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,
George Cowper, 6th Earl Cowper George Cowper, 6th Earl Cowper George Augustus Frederick Cowper, 6th Earl Cowper (26 June 1806 – 15 April 1856), styled Viscount Fordwich until 1837, was a British Whig politician. He served briefly as Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs under his uncle Lord Melbourne in 1834. Cowper was the eldest son of Peter Clavering-Cowper, 5th Earl Cowper, and his wife Emily Lamb, daughter of Peniston Lamb, 1st Viscount Melbourne, sister of Prime Minister William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne, and a leading figure in Regency society. William Cowper-Temple, 1st Baron Mount Temple, was his younger brother. His mother married as her