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
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