III.

Early Reign

Immediately after becoming queen, Victoria began regular meetings with William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne, the British prime minister at the time. The two grew very close, and Melbourne taught Victoria how the British government worked on a day-to-day basis.

Britain in the 19th century was a constitutional monarchy, and the king or queen ruled through ministers who were members of, and required the support of, the British Parliament. This meant that the monarch had some influence in government, but not a great deal of real power. In the course of her reign, Queen Victoria played a role in appointing some cabinet ministers (and even a prime minister), as well as particular ambassadors and bishops of the Church of England, and she consulted regularly with her prime ministers by letter and in person. In private, Victoria was never afraid to speak her mind. Much of her time, however, was devoted to ceremonial activities such as the official opening and closing of each year’s session of Parliament.

Victoria was very fond of Melbourne, and because he was the leader of the Whig Party (which later became the Liberal Party), Victoria began publicly to support the Whigs rather than the opposition party, the Tories (later the Conservative Party). The Whigs were sympathetic to freedom of speech and of the press and favored greater religious liberty for those people who did not belong to the official Church of England. The Tories were more concerned with maintaining the country’s established institutions and with making no further legal concessions to religious minorities.

The young queen hoped that the Whigs would continue to keep a majority of seats in the House of Commons (the lower house of the British Parliament) so that Melbourne could remain prime minister. When it appeared in 1839 that he might have to give up the post, the queen successfully used her influence to keep him. In the so-called Bedchamber Crisis, she refused to allow Tory leader Sir Robert Peel to change the ladies-in-waiting of her court, all of whom were Whig sympathizers. Peel then felt unable to form a government, and Melbourne continued as prime minister for two more years. A general election in 1841 resulted in a majority of Tory party members in the House of Commons, however, and Victoria was compelled to accept Peel as prime minister.