Frederick James Lamb, 3rd Viscount Melbourne, Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath Personal Computer, known as the Lord Beauvale from 1839 to 1848, was a British diplomat.
Background
Lamb was a younger son of Peniston Lamb, 1st Viscount Melbourne, and his wife Elizabeth Milbanke, and the younger brother of Prime Minister William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne. Since his mother had numerous lovers, his real paternity is a matter of conjecture. He married Alexandrina Julia Theresa Wilhelmina Sophia Gräfinance von Maltzan, daughter of Joachim Charles Leslie Mortimer Graf von Maltzan.
Career
He served as British Ambassador to Vienna ending in 1841. In 1839 he was raised to the peerage as Baron Beauvale, of Beauvale in the County of Nottingham. Despite a certain personal coolness between them, Lord Palmerston, as Foreign Secretary placed great confidence in Lamb, wrote to him in a courteous style very different from his usual brusque manner, and left the running of the Vienna Embassy almost entirely in his hands.
Palmerston"s biographer notes that the marriage coincided with the early stages of the Oriental Crisis of 1840, and that the two men, although they were then personally barely on speaking terms, cooperated in an entirely professional way to resolve lieutenant
Relations between the two men became friendlier in later years, partly because both Palmerston and Emily were fond of Alexandrina. Lord Melbourne died childless in January 1853, aged 70, and all his titles became extinct.
His widow remarried in 1856 to John Weld-Forester, 2nd Baron Forester, was widowed again in 1873, and died in 1894.