pale and tremulous. Carlyle, who was in the throng, breathed a blessing on her: ‘Poor little queen!’ he added, ‘she is at an age at which a girl can hardly be trusted to choose a bonnet for herself; yet a task is laid upon her from which an archangel might shrink.’ But despite her zeal to fulfil the responsibilities of her station, she still had much of the child's lightness and simplicity of heart. On returning to the palace she hastily doffed her splendours in order to give her pet spaniel, Dash, its afternoon bath (Leslie). She then dined quietly with her relatives who were her guests, and after sending a message of inquiry to the unfortunate Lord Rolle, concluded the day by witnessing from the roof of the palace the public illuminations and fireworks in the Green and Hyde Parks. Next morning a great ‘coronation’ fair was opened by permission of the government for four days in Hyde Park; and on the second day the queen paid it a long visit. The coronation festivities concluded with a review by her of five thousand men in Hyde Park (9 July), when she again shared the popular applause with Marshal Soult. A month later (16 Aug.) she prorogued parliament in person, and, after listening to the usual harangue on the work of the session from the speaker of the House of Commons, read her speech with customary clearness.

The episode of Lady Flora Hastings.
A few months later the queen was to realise that her popularity was not invulnerable, and that, despite Melbourne's parental care, her position was fraught with difficulty and danger, with which she was as yet hardly fitted to cope. With both the crises through which the queen and her court passed in the first half of 1839, her youth and inexperience prevented her from dealing satisfactorily. In January 1839 Lady Flora Hastings, daughter of the Marquis of Hastings, was lady-in-waiting to the Duchess of Kent at Buckingham Palace. On account of her appearance, she was most improperly suspected by some of the queen's attendants of immoral conduct. Neither the queen nor her mother put any faith in the imputation, but Lady Tavistock informed Melbourne of the matter, and the queen assented to his proposal that the unfortunate lady should be subjected by the royal physician, Sir James Clark, to a medical examination. Clark afterwards signed a certificate denying all allegations against Lady Flora (17 Feb. 1839). The incident was soon noised abroad. The lady's family appealed directly to the queen to make fitting reparation. Lady Flora's brother, the Marquis of Hastings, obtained an interview with her. Lady Flora's mother wrote her passionate letters and begged for the dismissal of Sir James Clark. The queen made no reply. Melbourne stated that she had seized the earliest opportunity of personally acknowledging to Lady Flora the unhappy error, but that it was not intended to take any other step. Lady Hastings published her correspondence with the queen and Melbourne in the ‘Morning Post,’ and Clark circulated a defence of his own conduct. A general feeling of disgust was roused, and the reputation of the court suffered, especially with the conservative section of the nobility to which the Hastings family belonged. The situation was rendered worse by the tragic ending of the episode. Lady Flora was suffering from a fatal internal disease¾the enlargement of the liver. On 4 July she was announced to be dying at Buckingham Palace. A royal banquet which was to take place that evening was countermanded (Malmesbury's Memoirs, p. 77). The lady died next day. The queen was gravely perturbed. Society was depressed and shocked. The blunder which the queen's advisers had committed was bad enough to warrant an unmistakable expression of her personal regret, and her innocent supineness, for which the blame was currently laid on the Baroness Lehzen, was a calamity.

Her first ministerial crisis, May 1839.

The queen and her ladies of the bedchamber.
The second court crisis of 1839 was due to a precisely opposite cause¾to the queen's peremptory exercise of her personal authority without consulting any one. During the session of 1839 the whig ministry finally lost its hold on the House of Commons. The recent emancipation of the slaves in Jamaica had led the planters into rebellion, and the government was driven to the disagreeable necessity of inviting parliament to suspend the constitution. The proposal was carried by a majority of only five (7 May). Melbourne felt the position to be hopeless, and placed the resignation of himself and his colleagues in the queen's hands. The queen was deeply distressed. When Lord John, leader of the House of Commons, visited her to discuss the situation, she burst into tears. But she soon nerved herself fully to exert for the first time the sovereign's power of choosing a successor to the outgoing prime minister. Her grief at parting with Melbourne was quickly checked. She asked him for no advice, but, after consulting Lord Spencer, she sent for the Duke of Wellington, and startled him by her self-possession (8 May). He declined her offer to form a ministry on the ground of his age and of the desirability of the prime minister being in the House of Commons. Accordingly she summoned Sir Robert Peel, the leader of the conservative opposition in the lower house. She feared his coldness and severity of manner, but her personal demeanour at their first interview was dignified, although very frank. She deprecated a dissolution of parliament at so early a date in the life of the existing parliament. Peel vaguely expressed sympathy with her view, but declined to pledge himself not to advise a dissolution. He, however, accepted without demur her commission to form the government, and, on leaving her, set about selecting members of the cabinet. There was already a strong feeling among the conservatives that the queen, who had hitherto shrunk from association with conservatives, was hedged in on all sides of her household by the female relatives of her whig ministers. Peel, in consultation with his friends, decided that the ladies holding the higher posts in the household must be displaced if conservative ministers were to receive adequate support from the crown. He had no intention of interfering with the subordinate offices, but deemed it essential to remove some at least of the ladies from such posts as those of mistress of the robes or of lady-in-waiting. Peel formed a high conception of his responsibility, and was willing to consult the queen's wishes in filling all appointments that might fall vacant. Unfortunately he did not define at the outset the precise posts or the number of them which were affected by his proposals. The subject was broached in a personal interview (9 May). The queen feared that she was to be deprived of the companionship of her closest friends, and suspected¾quite incorrectly¾that the Baroness Lehzen was aimed at. She declined point blank to entertain any suggestion of change in the female constitution of her household. After Peel left her she wrote to Melbourne that they wanted to deprive her of her ladies; they would rob her next of her dressers and housemaids; they thought to treat her as a girl; she would show them she was queen of England. Finally she requested her old minister to draft a reply of refusal to Peel's demands. Melbourne expressed no opinion, but did as he was asked. The queen's letter to Peel ran: ‘Buckingham Palace, May 10, 1839.¾The Queen, having considered the proposal made to her yesterday by Sir Robert Peel to remove the ladies of her bedchamber, cannot consent to adopt a course which she conceives to be contrary to usage, and which is repugnant to her feelings.’ Peel answered that he feared there was some misunderstanding, and declined to proceed to the formation of a government.

Admission of her error.
Peel's decision was received by the queen with immense relief, which she made no endeavour to conceal at a state ball that took place the same evening. With every sign of satisfaction she appealed to Melbourne to resume power. Although her action was her own, Melbourne had given it a tacit approval by not resisting it, when she first informed him of her intention. The old cabinet met on 11 May; some members argued for advising the queen to withdraw from the attitude that she had assumed. But Lord Spencer insisted that as gentlemen they must stand by her. Palmerston declared that her youth and isolation should have protected her from the odious conditions that Peel sought to impose. At length the good-natured Melbourne acquiesced in that opinion, and the whigs returned to office. The episode formed the topic of animated debate in both houses of parliament. Peel defended his action, which Lord John Russell lamely endeavoured to prove to be without precedent. Melbourne thoroughly identified himself with the queen, and was severely handled from different points of view by both the Duke of Wellington and Lord Brougham. In point of fact Peel's conduct was amply warranted, and subsequently Melbourne, Lord John Russell, and the queen herself admitted as much. In 1853 she confided to Lord John that she had taken no advice in the matter. ‘No,’ she said, ‘it was entirely my own foolishness!’ Melbourne afterwards remarked characteristically: ‘You should take care to give people who are cross time to come round. Peel's fault in that business, when he failed to form a government, was not giving the queen time to come round.’
The momentary effect of the queen's act was to extend by more than two years the duration of Melbourne's ministry, and to embitter the personal hostility of the tories towards her. James Bradshaw, the tory M.P. for Canterbury, made in July so violent an attack upon her at a conservative meeting that the whig M.P. for Cockermouth, Edward Horsman, challenged him to a duel, which was duly fought. But the permanent outcome of the crisis was to the good. The queen never repeated her obduracy, and although she often asserted her authority and betrayed her personal predilection when a new ministry was in course of creation, the nineteen changes of government that followed during her reign were effected with comparatively little friction. The ‘household’ difficulty never recurred. Ladies-in-waiting at once ceased to be drawn from the families of any one political party, and as early as July 1839 the queen invited Lady Sandwich, the wife of a tory peer, to join the household. It became the settled practice for the office of mistress of the robes alone to bear a political complexion, and for its holder to retire from office with the party to which she owed her appointment. Increase of years and the good counsel of a wise husband were to teach the queen to exercise with greater tact that habit of command which was natural to her, and to bring under firmer control the impatience and quickness of her temper.

Unreadiness to marry.
Absorption in the sovereign's work, the elation of spirit which accompanied the major part of her new experiences, the change from dependence to independence in her private affairs, put marriage out of her mind during the first two years of her reign. But King Leopold had no intention of quietly allowing his choice of her cousin Albert for her husband to be thwarted. Early in 1838 he reminded her of the suggestion. She replied that she and the prince, who was of her own age, were too young to think of marriage yet, and she claimed permission to defer a decision till the end of three years. King Leopold summoned Prince Albert to Brussels in March and explained the situation. Albert assented with some hesitation to the queen's proposal of delay. He assumed that in her proud elevation she would ultimately seek in marriage a partner of more exalted rank than a younger son of a poor and undistinguished German duke. But Stockmar was as zealous in Albert's cause as his uncle Leopold. He had left the queen's side at the end of 1838 for the first time since her accession, and accompanied Prince Albert on a tour in Italy with a view to keeping him faithful to the plan and to instructing him betimes, in case of need, in the duties of the consort of a reigning English monarch. Among the English courtiers doubts of the success of the innocent conspiracy were freely entertained. Such members of the large Coburg family as visited the queen at this period were too ‘deutsch’ in manner to recommend themselves to her English attendants (Lady Lyttelton). ‘After being used to agreeable and well-informed Englishmen, I fear she will not easily find a foreign prince to her liking,’ Lord Palmerston wrote in April 1838. Several names besides Prince Albert's were, too, freely canvassed as those of suitable candidates for her hand (cf. Stafford House Letters, p. 223). Another first cousin, Prince George of Cambridge (now Duke of Cambridge), was often in her society. The Duc de Nemours (brother of the queen of the Belgians and son of Louis Philippe) and a prince of the Prussian reigning family were believed to possess attractions, both in her sight and in that of some of her advisers. In May 1839 she entertained at Windsor the tsarevitch of Russia (afterwards Tsar Alexander II) and Prince William Henry, younger son of King William II of the Netherlands; and both the young men were reported to aspire to her hand.

Engagement to Prince Albert, 15 Oct. 1839.
The social and political embarrassments of the first half of 1839 gave the queen a sense of isolation, which rendered the prospect of marriage more congenial to her than it was before. At the same time she suffered much annoyance from a number of offers of marriage made to her by weak-minded subjects, several of whom forced themselves personally on her notice when she was riding out, or even gained entrance to her palaces. King Leopold, who was her guest at Windsor in September 1839, was not slow to use the opportunity. He arranged that Prince Albert and his elder brother Ernest should stay at the English court next month. Nothing was said to the queen of the objects of the mission. On 10 Oct. the young men arrived at Windsor, bearing a letter from King Leopold commending them to her notice. Many guests were there, besides Lord Melbourne. For four days the princes joined the queen and her crowded retinue in the ordinary routine of afternoon rides, evening banquets, and dances, but during the entertainments she contrived to have much talk with Albert, and suddenly a genuine and overpowering affection between them declared itself. On 15 Oct. she summoned the prince to her room, and, taking full advantage of her royal station, offered him marriage. It was ‘a nervous thing’ to do, she afterwards told her aunt, the Duchess of Gloucester; but, she added, it would not have been possible for him to propose to the queen of England (Peel Papers, ii. 414). Melbourne, who took the wise view that in the choice of a husband it was best for the queen to please herself, thought Prince Albert too young and untrained for the position, but hoped for the best and was warm in his congratulations.
The queen sent the information at once to King Leopold, but the public announcement was delayed for more than a month. During that period the queen and her affianced lover were rarely separated either in public or private. The prince was conspicuously at her side at a review of the rifle brigade which she held in the Home Park on 1 Nov. On the 14th the visit of Albert and his brother came to an end. Next day the queen wrote with delightful naïveté to all members of the royal family announcing her engagement. Sir Robert Peel saw the communication she sent to Queen Adelaide, and, although he regarded the match with little enthusiasm, said she was ‘as full of love as Juliet’ (Croker Papers). On 20 Nov. she left Windsor for Buckingham Palace, where on 23 Nov. she made the official declaration, which Melbourne had drawn up, to an extraordinary meeting of the privy council. No less than eighty-three members were present. The queen wore on her arm a bracelet enclosing the prince's miniature; although her hand shook, she read her short and simple speech without hesitation, and accepted the congratulations of her councillors with composure.

Reception of the news.

Attacks on prince by parliament.
The news was received by the public with mixed feeling. Daniel O'Connell, when he spoke of it at a meeting at Bandon, gave vent to ludicrous hyperboles of joy. But there were ominous murmurs amid the popular applause. Little was definitely known of the prince, excepting that he was German and very young. The tories took for granted that he was of ‘liberal’ opinions¾an assumption which did not please them¾and while some agreed that he owed his good fortune to his distaste for affairs of state and his fondness for empty amusement, others credited him with perilously stirring ambitions (Peel Papers, ii. 408-9). Although it was notorious that the Saxe-Coburg house was staunchly Lutheran, two of its members, King Leopold and Prince Ferdinand, had lately married catholics, and a foolish rumour circulated that Albert was a papist. At foreign courts, and even in his own domestic circle, it was felt that the prize the prince had won was above his station. The queen, who saw the situation only through the haze of true womanly affection, deplored the sacrifice of family and country which she regarded the prince as making for her sake. She pressed her ministers to secure for him wellnigh every honour that she enjoyed, in order to compensate him for his expatriation. Like Queen Mary, she entreated that her husband should be created a king consort. The ministers pointed out that Prince Albert's rank, as well as his household and emoluments, must correspond with those accorded the last prince consort, Prince George of Denmark, and she was galled by the comparison of her lover with ‘the stupid and insignificant husband of Queen Anne,’ as she called him. The final decision rested with parliament, and Melbourne made no effort to force its hand. The session opened on 16 Jan. 1840, and the queen, in the speech which she read from the throne, spoke of her approaching marriage. Melbourne found himself in a critical situation. While the queen demanded a fare higher status for her future husband than precedent warranted, a majority in both houses of parliament showed signs of a resolve to grant far less. Stockmar, who had resumed residence with the queen in order to watch the position of affairs and give her private advice, wisely recommended a consultation between whigs and tories so as to avoid public disputes, but he gained no hearing. The ministers proposed to grant Prince Albert an annuity of 50,000l., the sum granted to the queen consorts of George II, George III, and William IV. Joseph Hume moved an amendment to reduce the sum to 21,000l. on his favourite ground of economy. This was negatived by 305 to 38; but Colonel Sibthorp, a tory of a very pronounced kind, who echoed the general sentiment of dissatisfaction, moved another amendment to reduce the sum to 30,000l. He received exceptionally powerful support. Sir Robert Peel spoke in his favour. Sir James Graham denied that the parallel with the position of the queen consorts could be sustained; the independent status of the queen consort, he said, not very logically, was recognised by the constitution, but the prince consort stood in no need of a separate establishment. On a division the reduction was carried by the large majority of 104, the votes being 262 to 158. Sir Robert Peel and his friends made emphatic protests against insinuations of disloyalty, and denied that the tories were ‘acting from a spiteful recollection of the events of last May.’ Lord John Russell insisted that the vote was an insult to the sovereign. Colonel Sibthorp further proposed in committee that, should the prince survive the queen, he should forfeit the annuity if he remarried a catholic, or failed to reside in the United Kingdom for at least six months a year. This motion was disavowed by Peel, who agreed that it implied a want of confidence in the prince, and it was rejected. But the whole proceedings deeply incensed the queen, and King Leopold wrote that the action of the commons was intolerable.
The House of Lords was in no more amiable mood. The Duke of Wellington carried an amendment to the address censuring ministers for having failed to make a public declaration that the prince was a protestant and able to take the holy communion in the form prescribed by the church of England¾a point on which Stockmar had already given the ministers satisfactory assurances in private. When, on 27 Jan., the bill for the naturalisation of the prince was introduced into the upper chamber, it contained a clause giving him precedence next after the queen. The royal dukes of Sussex and Cambridge had agreed to accept a position below the queen's husband; but the king of Hanover, who was still Duke of Cumberland, bluntly declined to give way to any ‘paper royal highness;’ and his protest found much sympathy in the lords. Melbourne argued that he was following the precedent set in the case of Philip and Mary, but was willing to modify the clause so as to give the heir-apparent, when he should arrive, precedence of his father. The concession was deemed inadequate, and the clause was withdrawn. Thereupon the naturalisation bill passed without further opposition. Subsequently Greville, the clerk of the council, issued a paper proving that the queen could grant her husband by royal warrant what precedence she chose without any appeal to parliament, and she acted accordingly, giving him the next place to her. But, to the queen's chagrin, foreign courts declined to recognise in him any rank above that of his hereditary honours. Another difficulty arose with regard to the choice of his personal attendants. It was deemed inadvisable to allow him to appoint a private secretary for himself. A German was not reckoned fit for the post. Melbourne nominated his own private secretary, George Anson.

Marriage, 10 Feb. 1840.
Meanwhile the marriage was fixed for 10 Feb. Before the parliamentary wrangle ended, Lord Torrington and Colonel Grey had been sent to Coburg to invest the prince with the insignia of the Garter, and to conduct him to England. On 28 Jan. the prince with his father and brother left Coburg. At Brussels he met his uncle Leopold. On 7 Feb. he was at Dover. Next day he was received with much enthusiasm in London, and on reaching Buckingham Palace the oaths of naturalisation were administered to him by the lord chancellor. On the 10th the wedding took place in the chapel of St. James's Palace, and after an elaborate breakfast at Buckingham Palace the bride and bridegroom drove to Windsor amid vociferous acclamations. Two days later they were visited by the Duchess of Kent, the Duke of Coburg, and others, and on 14 Feb. returned to London. On 19 Feb. the queen held a levee, and the prince stood at her left hand.

III.

Prince Albert's character and influence on the queen.
With her marriage a new era in the queen's life and reign began. From a personal point of view the union realised the highest ideal of which matrimony is capable. The queen's love for her husband was without alloy, and invested him in her sight with every perfection. He, on his part, reciprocated her affection, and he made her happiness the main object of his life. Intellectually and morally he was worthy of his position. He was admirably educated; his interests were wide; he was devoted to art, science, and literature; his life was scrupulously well ordered; he was sagacious, philanthropic, conscientious, and unselfish. His example and influence gave new weight and stability to the queen's character and temperament, and her knowledge and experience grew. But outside the domestic circle the prince was not liked. He was cold and distant in manner, and his bearing, both mental and physical, was held to be characteristically German. It was out of harmony with the habitual ease and levity of the English aristocracy. He had no active sense of humour, no enthusiasm for field sports, no vices; he abhorred late hours, and did not conceal his disdain for many of the recreations in which the English leisured classes indulged. His public position was at the same time ill-defined. There was a jealous fear that his private influence with the queen and his foreign prejudices might affect her public action. Resentment at any possible interference by him in affairs of state quickly spread abroad. Although Melbourne gave the queen permission to show him official papers, he was during the first two years of his settlement in England excluded from her interviews with ministers. He felt his position to be one of humiliation. He was ‘the husband, not the master of the house,’ he wrote in May 1840 to his friend, Prince William of Löwenstein.
It was never with the queen's concurrence that he filled a rank in her household subordinate to herself. On 28 Dec. 1841 she wrote in her journal: ‘He ought to be, and is above me in everything really, and therefore I wish that he should be equal in rank with me.’ As his abilities came to be recognised by ministers, they gradually yielded to her persuasion to take him fully into their counsels. He was allowed to act as her private secretary. The cares of maternity were soon to distract her on occasion from the details of public duty, and her dependence on her husband in all relations naturally increased. Ultimately Prince Albert assumed in behalf of his wife in reality, although not in form, most of her responsibilities, and his share in the rule of the country through most of the twenty-one years of their married life is indistinguishable from hers. ‘Lord Melbourne was very useful to me,’ she said many years afterwards, ‘but I can never be sufficiently thankful that I passed safely through those two years to my marriage. Then I was in a safe haven, and there I remained for twenty[-one] years,’ (Prothero, Life of Dean Stanley, ii. 127).

The prince's public position.
As soon as the prince finally settled down to his new life he regarded it as his duty (as he wrote in 1850 to the Duke of Wellington) to ‘fill up every gap which, as a woman, she would naturally leave in the exercise of her regal functions, continually and anxiously to watch every part of the public business, in order to be able to advise and assist her at any moment, in any of the multifarious and difficult questions or duties brought before her, sometimes international, sometimes political, or social, or personal.’ He claimed to be of right ‘the natural head of her family, superintendent of her household, manager of her private affairs, sole confidential adviser in politics, and only assistant in the communications with the officers of the government.’ At the same time he was, he pointed out, ‘the husband of the queen, the tutor of the royal children, the private secretary of the sovereign, and her permanent minister.’ The defect and danger of such a claim lay, according to the constitution of the country, in the fact that the prince was under no parliamentary control, and his description of himself as the queen's ‘permanent minister’ was in exact. Substantially, however, the statement truthfully represented the prince's functions and occupation during his career as Queen Victoria's consort. But a large section of the public never willingly acquiesced in his exercise of so much activity and authority. Until his death he had to run the gauntlet of a galling and unceasing public criticism, and the queen, despite her wealth of domestic happiness, was rarely free from the sense of discomfort and anxiety which was bred of a consciousness that many of her subjects viewed her husband with dislike or suspicion. But from 1841 to 1861, the date of his death, the fact is unassailable that Prince Albert had as good a right as the queen to be regarded as the ruler of the British realm.

Changes in the palace.
On the queen's marriage the Duchess of Kent at once removed from the royal palace, and the Baroness Lehzen soon afterwards retired from the queen's service. These changes in the royal household disposed of checks which might have seriously limited the development of Prince Albert's influence. The supersession of both mother and gouvernante was effected without friction. The curmudgeonly king of Hanover declined the queen's request to give up to the Duchess of Kent his apartments in St. James's Palace which he never occupied, and thereupon the queen rented for her mother Ingestre House, Belgrave Square, at 2,000l. a year; but on the death of the Princess Augusta in September, Clarence House, St. James's Palace, was made over to her, together with Frogmore Lodge at Windsor. Hardly a day passed without the exchange of visits. As a rule, the duchess both lunched and dined with her daughter. The Baroness Lehzen left England in October 1842 for her native country of Hanover, finally settling with a sister at Bückeburg (cf. Bloomfield, Reminiscences, i. 215). For many years the queen found time to write her a letter once a week, an interval which was subsequently lengthened to a month at the baroness's own considerate request; the correspondence was maintained until the baroness's death in 1870. Stockmar alone of the queen's early confidential attendants retained his position after her marriage; until 1857 he spent the autumn, winter, and spring of each year with the queen and Prince Albert, and occupied rooms in their palaces. On every domestic or public question that arose both the queen and prince looked to him for private guidance.

First attempt on the queen's life, 10 June 1840.
Amid the festivities which celebrated the early days of married life general alarm was caused by an attack on the queen's life. The outrage had no political significance, and served to increase her popularity. On 10 June a brainless potboy, Edward Oxford, fired two shots at her from a pistol as she was driving through the Green Park from Buckingham Palace to Hyde Park Corner. She was unhurt, and to all appearance unmoved, and after making a call at her mother's house to assure her of her safety, she continued her customary drive in Hyde Park. The lad was arrested and was mercifully pronounced to be insane. Addresses of congratulation were presented by both houses of parliament. On 12 June 1840¾two days after the incident¾a concert was given at Buckingham Palace under Costa's direction, and the queen herself took part in no less than five numbers, singing in a duet with Prince Albert, and in a trio with Signors Rubini and Lablache, and in three choruses. A week or two later a magnificent reception was accorded her at Ascot. Next month the approaching birth of an heir to the throne was announced, and, in accordance with the queen's wish, a bill was passed constituting Prince Albert regent in case of her death, provided that he did not remarry a catholic and that he resided in the country. Prince Albert, by the advice of Stockmar, and with the full concurrence of Melbourne, had already given proofs of an anxiety to relieve the strained relations between the court and the tories. Their leaders had been entertained by the queen, and she had shown them marked civility. With the Duke of Wellington every effort was made to maintain cordial relations, and he reciprocated the advances with alacrity. The Duke of Sussex, whose critical attitude to the queen still caused her discomfort, was partially conciliated by the bestowal of the title of Duchess of Inverness on his morganatic wife, and in April, when the queen and Prince Albert attended a great ball at Lansdowne House, she permitted the new duchess to sup at the royal table. The pacific atmosphere which was thus engendered had the agreeable effect of stifling opposition to the nomination of Prince Albert to the regency. In the House of Lords the Duke of Sussex alone resisted it on the ground that the rights of ‘the family’ were ignored. On 11 Aug., when the queen prorogued parliament in person, the prince sat in an arm-chair next the throne, and, although objection was feared, none was raised. His predominance was treated as inevitable. On 28 Aug. he received the freedom of the city. On 11 Sept. he was admitted to the privy council. On 5 Feb. 1841 the queen ordered his name to be inserted in the liturgy.

Birth of princess royal.
Meanwhile, on 21 Nov., the queen's first child, a daughter, was born at Buckingham Palace. Her recovery from the confinement was rapid, and she removed to Windsor for the Christmas holidays. On 10 Feb., the anniversary of her marriage, the child, the princess royal of England, was baptised at Buckingham Palace in the names of Victoria Adelaide Mary Louisa. The sponsors were the prince's father, the queen's mother, and her uncle Leopold, besides the Dowager Queen Adelaide, the Duchess of Gloucester, and the Duke of Sussex. The Duke of Saxe-Coburg was unable to attend in person, and the queen by her own motion chose the Duke of Wellington to represent him. The last trace of animosity in regard to Wellington on account of his open objections to the queen's marriage was now removed. ‘He is,’ the queen wrote in her journal, ‘the best friend we have.’

Palmerston and the throne.

Political crisis with France.
Meanwhile politics were casting clouds on the joys of domestic life. The queen was to suffer, for the first of many times, that conflict of feeling between her private obligations to her foreign kindred and her public obligations to her country, which, despite an instinctive repugnance to unworthy concessions in the sphere of foreign diplomacy, was liable to involve her in difficulties with her advisers. Under Prince Albert's guidance and in accordance with her own predisposition, the queen regarded foreign affairs as peculiarly within the sovereign's province, and the prince, who with Melbourne's assent now enjoyed access to foreign despatches, claimed in behalf of the queen the full right to a voice in consultation before any action was taken by the government abroad. Palmerston, the masterful minister of foreign affairs, was reluctant to recognise the existence outside parliament of any check on his independence. This attitude at once caused vexation in the royal circle, and after prolonged heartburnings ultimately led to an open rupture. The immediate cause of divergence between the queen and her foreign minister was due to affairs in the east of Europe, which threatened a breach in the friendly relations of France and England. Egypt under her viceroy, Mehemet Ali, was seeking to cast off her allegiance to the sultan of Turkey. France encouraged the act of rebellion, while England and the rest of the great powers took Turkey under their protection. The queen and Prince Albert loathed the prospect of war with France, with whose sovereign, Louis Philippe, they had, through repeated intermarriages, close domestic relations; and the added likelihood that the dominions of her uncle and political ally, King Leopold, would, in case of war between England and France, be invaded by a French army filled the queen with alarm. Divisions in the cabinet encouraged resolute intervention on her part. In opposition to Lord John Russell's views, Palmerston, minister of foreign affairs, decided that the best way of dissipating all risk of French predominance in Egypt was to crush Mehemet Ali at once by force of English arms. The queen entreated Melbourne to reconcile his divided colleagues, to use his influence against Palmerston, and to seek a pacific settlement with France. But Palmerston stood firm. By his orders the British fleet forced Mehemet Ali to return to his allegiance to the sultan (November 1840). The minister's victory was more complete than he anticipated. Louis Philippe, to the general surprise, proved too pusillanimous to take the offensive in behalf of his friend in Egypt, and he finally joined the concert of the powers, who in July 1841 pledged themselves by treaty to maintain Turkey and Egypt in statu quo. The incident evoked in the French king, in his ministers, and in King Leopold a feeling of bitterness against Palmerston which found a ready echo in the minds of Queen Victoria and the prince.

Defeat of Melbourne.
Before this foreign crisis terminated, the retirement of Melbourne's ministry, which the queen had long dreaded, took place. The prospect of parting with Melbourne, her tried councillor, caused her pain. But, in anticipation of the event, hints had been given at Prince Albert's instance by the court officials to the tory leaders that the queen would interpose no obstacle to a change of government when it became inevitable, and would not resist such reconstruction of her household as might be needful. The blow fell in May. The whig ministers introduced a budget which tended towards free trade, and on their proposal to reduce the duty on sugar they were defeated by a majority of 36. Sir Robert Peel thereupon carried a vote of confidence against them by one vote. Moved by the queen's feelings, Melbourne, instead of resigning, appealed to the country. Parliament was dissolved on 29 June.
In June, amid the political excitement, the queen paid a visit to Archbishop Harcourt at Nuneham, and thence she and Prince Albert proceeded to Oxford to attend commemoration. The Duke of Wellington, the chancellor of the university, presided, and conferred on the prince an honorary degree. The queen was disturbed by the hisses which were levelled at the whig ministers who were present, but she was not the less willing on that account to give further proof of her attachment to them, and she seized the opportunity to pay a series of visits among the whig nobility. After spending a day or two with the Duke of Devonshire at Chatsworth, the royal party next month were entertained by the Duke of Bedford at Woburn Abbey and by Lord Cowper, Melbourne's nephew, at Panshanger. From Panshanger they went to lunch with Melbourne himself at his country residence, Brocket Park. The general election was proceeding at the time, and the whigs made the most out of the queen's known sympathy with them and of her alleged antipathy to their opponents. But, to the queen's dismay, a large tory majority was returned.

Second general election.

Acceptance of Peel's ministry.
The new parliament assembled on 19 Aug. 1841. For the first time in her reign the queen was absent and her speech was read by the lord chancellor, an indication that the constitution of the House of Commons was not to her liking. Melbourne's ministry remained in office till the last possible moment, but on 28 Aug. a vote of confidence was refused it by both houses of parliament; the same evening Melbourne saw the queen at Windsor and resigned his trust. She accepted his resignation in a spirit of deep dejectio