In July, a visit from the Duke of Gloucester, brother of Queen Caroline Matilda, gave occasion for numerous court festivities, but also for an increased dislike on the part of the queen against the favourite. One day, the king asked Count Holck, whom the duke resembled? And the impudent favourite answered, "An English ox." The duke was in truth extremely stout, and had a corresponding broad face. The king laughed at his favourite's joke, but was so malicious as to repeat Holck's sally to the queen. The duke appears to have enjoyed himself right royally while in Copenhagen, for we read that he and his gentlemen indulged so immoderately at table, after the fashion of the age, that they were obliged to take foot-baths, and use other preventives, for fear of an attack of apoplexy before morning. The boldness which the favourite displayed, and the loose life he himself led, and to which he habituated the king, at length aroused a party against him, which plainly increased more and more daily. At the head of it was the Supreme Court Marshal Frederick Christian von Moltke, who had recently been deposed on behalf of a man who in other respects stood far below him. But this Count Moltke did not possess the cleverness and practised craft of his father, and did not know how to overthrow the arrogant favourite. This was reserved for another man, from whom it had not been expected. This man of bourgeois origin contrived within a short period to remove not only Count Holck, but nearly all those in authority, and to introduce a spirit into the government which, had it not been overthrown, might have had the best consequences for land and nation; for the most important of his reforms were such as had endured a lengthened trial. This man was Dr. Struensee. JOHN FREDERICK STRUENSEE was born at Halle, on August 5, 1737, where his father, Adam Struensee, the son of a cloth-factor, in New Ruppin, was at the time preacher at St. Ulrich's Church. His mother, Maria Dorothea, was the only daughter of Dr. Carl, a man given to mysticism, who had been appointed physician in ordinary by Christian VII.'s grandfather, and died in 1757, as a practising physician at Mildorf, in Dittmarsch, at the great age of ninety years.[91]