The Milbanke and Melbourne Families

In April 1769 Elizabeth Milbanke, daughter of a Yorkshire baronet, married Peniston Lamb, a very rich young heir, and Stubbs was brought in to paint the two families joined. She sits in a light open carriage called a phaeton beside her father, Sir Ralph Milbanke. Her brother John leans on a grey horse in the middle, and her husband sits on a chestnut hunter, with the father's glance and a spaniel's upturned head tying the groups together under one spreading oak. The cliffs beyond may be Creswell Crags, a nod to the Lambs' ties to Derbyshire. The next year the groom was made Lord Melbourne. His bride, as Lady Melbourne, turned into one of the great political hostesses of London and, much later, the confidante of Lord Byron, who married her niece. Her son William Lamb became Prime Minister.