Melbourne Hall second Lord Melbourne, Queen Victoria's Prime Minister, was separated from his wife, Lady Caroline Lamb, in 1825, when her liaison with Lord Byron had become notorious. The house passed into the hands of the Cowper family when Emily Lamb, sister of the childless third and last Viscount Melbourne, married the 5th Earl Cowper. (She later married another Prime Minister, Lord Palmerston.) It remained in the Cowper family until Lady Amabel Cowper married Admiral of the Fleet Lord Walter Kerr who made Melbourne the family home in 1906. The current owner Lord Ralph Kerr also owns Ferniehirst Castle in Scotland. He
Frederick Lamb, 3rd Viscount Melbourne marriage: even though Alexandrina was more than thirty years her husband's junior, he was described as being "as handsome and debonair at sixty as he had been at twenty-five." William, Frederick and their sister Emily Lamb, Countess Cowper remained close all their lives, although Frederick and Emily disliked William's wife Lady Caroline Lamb, whom they called "the little beast". He served as British Ambassador to Vienna ending in 1841. He was invested as a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath and admitted to the Privy Council in 1822. In 1839 he was raised to the peerage as