Crisis? What crisis?

In 1839, when the man in the street was busy joining the Chartist movement and founding the Anti-Corn Law League, the young Queen Victoria was busy involving herself in a typically Victorian bedroom scandal. Prime Minister Lord Melbourne of the Whig party (the party of the landowning ascendancy) wanted to resign, and recommended that Victoria should appoint Robert Peel of the up & coming, urban, reforming Tory party to succeed him. Victoria made Peel the offer, but he would only accept if Victoria made some changes to the personnel of her bedchamber. Many of her ladies-in-waiting were the wives of Whig politicians, and Peel thought that with their influence on the Queen behind closed doors, a Tory prime minister wouldn't last very long. He didn't have a majority in the Commons: besides which, he must have had a sense of inverted deja-vu.

For Peel had been Prime Minister once already. In 1834, Lord Melbourne had succeeded Earl Grey as PM, with a large Commons majority for the Whigs. Those were troubled times, and even though Melbourne wasn't a natural reformer, he felt pressured into adopting a reform agenda to avoid a revolution. King William IV however thought he was going too far, and replaced Melbourne with Peel. Peel failed to gain a majority in the 1835 election, so within a year Melbourne was back in again. In fact that turned out to be the last time an English sovereign would sack a Prime Minister: but of course only 5 years later, Peel wasn't to know that. If he was going to take the job on again, things would have to be different.

Unfortunately for him, the 19-year-old Victoria was barely 2 years into her reign and also needed to make a show of strength. She refused to make any changes to her boudoir line-up. Peel turned the job down and Melbourne agreed to stay on. Fortunately for Peel, he didn't have to wait very long to get the job on acceptable terms. By the time he won a comfortable majority in the 1841 election, Victoria had married her Prince Albert, and with a strong man on hand could be trusted not to have her head turned by her attendants' Whig wiles.




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