Certainly no one could have foreseen the dismal fate which lay in store for Christian II. when he ascended the throne. Seldom has a new reign opened with fairer promise. His father, good King Hans, died in 1513, lamented by all his subjects, and leaving his successor a prosperous and united kingdom. Christian was thirty-two, and had already shown his courage and ability in quelling a revolt in Norway. A man of noble and commanding presence, with blue eyes and long fair hair, he seemed a born leader of men, while his keen intelligence, genial manners, and human interest in those about him, early won the affection of his subjects. Unfortunately his own passions proved his worst enemies. In Norway he had fallen in love with a beautiful girl named Dyveke--the Dove--whose mother, a designing Dutchwoman named Sigebritt Willems, kept a tavern at Bergen. On his accession he brought Dyveke and her mother to Hvidore, and gave them a house in the neighbourhood. This illicit connection excited great scandal at Court, and the Chancellor, Archbishop Walkendorf of Drondtheim, exhorted the King earnestly to put away his mistress on his marriage. Even before Isabella left Brussels, the Archbishop wrote glowing accounts of her beauty and goodness to his master, and told the King of the romantic attachment which she cherished for her unknown lord. After her arrival at Copenhagen he did his utmost to insure her comfort, and see that she was treated with proper respect. For a time Christian seems to have been genuinely in love with his young wife, whose innocent charm won all hearts in her new home. In his anxiety to please her, he furnished his ancestral castle anew, and sent to Germany for musicians, fearing that the rude voices of Danish singers might sound harsh in her ears. A young Fleming, Cornelius Scepperus, was appointed to be his private secretary, and the Fuggers of Antwerp were invited to found a bank at Copenhagen. At the same time twenty-four Dutch families, from Waterland in Holland, were brought over in Danish ships, and induced to settle on the island of Amager, opposite the capital, in order that the royal table might be supplied with butter and cheese made in the Dutch fashion. This colony, imported by Christian II., grew and flourished, and to this day their descendants occupy Amager, where peasant women clad in the national costume of short woollen skirts, blue caps, and red ribbons, are still to be seen. Unfortunately, the influence which Sigebritt and her daughter had acquired over the King was too strong to be resisted. Before long they returned to Court, and, to the indignation of Isabella's servants, Sigebritt was appointed Mistress of her household. Rumours of the slights to which the young Queen was exposed soon reached the Netherlands, and when Maximilian informed Margaret that he intended to marry her niece Eleanor to the King of Poland, she replied with some asperity that she could only hope