THE BEDCHAMBER PLOT (1839).I.The Queen and Lord Melbourne.
Source.—Letters of Queen Victoria: 1837-1861, vol. i., p. 204.(London: 1907.)
Lord Melbourne presents his humble duty to your Majesty, and begs to suggest that if Sir Robert Peel presses for the dismissal of those of your Household who are not in Parliament, you may observe that in so doing he is pressing your Majesty more hardly than any Minister ever pressed a Sovereign before.
When the Government was changed in 1830, the principal posts of the Household were placed at the disposal of Lord Grey, but the Grooms and Equerries were not removed.
When Sir Robert Peel himself became Minister in 1834, no part of the Household were removed except those who were in Parliament.
When I became Prime Minister again in 1835, none of the Grooms or Equerries were removed because none of them were in Parliament.
They press upon your Majesty, whose personal feelings ought from your circumstances to be more consulted, a measure which no Minister before ever pressed upon a Sovereign.
If this is put to him by your Majesty, Lord Melbourne does not see how he can resist it.
The Queen writes one line to prepare Lord Melbourne for whatmayhappen in a very few hours. Sir Robert Peel has behaved very ill, and has insisted on my giving up my Ladies, to which I replied that I neverwould consent, and I never saw a man so frightened. He said he must go to the Duke of Wellington and consult with him, when both would return, and he said this must suspend all further proceedings, and he asked whether I should be ready to receive a decision, which I said I should; he was quite perturbed—but this isinfamous. I said, besides many other things, that if he or the Duke of Wellington had been at the head of the Government when I came to the Throne, perhaps there might have been a few more Tory Ladies, but that then if you had come in Office you would never havedreamtof changing them. I was calm but very decided, and I think you would have been pleased to see my composure and great firmness; the Queen of England will not submit to such trickery. Keep yourself in readiness, for you may soon be wanted.
Lord Melbourne presents his humble duty to your Majesty. This is a matter of so much importance, and may have such grave results, that any advice which Lord Melbourne could give would be of little importance unless it coincided with the opinions of others, and particularly of all those who were and intend still to continue to be his colleagues.
It will depend upon their determination whether your Majesty is to be supported or not. The best course will perhaps be that you should have Sir Robert Peel’s determination, say nothing, but send for Lord Melbourne, and lay the matter before him. Lord Melbourne will then summon a Cabinet to consider of it.
J. W. Croker to the King of Hanover. May 11.
The mission of Sir Robert Peel failed upon what I may call an abstract principle—the right of the Minister to interfere at all in the female household. No lady’s name was mentioned by Sir Robert, for on hissaying to the Queen, “As to ladies of the household” her Majesty is said to have interrupted him at once by saying: “Oh, I do not mean to make any change among them.” This is the sum of the whole affair. Sir Robert Peel could not admit the broad principle that all were to remain. Lady Normanby (whom the Queen particularly wishes for), for instance, the wife of the very Minister whose measures have been the cause of the change, two sisters of Lord Morpeth, the sisters-in-law of Lord John Russell, the daughter of the Privy Seal and Chancellor of the Exchequer. Your Majesty sees that though Sir Robert might, and I have no doubt would, have left the great body of the female attendants, he could not possibly have submitted to have the hostile party thus in possession of the personal favour, friendship, and confidence of the Queen. The general opinion is that this scheme was prepared even before the resignation, and that the whole has been a trick, though for my part I cannot see how it betters the position of the Whigs....
Her Majesty’s ball last night was, I am told, rather dull, though she herself seemed in high spirits, as if she were pleased at retaining her Ministers.
It is a high trial to our institutions when the wishes of a Princess of nineteen can overturn a great Ministerial combination, and when the most momentous matters of Government and legislation are influenced by her pleasure about the ladies of the Bedchamber.... The origin of the present mischief may be found in the objectionable composition of the Royal Household at the Accession. The Queen knew nobody, and was ready to take any ladies that Melbourne recommended to her. He ought to have taken care that the female part of her household should not have a political complexion, instead of making it exclusively Whig, as, unfortunately for her, he did; nor is it little matter of wonder that Melbourne should have consented to support her in such a case, and thathe and his colleagues should have consented to act the strange, anomalous, unconstitutional part they have done.... To have met as a Cabinet, and to have advised her what answer to send to the man who still held her commission for forming a Government upon points relating to its formation, is utterly anomalous and unprecedented.