Bedchamber crisis

It began after Whig politician William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne declared his intention to resign as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom after a government bill passed by a very narrow margin of only five votes in the House of Commons.

She was partial to Melbourne, and resisted the requests of his rival Robert Peel to replace some of her ladies-in-waiting, who were primarily from Whig-aligned families, with Conservative substitutes as a condition for forming a government.

After the Whig government bill passed by a narrow margin on 7 May 1839, the prime minister, William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne, declared his intention to resign.

She was dismayed at the thought of losing her first, and so far only, Prime Minister, the avuncular Melbourne, a wise and kindly father-figure to her in the first years of her reign—her own father, the Duke of Kent, had died when she was an infant.

[3] Late in life Victoria regretted her youthful intransigence, writing to her private secretary, Arthur Bigge: "I was very young then, and perhaps I should act differently if it was all to be done again.