WILLIAM LAMB entered Parliament in January 1806, six months after his
marriage. For the next twenty-two years, with the exception of 1812-16, he
was in theory a House of Commons man, representing seven different con-
stituencies. Initially, his prospects were excellent. Lady Holland, a talent spot-
ter of some distinction, hailed him as 'one of the most rising men in public'. ¹
Unfortunately, William Lamb failed to rise. Until 1827, he was a political
nonentity, with no offer of office and a blasted reputation. Even when he took
on a junior post in Ireland, contemporaries might well have thought that this
would be the ceiling of his ambitions. He was a minor figure, whose existence
as a politician at all was entirely a matter of inheritance. He had the benefit
of being born in influential circles. There was little else to recommend him.
His catastrophic marriage was the major factor in his political eclipse, but
there were others.

First and foremost, he lacked ambition. The unwillingness to impose
himself on events, which had been so marked a feature of his domestic life,
made him an unlikely politician. Indeed, he believed that 'most mad peo-
ple grow mad out of ambition'. ² He admired men like Charles V and
Diocletian who had abdicated from positions of great power. The slightest
set-back was enough to make Lamb think of retiring from politics alto-
gether. As late as 1826, he was seriously thinking of exercising this option. ³
His first two decades in Parliament are marked by long periods of non-
attendance and inertia, and this lack of interest was only partially to be
explained by a preoccupation with his wife's behaviour. As Albany
Fonblanque observed:

The one thing needful and wanting in him was the spur to exertion. Had he been
born to bread-and-cheese, he would have risen to the top of whatever profession he
had made his choice. His capacity was of the highest order, but there was something
which prevented its full development; not indolence, though it bore the appearance
of indolence; but the ruling idea that nothing was worth its trouble, the non tanti
answering to too many a suggestion. ⁴

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