William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne fall. The king and the Duke of Wellington urged him to stay on as prime minister. After Norton failed in court, Melbourne was vindicated, but he did stop seeing Norton. Nonetheless, as historian Boyd Hilton concludes, "it is irrefutable that Melbourne's personal life was problematic. Spanking sessions with aristocratic ladies were harmless, not so the whippings administered to orphan girls taken into his household as objects of charity." Melbourne was Prime Minister when Queen Victoria came to the throne (June 1837). Barely eighteen, she was only just breaking free from the domineering influence of her mother, the Duchess of Kent,
William Ward, 3rd Viscount Dudley and Ward John, who served as Foreign Secretary and was created Earl of Dudley in 1827. William Ward, 3rd Viscount Dudley and Ward William Ward, 3rd Viscount Dudley and Ward (21 January 1750 – 25 April 1823) was a British peer and politician. Ward was the son of John Ward, 1st Viscount Dudley and Ward, by his second wife Mary (née Carver). He was elected to the House of Commons for Worcester in 1780, a seat he held until 1788, when he succeeded his half-brother in the viscountcy and entered the House of Lords. He married Julia, daughter of Godfrey Bosvile, in