Shortly after eleven o'clock, the royal Dukes and a great number of Privy Councillors, amongst whom were all the Cabinet Ministers and the great officers of State and the Household, arrived at Kensington Palace, and were ushered into the State apartments. A later arrival consisted of the Lord Mayor, attended by the City Marshals in full uniform, on horseback, with crape on their left arms; the Chamberlain, Sword-bearer, Comptroller, Town Clerk, and Deputy Town Clerk, &c., accompanied by six aldermen. These City magnates appeared at the Palace to pay their homage to her Majesty. The Lord Mayor attended the Council. We have various accounts--one from an eye-witness wont to be cool and critical enough--of what passed. "The first thing to be done," writes Greville, "was to teach her her lesson, which, for this purpose, Melbourne had himself to learn. I gave him the Council papers and explained all that was to be done, and he went and explained all this to her. He asked her if she would enter the room accompanied by the great officers of State, but she said she would come in alone. When the Lords were assembled, the Lord President (Lord Lansdowne) informed them of the King's death, and suggested, as they were so numerous, that a few of them should repair to the presence of the Queen, and inform her of the event, and that their lordships were assembled in consequence; and accordingly the two royal Dukes (the Duke of Cumberland, by the death of William, King of Hanover, and the Duke of Sussex--the Duke of Cambridge was absent in Hanover), the two Archbishops, the Chancellor, and Melbourne went with him. The Queen received them in the adjoining room alone." It was the first time she had to act for herself. Until then she had been well supported by her mother, and by the precedence which the Duchess of Kent took as her Majesty's guardian. But the guardianship was over and the reign begun. There could be no more sheltering from responsibility, or becoming deference to, and reliance on, the wisdom of another and a much older person. In one sense the stay was of necessity removed. The Duchess of Kent, from this day "treated her daughter with respectful observance as well as affection." The time was past for advice, instruction, or suggestion, unless in private, and even then it would be charily and warily given by the sensible, modest mother of a Queen. Well for her Majesty that there was no more than truth in what one of the historians of the reign has said, in just and temperate language, of her character: "She was well brought up. Both as regards her intellect and her character her training was excellent. She was taught to be self-reliant, brave, and systematical."