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 Lamb (politician) George Lamb (politician) The Hon. George Lamb (11 July 1784 – 2 January 1834) was a British politician and writer. The youngest son of Peniston Lamb, 1st Viscount Melbourne, and his wife Elizabeth, and the brother of William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne, Frederick Lamb, 3rd Viscount Melbourne, and Emily Lamb, Countess Cowper, he was educated at Eton College and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated MA in 1805. On 17 May 1809, he married Caroline Rosalie Adelaide St. Jules, the illegitimate daughter of William Cavendish, 5th Duke of Devonshire, by his mistress (and eventual second wife) Lady Elizabeth Foster. In