Ronald John McNeill

“ DURHAM, JOHN GEORGE LAMBTON, 1st Earl of (1792–1840) , English statesman, son of William Henry Lambton of Lambton Castle, Durham, was born in London on the 12th of April 1792. His mother was Anne Barbara Villiers, daughter of the 4th earl of Jersey. Lambton was only five years old when by his father’s death at Pisa (1797) he succeeded to large estates in the north of England which had been in the uninterrupted possession of his family since the 12th century. In 1805 he went to Eton, and in 1809 obtained a commission in the 10th Hussars. ”

“ Durham was at this time courted by the youthful Disraeli, who, when Melbourne became prime minister in succession to Grey in 1834, declared that the Whigs could not exist as a party without Lord Durham. Brougham’s animosity became undisguised at the great banquet given to Lord Grey at Edinburgh in September 1834, where he made a venomous attack on Durham, repeated shortly afterwards at Salisbury, and anonymously in the Edinburgh Review. ”

“ His colleagues, who were appointed rather as his assistants than as his equals, were Lord John Russell, Sir James Graham and Lord Duncannon; and it was Durham who selected Lord John Russell, not then in the cabinet, to introduce the bill in the House of Commons; a selection that was hotly opposed by Brougham, whose later vindictive animosity against Durham is to be traced to his having been passed over in the selection of the committee of four. Durham was present with Grey at an audience of the king which led to the sudden dissolution of parliament in March 1831 ”