On 20 Jun 1837, the Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Chamberlain are sent to Kensington Palace in London to notify eighteen-year-old Princess Victoria that her uncle, King William IV, has died and that she is now Queen of England. Her mother, the Duchess of Kent, tries to intercede, but the two men are able to see the young queen alone. Awakened from her sleep, young Victoria is told of her ascension to the crown. Despite the interference of her domineering mother, whose loyalty to England is questionable, Victoria is crowned Queen of England on 28 June 1838 at Westminster Abbey, with the help of her first prime minister, Lord Melbourne. Without an heir to the throne, Lord Melbourne convinces the queen that she must marry, and she is forced to consider her German cousin, Albert. Albert and his brother Ernest are summoned to England and, after a stormy crossing, are finally presented to Victoria. The two royals, though opposites in many ways, quickly fall in love, and Victoria proposes marriage. The two are married 10 February 1840 and honeymoon by train. While Victoria rules the country, Albert becomes bored by his life, for as husband to the queen, he has no power. When Sir Robert Peel suggests to Victoria that she share some of the burdens of the crown with her husband, she refuses, arguing that the English people would reject Albert as an interloping foreigner. Victoria's domination over her household comes to an abrupt end when the two argue over Albert's smoking, as Victoria has forbidden smoking in the castle. This becomes a battle of wills between husband and wife, not queen and prince. Victoria finally relents, and Albert soon becomes her most trusted advisor. On 9 Nov 1841, an assassin attempts to shoot Victoria as she rides along Constitution Hill, but his bullet misses as Albert throws himself over Victoria. Soon thereafter, Albert is made Prince of Wales. Victoria then faces her first political crisis, as a Chartist demonstration takes place just outside the gates of Buckingham Palace, and the young queen learns of discontentment among the lower classes. Peel addresses the House of Commons, and opposes his own party in support of the repeal of the Corn Laws, which taxes grain. While the taxes are successfully repealed, Albert is attacked for appearing in the House of Commons, and is accused, as Victoria predicted, of being an interloping foreigner. After twenty years of marriage, Albert falls ill. In his last official act, he stops a letter by Lord Palmerston to President Abraham Lincoln of the United States, a letter which may have led to a war between the United States and England in 1861. After Albert's death that year, Victoria goes into a thirteen year self-imposed retirement, but her prime minister, Gladstone, finally persuades her to take a more active role in the administration of her government. Upon the sixty-year jubilee of her rule, Victoria is proclaimed the Empress of India by her favorite prime minister, Disraeli.