In 1768 Lamb was returned by George Selwyn for Ludgershall at the recommendation of the Duke of Grafton. In Parliament he supported the Grafton and North Administrations, and when he voted with Opposition on the naval captains’ petition, 9 Feb. 1773, he was marked in the King’s list as a friend. In 1774 and 1780 Melbourne, as he had become, was again returned by Selwyn as a Government supporter. He continued to vote with North till March 1782 when he was induced by the Prince of Wales to abstain from voting on Rous’s motion of no confidence, 15 Mar.
who [writes Wraxall] never, I believe, uttered a word in his place either before or after that evening, starting up, broke silence. Occupying as he did the place of a gentleman of the bedchamber to the Prince of Wales, and indignant at the charge, he declared that the words spoken amounted to a direct attack on his Royal Highness, and therefore he should demand proof of the alleged fact.
Mems. iii. 266.
At the general election of 1784, Melbourne was returned unopposed for Malmesbury, and continued to vote with Opposition throughout this Parliament.
Wraxall writes that Melbourne was ‘principally known by the distinguished place that he occupies in the annals of meretricious pleasure, the memoirs of Mrs. Bellamy or Mrs. Baddeley, the sirens and courtesans of a former age’.