These changes caused great excitement among the official classes and the nobility. The government of the kingdom had hitherto been in the hands of an oligarchy, which was recruited solely from the nobility and their dependents. By this last decree the King intended to strip the nobility of their privileges and power. But the King was known to be a figurehead, and therefore the resentment aroused by these changes was directed, not against him but against the Queen. Struensee was still working behind the Queen, and therefore, though he was known to have great influence, the malcontents made the Queen the first object of their resentment. The hostility felt against Matilda for the revolutionary policy now inaugurated was especially bitter amongst the old nobility, many of whom, notably Count Reventlow, had formerly been her friends. Reventlow communicated his anger to Gunning, who wrote in haste to Lord Rochford. He saw in the present confusion an opportunity for English influence to be re-established in Copenhagen, and, ignorant of the rebuff the King had received from his sister a few weeks before, he urged his old expedient that George III. should write a private letter to Queen Matilda. "Both Count Reventlow and everybody ascribe [these new measures] without scruple to the Queen of Denmark," he writes, "_whose power is affirmed to be unlimited, and on whose will all depends_. If these assertions are not made without reason, your Lordship will judge how much those persons who are honoured with her Danish Majesty's confidence have misrepresented the state of affairs to her, in order to make her consent to what is so evidently against the system this court has some time adopted. Should the preservation of it be thought worthy of the King's (George III.'s) attention, your Lordship will, I am sure, think it necessary that the Queen of Denmark should be made acquainted with his Majesty's sentiments on this important point as soon as possible, and before the Prince Royal of Sweden comes here, which under the present circumstances will be most effectually done (if I may humbly presume to offer my opinion) by a private letter from his Majesty to the Queen his sister. It is not to be doubted but that this would have great weight; and should it either procure the reinstatement of Count Bernstorff (whose indubitable attachment to the King's person and family gives him a claim on his Majesty's protection), or till such time as this could be more easily effected, prevent any extension of the present influence, it would soon give his Majesty (George III.) as great an ascendency here as the court of Petersburg has had, and which, were it conducted in a more moderate and judicious manner, would not be liable to the same reverse. It is not, however, impracticable for the latter [the court of Petersburg] still to prevent the defection of this court, but it must be by different and harsher methods than those (it is hoped) his Majesty has occasion to take."[144]