Some years ago, when visiting Celle in connection with a book I was writing on Sophie Dorothea, The Love of an Uncrowned Queen, I found, in an unfrequented garden outside the town, a grey marble monument of unusual beauty. Around the base ran an inscription to the effect that it was erected in loving memory of Caroline Matilda, Queen of Denmark and Norway, Princess of Great Britain and Ireland, who died at Celle in 1775, at the age of twenty-three years. To this may be traced the origin of this book, for until I saw the monument I had not heard of this English Princess—a sister of George III. The only excuse to be offered for this ignorance is that it is shared by the great majority of Englishmen. For though the romantic story of Caroline Matilda is known to every Dane—she is the Mary Stuart of Danish history—her name is almost forgotten in the land of her birth, and this despite the fact that little more than a century ago her imprisonment nearly led to a war between England and Denmark.

Inquiry soon revealed the full measure of my ignorance. The dramatic tale of Queen Caroline Matilda and her unhappy love for Struensee, her Prime Minister, has been told in Danish, German, French and English in a variety of ways. Apart from history and biography, it has formed the theme of novels and plays, and even of an opera. The most trustworthy works on the Queen and Struensee are written in Danish, a language not widely read. In English nothing of importance has been written about her for half a century,[1] and, owing to the fact that many documents, then inaccessible, have since become available, the books are necessarily incomplete, and most of them untrustworthy. Moreover, they have been long out of print.

My object, therefore, in writing this book has been to tell once more the story of this forgotten “daughter of England” in the light of recent historical research. I may claim to have broken fresh ground. The despatches of Titley, Cosby, Gunning, Keith and Woodford (British Ministers at Copenhagen, 1764-1775) and others, quoted in this book, are here published for the first time in any language. They yield authoritative information concerning the Queen’s brief reign at the Danish court, and the character of the personages who took part, directly or indirectly, in the palace revolution of 1772. Even Professor E. Holm, of Copenhagen, in his admirable work, Danmark-Norges Historie (published in 1902), vol. iv. of which deals with the Matilda-Struensee period, is ignorant of these important despatches, which I found two years ago in the State Paper Office, London. To these are added many documents from the Royal Archives at Copenhagen; most of them, it is true, have been published in the Danish, but they are unknown to English readers. I have also, in connection with this book, more than once visited Denmark, and have had access to the Royal Archives at Copenhagen, and to the palaces in which the Queen lived during her unhappy life at the Danish court. I have followed her to Kronborg, where she was imprisoned, and to Celle, in Germany, where she died in exile. My researches at this latter place may serve to throw light on the closing (and little-known) years of the Queen’s brief life. She rests at Celle by the side of her ancestress, Sophie Dorothea, whose life in many ways closely resembled her own.

A word of explanation is perhaps necessary for the first few chapters of this book. In all the biographies of Caroline Matilda written in any language, her life in England before her marriage has received scant consideration, probably on account of her extreme youth. As her parentage and education were largely responsible for the mistakes of her later years, I have sketched, with some detail, the characters of her father and mother, and her early environment. This plan has enabled me to describe briefly the English court from the death of Queen Caroline to the accession of George III., and so to form a link with my other books on the House of Hanover.

My thanks are due to Miss Hermione Ramsden for kindly translating for me sundry documents from the Danish; to Mr. Louis BobÉ, of Copenhagen, for much interesting information; and to the Editor of the Nineteenth Century and After for allowing me to re-publish certain passages from an article I recently contributed to that review on Augusta, Princess of Wales. I must also thank the Earl of Wharncliffe for permitting me to reproduce the picture of Lord Bute at Wortley Hall, and Count Kielmansegg for similar permission with regard to the portrait of Madame de Walmoden at GÜlzow.

W. H. WILKINS.

November, 1903.