The fact that this person was the Sovereign's husband, while it explained his influence and even made it inevitable, by no means diminished its strange and momentous import.

An ambiguous, prepotent figure had come to disturb the ancient, subtle, and jealously guarded balance of the English Constitution.

Such had been the unexpected outcome of the tentative and fainthearted opening of Albert's political life.

He himself made no attempt to minimise either the multiplicity or the significance of the functions he performed.

He considered that it was his duty, he told the Duke of Wellington in 1850, to "sink his OWN INDIVIDUAL existence in that of his wife--assume no separate responsibility before the public, but make his position entirely a part of hers--fill up every gap which, as a woman, she would naturally leave in the exercise of her regal functions--continually and anxiously watch every part of the public business, in order to be able to advise and assist her at any moment in any of the multifarious and difficult questions or duties brought before her, sometimes international, sometimes political, or social, or personal.