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 Ponsonby, 1st Baron de Mauley December 1832. At the 1832 UK general election he was elected MP for Dorset and held the seat until 1837. In 1838 he was created Baron de Mauley. Whilst an MP for Poole, Ponsonby and Benjamin Lester opened Poole's first public library in 1830. When the marriage of his sister Lady Caroline Lamb to William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne, began to break up, he strongly supported Caroline. Unfortunately he was not noted for tact or intelligence—Melbourne's sister Emily Lamb, Countess Cowper, described him as being universally regarded as "an ass and a jackanapes". Ponsonby reminded Melbourne that the Lamb family