So soon as the _coup d'état_ was an accomplished fact, Colonel Keith, the British envoy, lost not a moment in acting on behalf of the sister of his monarch. Dark rumours were afloat that a family council had been held to decide the fate of the queen; and it was even said that proposals to execute her at once were entertained. Colonel Keith, under these circumstances, forced his way into the Christiansborg, and denounced war against Denmark if a hair of her head were touched. This done, he despatched a messenger forthwith to England, and immediately locked himself and his household up until the answer should arrive. What the nature of Keith's despatch was it is impossible to tell till the Foreign Office shall give up its dead, by repealing the absurd regulation that no state papers may be inspected after the year 1760. For the present, therefore, I am only able to inform my readers of what the public journals of the day said, and that is naturally rather in the shape of surmise than fact. As early as January 23, the _General Evening Post_ spread an uneasy feeling by the following portentous paragraph:--"It is affirmed by letters from the Continent that a royal princess is certainly detained in a tower inaccessible to every creature except such as are appointed to attend her, but that an absolute silence is imposed throughout the kingdom on this subject." On January 26, the journalist being unable to offer more precise information, and yet unwilling to let the subject drop, keeps it alive by a paragraph to the following effect:-- "So exceedingly cautious are foreign states when they marry a daughter of England not to let an English woman attend the princess into their territories, for fear of her having too much influence over the mind of her royal mistress, that when the Queen of Denmark was sent over to her illustrious consort, she had only one bed-chamber woman in her suite as far as Altona, and even this one was sent back on her arrival at that place, that the Danish ladies only might have the ear of her Majesty." On January 29, just as the king was about to hold a levee, an express arrived from Copenhagen, bearing the news. It threw the royal family, we are told, into the profoundest affliction; his Majesty seemed deeply affected by the news; and the queen and the Princess of Brunswick were observed to shed tears. But there was another member of the royal family whom the news would afflict even more: the mother of Caroline Matilda, who, as we have seen, felt persuaded that her daughter had been guilty of gross indiscretion, and who, in the previous year, had attempted to turn her from a course which her own experience of court intrigues told her must end in ruin.