Sir Robert Peel’s reply was that he would much prefer not to accept any reward at all; he sprang, he said, from the people, and such a great honour in his case was out of the question.  The only reward he asked for was Her Majesty’s confidence, and so long as he possessed that he was content.

When his ministry came to an end the Prince wrote to him, begging that their relations should not on that account cease.  Sir Robert replied, thanking him for “the considerate kindness and indulgence” he had received at their hands, and regretting that he should no longer be able to correspond so frequently as before.  The Prince and he were in the fullest sympathy in matters of politics, art, and literature, and Peel had supported the Prince loyally through all the anxieties connected with the arrangements for the Great Exhibition.

His death in 1850 was a calamity.  Prince Albert, in a letter, speaks of Peel as “the best of men, our truest friend, the strongest bulwark of the throne, the greatest statesman of his time.”

The Duke of Wellington said in the Upper House:  “In all the course of my acquaintance with Sir Robert Peel I never knew a man in whose truth and justice I had a more lively confidence, or in whom I saw a more invariable desire to promote the public service.  In the whole course of my communications with him I never knew an instance in which he did not show the strongest attachment to truth; and I never saw in the whole course of my life the slightest reason for suspecting that he stated anything which he did not believe to be the fact.”  The Queen writing to her uncle said that “Albert . . . felt and feels Sir Robert’s loss dreadfully.  He feels he has lost a second father.”

As a statesman it was said of him that “for concocting, producing, explaining and defending measures, he had no equal, or anything like an equal.”

By far the most interesting person who acted as both friend and adviser to the Queen and her husband was the Baron Christian Friedrich von Stockmar, who had been private physician to Prince Leopold, and afterward private secretary and controller of his household.  He took an active part in the negotiations which led to his master becoming King of the Belgians.  Long residence in this country had given him a thorough knowledge of England and the English, and he claimed friendship with the leading diplomatists both at home and on the European continent.

In 1834 he retired to Coburg, but later was chosen, as we have seen, to lend his valuable advice toward bringing about a union between Prince Albert and Queen Victoria, both of whom he knew and admired.

Immediately before Victoria’s accession King Leopold had sent him to England, where his counsel, judgment, and thorough knowledge of the English Constitution were placed at the service of the young Princess.  He accompanied Prince Albert on a tour in Italy, and again returned to England to make arrangements for the Prince’s future household.