William IV. died in the early hours of June 20, 1837, and the archbishop of Canterbury and the lord chamber lain, hastening with the news of the king's death to Kensington, were received by Victoria in her dressing-gown at 5 A.M. In the morning the privy council assembled at Kensington, and the usual oaths were administered to the queen by the lord chancel 'or. The grace and dignity of Victoria's demeanour on this occasion made an immense impression on all present. Romantic sentiment was very much in fashion, and the accession of the girl-queen carried an almost instinctive conviction to her subjects that a new, and much better, epoch in the long history of English monarchy had begun.
An important and welcome result of the accession of a female sovereign was the separation of the crowns of Great Britain and Hanover, the latter passing to William IV.'s next surviving brother, the deservedly unpopular duke of Cumberland. The separation of the two crowns was indeed even more important than could be realized at the time. Thirty years later Prussia, under Bismarck's guidance, annexed the Hanoverian kingdom. It is impossible to estimate the complications that would have arisen if the Hanoverian crown had still belonged to the British sovereign.
The young queen entered with intense zest upon her new freedom, her new interests and her new duties. "I have," she wrote, "so many communications from the Ministers, and from me to them, and I get so many papers to sign every day, that I have always a very great deal to do. I delight in this work." After 18 years of seclusion, zealously supervised by the duchess and Lehzen, with scarcely any male society except Uncle Leopold and sundry tutors, it was a delight to do business with the great men of the land. But all other great men were eclipsed in her eyes by her prime minister, Lord Melbourne. The story of that romantic friendship has often been told. The queen had neces sarily much to learn about the elements of domestic and foreign policy, and the art and tact of Melbourne made such lessons a pleasure. But the statesman's unlimited influence was not in all respects wisely used. Himself the leader of the Whig party, he surrounded the queen with Whig ladies, and allowed her to be come an enthusiastic partizan of the Whig party. The duchess of Kent had been rigorously excluded from all share in the queen's political duties. A spiteful rivalry arose between the ladies of the duchess and of the queen, culminating in baseless accusations of immoral conduct against Lady Flora Hastings, a maid of honour to the duchess of Kent. Before the first year of the reign was over the queen's court, had, temporarily, sunk low in the esteem of high society, and it is impossible to believe that Melbourne could not, with more vigilance, have prevented these scandals. The loyalty of the nation as a whole, however,
was probably unimpaired, and the coronation ceremony, on June 28, 1838, with the royal procession through the streets of London, provided an impressive demonstration of that loy alty.
In May 1839 Lord Melbourne resigned, and Sir Robert Peel, the Conservative leader, stipulated that the mistress of the robes and the ladies of the bedchamber appointed by his predecessor should be removed. The queen refused. Lord Melbourne urged her to give way, but he could not undo in a minute the results of his own work, and, when Peel had refused to take office with the ladies unchanged, Melbourne very weakly consented to resume office. The next few months witnessed Chartist riots and demon strations more extensive than any before or afterwards, and denunciation of the queen's conduct was a popular item in Chartist propaganda.
certain other respects the queen's manner of life during these first years of her reign was in marked contrast with what was to follow. She preferred the gaiety of the town to the peace of the country, delighted in social festivities and late hours, and even rebuked those whose judgments of others seemed to her over-strict and puritanical. Long afterwards she wrote to Mr. Theodore Martin, the author of the Life of the Prince Consort : "The Queen's letters between '37 and '4o are not pleasing, and indeed rather painful to herself. It was the least sensible and satisfactory time in her whole life. . . . That life of mere amuse ment, flattery, excitement, and mere politics, had a bad effect on her naturally simple and serious nature. But all changed after '4o." 1840-1861 Marriage.—It had long been Leopold's design that Victoria should marry his nephew Prince Albert, son of the duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. Albert, who was the same age as Victoria, had visited her before her accession, and had since been carefully coached for his prospective career by Baron Stockmar. Stockmar was one of the most important and least conspicuous figures of 19th century history. Originally a doctor of medicine, he had long been the intimate adviser of Leopold, and he was now to be transferred to the service of Albert. He was very able, with an ambition which found its sole satisfaction in securing the great ness of his successive masters. It has been said with little exag geration that Albert was "Stockmar's creation," and one may add that Victoria as revealed from 1840 onwards was the creation of Albert. During the Melbourne ascendancy the queen had rather alarmingly declared that she did not see why she should ever marry, but when Albert arrived on a visit in Oct. 1839, Victoria capitulated at once, and the engagement was announced. The marriage was solemnized on Feb. I 0, 1840, the queen being dressed entirely in articles of British manufacture.