in their various departments he frankly recognized, rarely interfering personally unless absolutely called upon to do so. His influence, always great, was increased by his genial and unaffected manners as a host. He is also remarkable as one of the few kings of the house of Oldenburg who had no illicit _liaison_. He died at Antvorskov on the 4th of April 1588. No other Danish king was ever so beloved by his people. See _Lund_ (_Troels_), _Danmarks og Norges Historie i Slutningen af det XVI. Aarh._ (Copenhagen, 1879); _Danmarks Riges Historie_ (Copenhagen, 1897-1905), vol. 3; Robert Nisbet Bain, _Scandinavia_, cap. 4 (Cambridge, 1905). (R. N. B.) FREDERICK III. (1609-1670), king of Denmark and Norway, son of Christian IV. and Anne Catherine of Brandenburg, was born on the 18th of March 1609 at Hadersleben. His position as a younger son profoundly influenced his future career. In his youth and early manhood there was no prospect of his ascending the Danish throne, and he consequently became the instrument of his father's schemes of aggrandizement in Germany. While still a lad he became successively bishop of Bremen, bishop of Verden and coadjutor of Halberstadt, while at the age of eighteen he was the chief commandant of the fortress of Stade. Thus from an early age he had considerable experience as an administrator, while his general education was very careful and thorough. He had always a pronounced liking for literary and scientific studies. On the 1st of October 1643 Frederick wedded Sophia Amelia of Brunswick Lueneburg, whose energetic, passionate and ambitious character was profoundly to affect not only Frederick's destiny but the destiny of Denmark. During the disastrous Swedish War of 1643-1645 Frederick was appointed generalissimo of the duchies by his father, but the laurels he won were scanty, chiefly owing to his quarrels with the Earl-Marshal Anders Bille, who commanded the Danish forces. This was Frederick's first collision with the Danish nobility, who ever afterwards regarded him with extreme distrust. The death of his elder brother Christian in June 1647 first opened to him the prospect of succeeding to the Danish throne, but the question was still unsettled when Christian IV. died on the 28th of February 1648. Not till the 6th of July in the same year did Frederick III. receive the homage of his subjects, and only after he had signed a _Haandfaestning_ or charter, by which the already diminished royal prerogative was still further curtailed. It had been doubtful at first whether he would be allowed to inherit his ancestral throne at all; but Frederick removed the last scruples of the _Rigsraad_ by unhesitatingly accepting the conditions imposed upon him.