[1] She was a young woman of great beauty, intelligence and strong character, who quickly came to dominate her husband completely, and steered them into the centre of polite society.

Only the first-born son can be definitively attributed to Lord Melbourne due to his wife's many affairs.

[10] Their one serious quarrel was caused by the death of their eldest son Pen (who was undoubtedly Melbourne's child); he angrily refused to make the same allowance to William (who was almost certainly not Melbourne's child) as he had given Pen, suggesting that he felt some degree of resentment of his wife's conduct.

Nathaniel Wraxall wrote of Melbourne that he was "principally known by the distinguished place that he occupies in the annals of meretricious pleasure, the memoirs of Mrs. Bellamy or Mrs. Baddeley, the sirens and courtesans of a former age".

[1] Melbourne's children regarded him with what has been described as "kindly contempt": his daughter Emily said that he was always going wrong and they were always having to put him right, and that although he was not a heavy drinker, he always seemed drunk.