A QUEEN OF TEARS _BY THE SAME AUTHOR._ THE LOVE OF AN UNCROWNED QUEEN: SOPHIE DOROTHEA, CONSORT OF GEORGE I., AND HER CORRESPONDENCE WITH PHILIP CHRISTOPHER, COUNT KONIGSMARCK. NEW AND REVISED EDITION. _With 24 Portraits and Illustrations._ _8vo, 12s. 6d. net._ LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO., LONDON, NEW YORK AND BOMBAY. [Illustration: O keep me innocent, make others great. Caroline Mathilde. _After the painting by Sir Joshua Reynolds, 1766._ _Walter S. Colls, Ph. Sc._] A QUEEN OF TEARS CAROLINE MATILDA, QUEEN OF DENMARK AND NORWAY AND PRINCESS OF GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND BY W. H. WILKINS _M.A., F.S.A._ _Author of "The Love of an Uncrowned Queen," and "Caroline the Illustrious, Queen Consort of George II."_ WITH ILLUSTRATIONS IN TWO VOLUMES VOL. I. LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON NEW YORK AND BOMBAY 1904 PREFACE 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. [1] I except Dr. A. W. Ward's contribution to the _Dictionary of National Biography_, but this is necessarily brief. A list of the books which have been written about the Queen in different languages will be found in the Appendix.