A Royal pain in the a**

William Lamb, 2nd viscount Melbourne, Prime Minister of England under Queen Victoria, had a spanking fetish. He was dragged into court on two separate occasions for giving "undignified spankings" to Lady Branden and the author Caroline Norton, two astute ladies in their time. Even though Melbourne was granting their husbands political favors the men became disgruntled over Melbourne smacking their wives tushies and decided to sue. He was acquitted on both accounts. In letters sent to Lady Branden he mentions "spanking" or "whipping" in 36 of the 40 letters he sent her. He told her she should spank her children more often as well as her lazy maid. Melbourne wrote, "A few twigs of a birch applied to the naked skin of a young lady produces with very little effort a very considerable sensation." As an act of "charity" Melbourne would pick up girls from the orphanage and take them home and spank them. He enjoyed spanking one orphan girl, Susan Churchill, so much that he moved her into his home. In her book, Victoria the Queen, Julia Baird states that, "As his female friends could attest, Lord Melbourne was obsessed with discipline. He even discussed it with Queen Victoria, particularly when it came to spanking children." Melbourne engaged in the practice with his own wife and there is speculation that even more society ladies were involved with him. Historians are quick to point out that there isn't any evidence that Melbourne ever spanked the Queen, even though she was crowned at 18 and viewed Melbourne as a "father figure" and spent a lot of time alone with him. Hmm...makes you wonder. He seems like a persistent guy determined to keep young ladies on the straight and narrow, and I'm willing to bet all my wooden nickles that he spanked that Royal booty at least once. I'm surprised the guy didn't go door to door offering his services to wayward debutantes. If anybody has any more information concerning him or his exploits I'd love to hear about it. As with most historical figures, people try to whitewash them and hide uncomfortable facts, such as things omitted from the Queen's diary concerning Lord Melbourne. "The relationship between Queen Victoria and her prime minister Lord Melbourne is one of the great platonic romances of modern history. Both the young fatherless queen and the curiously apolitical politician had much to gain from the relationship - guidance for her and added status for him. Both fell a little bit in love." Victoria's infatuation had developed quickly. "I am so fond of him and his conversations do me much good," she wrote in her diary. I suppose what was deleted from her entries were the times he took the young queen over his knee or applied the birch to her backside. I can only speculate. I guess we'll never know the truth.


As an interesting side note, we have popular sayings and a lot of times we can't trace the genesis of its origins. Given Melbourne's love for spanking ladies of the royal court I wonder if that's where the term, "a royal pain in the ass" came from?

Yes, I've often wondered whether Melbourne ever put the young Vicky across his knee. I bet he was tempted to - quite apart from the attraction of it, how many men can say they've ever spanked a Queen? As you say, we'll probably never know.

An earlier royal British scandal that apparently did involve spanking - though the female in question wasn't yet Queen - concerned Thomas Seymour, whose older brother Edward was Lord Protector during the short reign of Edward VI (who died aged only 15). He was also the brother of Edward's mother, Jane Seymour, third wife of Henry VIII. A few months after Henry's death he married the king's widow, Catherine Parr.

Catherine had taken into her household the young Princess Elizabeth, Henry's daughter by Anne Boleyn and the future Queen Elizabeth I. Elizabeth was 14 at the time, and according to her governess, Kat Ashley, Thomas took to coming into her bedroom in the mornings still dressed in his nightgown, stripping off her bedclothes, tickling her and smacking her bare bottom. It would seem that the young Liz rather enjoyed these games; after Catherine Parr's death there was even speculation that she and Thomas might marry.

Thomas overreached himself, though; jealous of his brother, he tried to supplant him with the king, was arrested and executed for treason. It was at his trial that details of his bedroom games with young Elizabeth came to light.

Thank you both for these fascinating historical tidbits. It is, frankly, a scandal that none of these deeply relevant goings-on ever feature in the characterisations of our two most celebrated queens in the plethora of media portraits over the years.

It makes one wonder, too, if John Brown's success in cajoling Victoria out of mourning may have involved a tawse at some point.

Oh thank you. I LOVE this historical tidbit. It has just the right mix of class snobbery, Victorian hypocrisy and fervent kink. To anyone English he might make a great story series.

According to the book, Queen Victoria: A personal history, Christopher Hibbert draws a clear picture of how the queen dealt with her nine children. It is obvious that Lord Melbourne had an influence on how she dealt with disobedience and the use of corporal punishment.


"The royal family presented itself as the ideal Victorian family. In many respects they were. In one respect they were not. In the royal family it WAS the queen that was the strict disciplinarian. It was Albert that was expected to actually discipline the children, but the queen insisted he be harsher than he preferred.


Apparently Albert was hesitant to quarrel with her on the issue least she become excited. The royal children appear to have been subjected to quite severe punishments, although not unusual for the time. The children were harshly spanked for infractions like telling lies. Another punishment was having their hands tied. Bertie and Alfred, the two oldest boys, were punished the most harshly."

It wasn't just the women who got punished. James VI of Scotland was birched by his tutor, and Henry II supposedly once pulled his son John (of the Magna Carta) across his lap and spanked him in public.

And wasn't Henry II flogged by monks as part of his penance for indirectly causing the death of Thomas a Becket? Think I once saw a drawing that portrayed that,in some history book.
Spanking a queen brings to mind the old Phantom comic strip where the Phantom spanked a spoiled, arrogant queen named Pera. Lots on that over at Chicago Spanking Review.
As for queens doing the spanking, also have seen pictures of the Amazon queen spanking her daughter Diana, better known as Wonder Woman.Too bad that didn't make it into the last Wonder Woman movie!

Found on the Internet:

The teenage Princess Mary, the future Mary I was spanked on the orders of her step mother Anne Boleyn. It is thought that she was so resented by Anne, that her servants birched her for the least offence. There is even one story that Anne herself once held Mary down and applied a slipper to her bottom.

A few years later another future queen of England, Lady Jane Grey, was also birched by her mother and her governess on the orders of her father. This was well illustrated in the movie with Helena Bonham-Carter, although in fact Jane was flogged in this manner over several months.

There was nothing unusual about Lady Jane's treatment. At the time, women of good birth were often birched. The flogging of Tudor gentlewomen was usually carried out in the long gallery, as the name suggests, a long room that was hung with family portraits of long dead ancestors who would look down on the miscreant in disapproval.

As I was finishing reading Julia Baird's book I found something interesting. On page 459 I read:

"Beatrice, known as "the shy princess," would live out the last part of her life as she had the first: devoted to her mother, and to the preservation - and sanitation - of her mother's words. Her life's work would become the rewriting and editing of her mother's diaries, in one of the greatest acts of censorship in history."

I'm really beginning to think if I had the original diaries in tact it would probably make a great script or screenplay for an outstanding spanking movie. Did the queen and Melbourne setup spanking play dates? Did he spank Victoria and she liked it? Did Lord Melbourne dress the young queen as a schoolgirl before caning her over his desk? Did she act like a rebellious stepdaughter in order to earn her licks? Was she a naughty princess in need of a good spanking? Did she like to have her hair pulled while he was smacking her ass? Did he make the queen cut her own switch or send her to get the strap? Did he make her stand in the corner after he spanked her? Did Melbourne line up the queen, Lady Branden, and Caroline Norton and lecture them before spanking them in front of each other? Did he dress all three women as schoolgirls? Did the three ladies spank each other? Just what exactly could have been in her diary, what dirty secrets did it contain? It must have been really good stuff to be so heavily censored. What ever was written is only known to Beatrice, and she took it to her grave.

Perhaps she was just a kinky queen looking for a spanKING, but couldn't find one in Prince Albert, but she could in Lord Melbourne.

Speaking of that Lady Jane movie, it is worth watching for more than just the birching scene. Not only is it a good movie but it is mostly accurate - and includes what happened when teenagers were married because of their family's political ambitions. The pair were sent off, living in an isolated house with only a few servants, encouraged to get to know each other until they felt like consummating their marriage.

The only major "we have to change history to make a film" bit happens near the end. Lady Jane hated the man she had married because he betrayed her cause to save her life while in the movie they love each other to the end.