The political partisanship of the court meant that in effect the court was closed to Conservative aristocrats between 1837 and 1840. The queen even begrudged an invitation to the Duke of Wellington to her wedding -- his reputation as the victor of Waterloo and saviour of his country being lost in her eyes in his position as leader of the Conservatives. Despite its political exclusivity, the brief period before Victoria's marriage saw a firmly aristocratic court: the queen's household was drawn from some of the grandest families in the land (her Mistress of the Robes was the Duchess of Sutherland, the Lord Chamberlain was the Marquess Conyngham, and the Lord Steward was the Duke of Argyll), and the queen, relieved at last of the isolation of her childhood, threw herself enthusiastically into the favoured pursuits of the leisured class. Based in London, the balls, concerts, receptions and dinners were held at a court where for the first time in thirty years even morally rigorous ladies were prepared to be seen. Riding in the parks, visiting the theatre and the opera, Victoria looked set to realign the interests of the court with those of the aristocracy. But within a short time the gaiety of the court was disrupted by the emergence of the kind of tensions, jealousies and gossip which were an almost inevitable feature of a structure in which individuals jockeyed for position and from which one party was excluded. Moral corruption was suggested by the unfortunate affair of the courtier Lady Flora Hastings (she was unjustly accused of being pregnant, and subsequently died from an internal tumour), while the queen's determination to keep the Whigs in office led to the Bedchamber Crisis of 1839, when Sir Robert Peel's attempt to form a ministry was undermined by Victoria's insistence on maintaining her exclusively Whig household.The court that had been formed with such high hopes in 1837 was thus by 1840 demonstrating a tendency to follow in the paths set out by its predecessors: morally corrupt, incapable of embracing the full range of aristocratic society, and politically exclusive. The queen was inexperienced and emotionally excitable; her marriage to Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha in February 1840 brought her personal stability and transformed the court for the next twenty years.
