The commissioners were ordered to assemble, after giving a solemn pledge of secrecy, and, in accordance with the royal instructions, form an opinion, from the papers laid before them, whether Chamberlain von Beringskjold had not proved himself one of those restless subjects who ought to spend the rest of their lives in imprisonment. The choice of the commission in itself proved what weight was attached to Beringskjold's detected conspiracy. It was a peculiar circumstance, too, that secret instructions were given to the Hamburg post-office, which led to the tolerably correct supposition, that the person related to the royal house was no other than the king's brother-in-law. As early as 1773, Juliana Maria had felt alarm about Christian VII.'s sister, and was very glad at that time that the latter consented to accompany her husband, when appointed generalissimo of Norway, to that distant country.[61] At the period when the conspiracy was detected, Prince Charles was a highly esteemed volunteer in the Prussian army, so that he must naturally have been consulted by letters which must go _viâ_ Flensburg, after passing through Schleswig and Louisenlund. The result of the investigation was, however, carefully kept private, and it is, up to the present day, one of the state secrets of the Danish archives. In the Beringskjold affair, a great number of witnesses was examined who had been connected with the prisoner of state, and even persons who had dined with him were asked what their host had said about the government at dinner. After the witnesses had all been examined, the prisoner's turn arrived, and his crimes, among which a conspiracy against the government was the chief, were brought before him, and he learned for the first time that his own son had denounced him. Beringskjold handed in his counter-declaration, and requested, during the trial, the assistance of Advocate Colbjörnsen, brother of the commissioner. Finally, when all the regulations of the law, so far as the peculiar nature of the affair allowed it, had been exhausted in the examination, the commission sent in, on December 31, 1781, their opinion upon the point laid before them by the king, which was to the effect, that Chamberlain von Beringskjold was proved to be a restless man, and dangerous to the general welfare and public order, and, as such, ought to be imprisoned for life under a strict guard, according to the law. When the king was on the point of confirming the sentence or opinion of the commissioners, but at the same time of granting the accused a considerable sum for his maintenance, the discovery was made that the prisoner, in spite of his strict arrest, had carried on a secret correspondence, and undertaken "another attempt at his old wickedness." After such "mad disobedience of all royal orders,"--so says the royal re-script of February 20, 1782,--all the proofs against the prisoner were to be gathered, and laid before the commission for a final judicial sentence.