On Palmerston's death Lord Russell formed a government committed to parliamentary reform, an issue which his predecessor had put on ice for the past five years. The difficulties the new prime minister would face from his own party had been demonstrated in 1865 when a private member's bill had been defeated by a combination of Tories and anti-reform Liberals. The latter formed the nucleus of what John Bright was to dub the ‘Cave of Adullam’ from the biblical hiding-place where David gathered around him ‘everybody that was in distress, and everyone that was in debt, and everyone that was discontented’. The Adullamites combined with the Conservatives to defeat Russell's bill. He thereupon resigned, to be replaced by Lord Derby, who once again formed a minority government. Derby announced that he ‘did not intend a third time to be made a mere stop gap until it should suit the convenience of the Liberal party to forget their dissensions and bring forward a measure which should oust us from office and replace them there’. He proposed to keep the Liberals divided and to sustain his own ministry in office by passing a measure of reform. He was fortified in this resolve by the support of the monarch, whose views he treated with as much deference as any Victorian politician. Besides, as he told Disraeli, ‘The queen wants “us” to settle it.’