King Christian's adviser was, for some years, the eminent Danish statesman, Peter Griffenfeld. His original name was Peter Schumacher, and he was the son of a wine-seller in Copenhagen. His father died in poverty, after which Bishop Brochmann took him into his home. Here King Frederick saw him and had him sent abroad for six years at his expense. After his return he became librarian to the king, and occasionally assisted the king in state affairs. On his death-bed the king asked his son to take care of Peter Schumacher, saying: "Make a great man of him, but not too rapidly." Christian did not exactly follow this advice: in the following year he made him Count of Tunsberg, with the name of Griffenfeld, and appointed him great chancellor of the realm. Griffenfeld became greatly renowned. The emperor made him an imperial count, and Louis XIV. called him one of the greatest statesmen in the world. But, on account of this, he soon had many jealous rivals at the court, who aroused the king's suspicions as to his loyalty; he was deposed and accused of several great crimes, although some of the acts construed as crimes were acts of statesmanship for which he had deserved the greatest praise. He was condemned to death and brought to the scaffold; but, at the last moment, a message arrived from the king, that the sentence had been commuted to imprisonment for life. "This mercy is more cruel than death," exclaimed Griffenfeld. He was first imprisoned in the castle of Copenhagen, and remained there for four years; but as the king missed his able services, and his enemies feared that he might again be put in power, they caused him to be removed to the fortress of Munkholmen at Throndhjem, where he remained for eighteen years. At first he whiled away the time by reading and writing; but later they cruelly took away pen and ink. He wrote numerous apothegms in the margins of his books with little bits of lead, which he tore from the window-panes, or with coals on the wall. He was given his liberty in 1698, but died the following year (March 11, 1699), in Throndhjem, at the age of sixty-four years.