Queen Victoria: the waning of power (1)

Queen Victoria: the coronation portrait
by George Hayter
Royal Collection
Public domain

Victoria's reign is long and complex. Rather than consider every aspect, this and the following post have one main theme: the slow draining away of power from the monarchy in the nineteenth century. Victoria resented this development, but the growth of political parties and the widening of the franchise made it inevitable.

The 'Kensington system': a restricted childhood

In November 1817 Princess Charlotte, the daughter of the Prince Regent, died in childbirth. This unexpected death threw the succession open and the Regent's brothers made haste to acquire wives and legitimate children. Edward, duke of Kent, the fourth son of George III, proposed to Victoire of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld. She was the thirty-year-old widowed elder sister of Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, Princess Charlotte's widower. She already had two children, Carl, Prince of Leningen, born 1804 and Fedora, born 1807. In May they were married at the Ehrenburg Palace in Coburg. A second marriage took place at Kew Palace in July.

When Victoria was born at Kensington Palace on 24 May 1819, her birth went virtually unnoticed. It was by no means certain that she would inherit the throne, as her father had three elder brothers and her parents’ next child might be a son. She was baptised Alexandrina Victoria after her godfather, Tsar Alexander I of Russia, and her mother, and in her early childhood was known as ‘Drina’. For a while both names were thought unacceptably foreign. 

Events brought Victoria closer to the throne. The Duke of Kent died in January 1820, and the Duke of Clarence’s infant daughter died in the summer. On the death of George IV in 1830 and the accession of the childless William IV (Clarence), Victoria became heiress presumptive.

Behind her angelic looks lay a fiery temper and pronounced likes and dislikes. When she was older her tutor, the Revd. George Davys, who worked hard to obliterate her German accent, wrote in his journal, ‘She seems to have a will of her own’. Her early years were dominated by a sense of powerlessness. She had a fraught relationship with her mother and resented her attempts to control her and in particular the influence of Sir John Conroy, the controller of the duchess's household. There were unfounded rumours that the duchess and Conroy were lovers and it has even been speculated (though without evidence) that Conroy was Victoria’s father.

The Duchess of Kent and Princess Victoria
by Henry Bone
Public domain
The portrait suggests a
harmony that did not exist.

The duchess and Conroy followed ‘the Kensington system’ designed to keep the princess’s education entirely in her mother’s hands and to keep her away from court. Victoria later blamed this system for her unhappiness as a child. However it enabled the princess to be presented as an unspoiled child, in no way associated with the extravagance of the court.


While her mother and Conroy were doing their best to mould her, the most important influences on the young Victoria were her German governess, Baroness Louise Lehzen and her uncle, King Leopold of the Belgians, the widower of Princess Charlotte. With her death, he had lost his chance to influence British politics, but Victoria presented him with another opportunity.

At the end of September 1835, Victoria, her mother and Conroy, went to Ramsgate to welcome Leopold, who was paying a visit from Belgium. She became ill and for a while her life was in danger. Conroy entered her bedroom and tried to make her promise to make him her unofficial private secretary and her mother regent. Sick though she was, Victoria refused. Victoria refused. An attempt had been made to deprive her of power – and she had resisted.

Accession

William IV died on 20 June 1837, a month after Victoria came of age. Almost her first action was to request that her bed be moved from her mother’s room and made up in her own chamber. She then received her Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne, ‘of COURSE quite ALONE’. She saw her accession as her moment of emancipation. The Kensington system had failed.Conroy was banished from her presence and though the Duchess of Kent continued to attend her in public, she was kept out of her counsels. Victoria never sought her advice.This left her free to make her own mistakes – and to be blamed for them.

Victoria receives the news of her accession
Henry Tanworth Wells
Public domain

Her position was a tricky one. She was the first female sovereign since the death of Queen Anne in 1714. One immediate result of her accession was the severing of the link with Hanover, which did not allow female succession.

Queen Victoria’s first political decision was to retain her uncle’s prime minister, Lord Melbourne. The two developed a deep affection for each other. But Melbourne was a Whig and her surrounded her with active Whig partisans. By the end of 1837 the Tories were calling her ‘Mrs Melbourne’ and ‘the Queen of the Whigs’.

The 'Bedchamber Crisis'

In May 1839 Melbourne resigned and Victoria was in despair. She sent for the Duke of Wellington, who referred her to the Tory leader, Sir Robert Peel, a man she disliked intensely. Peel told her that he could only serve as prime minister if she made ‘some changes’ in her ladies of the bedchamber so that she would no longer be surrounded by Whig ladies only. She refused to give in, and in doing so, she created a constitutional crisis. Peel refused to serve as prime minister, and Albert was back in power.

She wrote to Uncle Leopold, who approved of her action, ‘You will easily imagine that I firmly resisted this attack upon my power’.  She remained in constant touch with Melbourne, who also approved. In fact, she had shown weakness. The Tories and radicals attacked her in the press. She had staved off a Tory ministry, but this did not prevent Peel being returned as prime minister in the general election of 1841. The will of the monarch could not preside over the decision of the electorate.

Enter Albert

Victoria first met her cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, when he and his brother Ernest visited England in 1836, the year before she became queen. As a penniless prince from a small duchy, he was not thought to be much of a catch.

On Albert’s second visit to England in 1839, Victoria proposed to him. This breach with convention aroused much comment - some of it amused, some hostile. As there had not been a husband of a reigning queen since Anne’s nondescript consort, Prince George of Denmark, there were no precedents for how to treat Albert

Her marriage was criticised; she was marrying a German and she was costing the country too much money at a time of great hardship. She would be dominated by him. Victoria was furious when Parliament refused to make Albert a peer as this would set him lower in precedence than his future sons. However, she was able to make him a Knight of the Garter, an honour which is in the gift of the sovereign.

The couple were married in February 1840 in the Chapel Royal at St James’s Palace. Victoria promised to obey. There was a moment of embarrassment when Albert promised to endow her with all his worldly goods. After the wedding the couple travelled to Windsor.

Prince Albert, by John Partridge
painted in 1840, the year of his wedding
Royal Collection
Public domain

Victoria quickly became pregnant, and her first child, Victoria, was born in November 1840, with Bertie, the Prince of Wales, born in the following year. Seven more pregnancies were to follow.

Albert: the real ruler?

From the start of the marriage, Albert was frustrated at his ambivalent role and resented his apparent subordination to his wife. But Victoria's many pregnancies presented him with his opportunity. He persuaded her to support Sir Robert Peel, a prime minister she had previously disliked, and, controversially, went out of his way to show his support for Peel at the time of the great debate over the Corn Laws. For this, he was much criticised by the Conservative opposition. But he won much praise for his key role in the success of the Great Exhibition of 1851. 

Victoria had now convinced herself that women were not meant to rule and that she could not be able to fulfil her duties as a queen and a mother without him. Albert’s dominance was total. He now personally drafted all Victoria’s official correspondence and she simply copied it out. The queen who had been so eager to exert her power at the beginning of her reign, now seemed ready to abdicate it. What would happen when Albert died?