Queen Victoria's Accession (1837): The Start of an Era

Queen Victoria’s accession took place on 20 June 1837, when King William IV died and his eighteen-year-old niece Victoria became Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Woken at Kensington Palace to hear the news at dawn, she held her first Privy Council that morning and was crowned a year later in Westminster Abbey. Her reign of more than 63 years gave its name to the Victorian era, a period of industrial growth, imperial expansion and political reform.

Background: a succession crisis

At the start of the nineteenth century there seemed to be no shortage of royal heirs. King George III had fifteen children, and his son, the future George IV, had a daughter, Princess Charlotte, who was expected one day to reign. Her death in childbirth in November 1817 changed everything, because none of George III’s other sons had a legitimate child who had survived.

Several of the king’s middle-aged sons hurried to marry and produce heirs. Edward, Duke of Kent, the fourth son, married Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, a widowed German princess, in 1818. Their only child was born at Kensington Palace on 24 May 1819 and christened Alexandrina Victoria. Her father died suddenly in January 1820, when she was eight months old, a few days before George III.

Growing up as heir

Because the Duke of Kent’s elder brothers, George IV and the future William IV, left no surviving legitimate children, Victoria moved steadily closer to the throne. When William IV succeeded in 1830, she became heir presumptive, and a Regency Act named her mother as regent should the king die before Victoria turned eighteen.

Her upbringing at Kensington Palace was strict and isolated. Her mother and the ambitious comptroller of her household, Sir John Conroy, developed what became known as the Kensington System: Victoria was never allowed to sleep alone or walk downstairs without holding someone’s hand, and her contacts with the court and the king’s family were closely controlled. Conroy hoped to dominate her through a regency or a long period of influence after she came of age.

Her governess, Louise Lehzen, was her closest companion. Lehzen later recalled that when Victoria learned of her position in 1830 she declared that she would be good, a story often repeated though it rests on Lehzen’s later memory. Victoria was also taken on journeys around England and Wales so that the public could see her. The king resented these “royal progresses”, which he regarded as presumptuous displays staged by the Duchess and Conroy.

Her education was thorough by the standards of the time. She learned history, languages including French, German and Italian, drawing and music, and she began keeping a journal at the age of thirteen, a habit she maintained for the rest of her life. Those journals, later partly edited by her daughter Princess Beatrice, are a major source for her early years.

William IV disliked the Duchess of Kent and openly hoped to live until Victoria was of age. At a birthday dinner in August 1836 he publicly said he wished to survive until she turned eighteen, so that the realm would not fall into the hands of a regent he distrusted. The outburst humiliated the Duchess in front of her guests.

The king’s wish was granted. Victoria turned eighteen on 24 May 1837, and William, who had been ill for some time, died at Windsor Castle in the early hours of 20 June 1837, less than a month later. Victoria came to the throne in her own right with no regency, and Conroy’s plans collapsed.

The morning of 20 June 1837

After the king’s death the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Howley, and the Lord Chamberlain, the Marquess Conyngham, rode from Windsor to Kensington, arriving around five o’clock. They had to wait before Victoria was woken by her mother at about six. She received them alone, in her dressing gown, and was told that she was now queen.

That day she wrote in her journal that she was “very young and perhaps in many, though not in all things, inexperienced”, but resolved to do her duty to her country. At about half past eleven she held her first Privy Council in the Red Saloon at Kensington Palace. Ministers and privy counsellors were struck by her composure, and the scene was later painted by Sir David Wilkie.

On 21 June she was formally proclaimed at St James’s Palace. She chose to reign under her second name, Victoria, rather than Alexandrina. Within weeks she moved out of her mother’s rooms, sharply reduced Conroy’s influence, and on 13 July 1837 took up residence at Buckingham Palace, becoming the first monarch to live there.

Lord Melbourne and the first years

The young queen came to rely heavily on the Whig Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne, who acted as a political tutor and almost a father figure, spending hours with her each day. Melbourne, then 58 and a widower whose only son had died the previous year, found in the young queen a new purpose, while she valued his wit, experience and gentle advice on everything from politics to reading. Her obvious partiality for the Whigs drew criticism. In the Bedchamber Crisis of May 1839 she refused to replace Whig ladies of her household with Tory ones, causing Sir Robert Peel to decline to form a government and keeping Melbourne in office for two more years.

The same year, the scandal surrounding Lady Flora Hastings, a lady-in-waiting falsely suspected of being pregnant who in fact had a fatal tumour, damaged the queen’s early popularity. Victoria’s marriage to her cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, on 10 February 1840 brought a new adviser and a more stable court.

The coronation of 1838

Victoria was crowned in Westminster Abbey on 28 June 1838. The government organised a public procession through London, and hundreds of thousands of people came to watch. The ceremony was costlier than William IV’s modest coronation but far cheaper than the lavish event staged for George IV in 1821.

The day was memorable for its mishaps as well as its splendour. The coronation ring had been made for her little finger but the Archbishop forced it onto her fourth finger, and the elderly Lord Rolle stumbled and fell on the steps while paying homage, prompting the queen to step forward to help him. Victoria described the day at length in her journal, recording her pride at the reception she received. A large fair was held in Hyde Park, and towns across the country marked the day with public dinners, processions and illuminations.

Consequences: the end of the Hanoverian union

Victoria’s accession separated the crowns of Britain and Hanover, united under one monarch since George I arrived from Germany in 1714. Hanover followed Salic law, which excluded women from the succession, so her uncle Ernest Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, became King of Hanover. Many in Britain welcomed his departure, as he was unpopular and reactionary. Until Victoria had children of her own, Ernest Augustus also remained her heir presumptive in Britain, a prospect that made her early health and marriage matters of national concern.

The accession also tested the constitutional settlement. The monarch still chose the Prime Minister and could influence policy, but after 1832 governments depended more on majorities in the reformed House of Commons. Victoria’s early mistakes, such as the Bedchamber Crisis, showed the limits of royal power, and under Albert’s guidance she gradually withdrew from open party favouritism.

Legacy: the start of the Victorian age

Victoria came to the throne at a moment of rapid change. The Great Reform Act of 1832 had just reshaped Parliament, the Slavery Abolition Act had taken effect in 1834, and railways were spreading across the country. In the very year of her accession the first practical electric telegraph, the Cooke and Wheatstone telegraph, was patented, and within a year the Chartist movement began its campaign for the vote.

Her reign of 63 years and 7 months, until her death on 22 January 1901, became the longest in British history until it was surpassed by Elizabeth II in 2015. Through her nine children and their marriages, she became known as the “grandmother of Europe”. The adjective “Victorian” came to describe an age of industrial power, empire, scientific progress and distinctive social values.

Myths and facts

Victoria is often described as Britain’s first reigning queen, but Mary I, Elizabeth I, Mary II and Anne had all reigned before her. She was, however, the first queen regnant for more than a century.

The phrase “We are not amused” is widely attributed to her, but there is no reliable contemporary evidence that she said it, and the story appeared in print only many years later. Her own journals and letters show a lively, emotional and often humorous young woman, very different from the stern widow of later photographs.

Timeline

• 1817, 6 November: Princess Charlotte dies in childbirth, leaving no grandchild of George III in line to the throne.
• 1819, 24 May: Alexandrina Victoria is born at Kensington Palace.
• 1820, 23 January: Her father, the Duke of Kent, dies.
• 1830, 26 June: William IV becomes king and Victoria becomes heir presumptive.
• 1837, 24 May: Victoria turns eighteen and comes of age.
• 1837, 20 June: William IV dies at Windsor; Victoria becomes queen and holds her first Privy Council.
• 1837, 13 July: The queen moves into Buckingham Palace.
• 1838, 28 June: Coronation of Queen Victoria in Westminster Abbey.
• 1840, 10 February: Victoria marries Prince Albert.

Why it matters

Victoria’s accession brought a young, independent monarch to the throne just as Britain was becoming the world’s leading industrial and imperial power. Her long reign helped transform the monarchy into a constitutional institution above party politics, and it gave its name to one of the most influential periods in modern history.