[E22] Ulfeldt received this present probably in 1647, when in France as ambassador, on which occasion Queen Anna is known to have presented to Leonora a gold watch set with diamonds of great value.
[E23] The lady alluded to is Helvig Margaretha Elizabeth Rantzow, widow of the famous General Josias Rantzow, who died as a maréchal of France. She had become a Romanist, and took the veil after her husband’s death. Subsequently she founded the new order of the Annunciata. In 1666 the first convent of this order, of which she was abbess, removed to Hildesheim, where she died in 1706.
[E24] Margrete Rantzow was the sister of that Birgitte Rantzow to whom there is an allusion in the Autobiography of Leonora, where she relates the examination to which she was subjected at Malmöe. Margrete’s husband was Ove Thott, a nobleman in Skaane, who had taken an important part in the preparations for a rising against the Swedes, in which Corfitz Ulfeldt was implicated.
[E25] The book in question is probably Philip Sidney’s work, ‘The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia,’ a famous book of its time, which Leonora, who does not seem to have known it, has understood to be a book by the Countess of Pembroke. It is true, however, that Philip’s sister, Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke, had translated a French play, Antonius (1592, and again 1595).
[E26] La Roche Tudesquin had some time been in the Danish army, but had returned to France when Hannibal Sehested, while in Paris as Ambassador from the King of Denmark, received information from a certain Demoiselle Langlois that La Roche was implicated in a conspiracy for surrendering the principal Danish fortresses to a foreign prince. He and a friend of his, Jaques Beranger, were arrested in Brussels in September 1663, but not, as Leonora says, immediately brought to Copenhagen. The Spanish Government did not consent to their extradition till the following year, and they were not placed in the Blue Tower till June 1664. La Roche seems to have been guilty of peculation while in the Danish service, but the accusation of treason seems to have been unfounded.
[E27] In the MS. a pen is drawn through this paragraph, of which the contents were to form part of the Preface. The date of Count Rantzow is moreover not correctly given; he died on November 8, five days before the execution of Ulfeldt’s effigy.
[E28] The execution took place on November 13. The King’s order concerning it to the prison governor, Jochum Waltpurger, exists still. It is to this effect: ‘V. G. T., Know that you have to command the executioner in our name, that to-day, November 13, he is to take the effigy of Corfitz, formerly called Count of Ulfeldt, from the Blue Tower where it is now, and bring it on a car to the ordinary place in the square in front of the castle; and when he has come to the place of justice, strike off the right hand and the head, whereafter he is to divide the body into four parts on the spot, and carry them away with him, whilst the head is to be placed on a spike on the Blue Tower for remembrance and execration.’ The order was afterwards altered in this particular, that the head was to be placed on the town hall, and the four parts of the body one at each of the gates of the city. The executioner was subsequently ordered to efface the arms of Corfitz and his wife wherever they occurred in the town; for instance, on their pews in the churches. Leonora states in her Autobiography that the prison governor some time after told her that the Queen had desired that the effigy should be placed in the antechamber of Leonora’s prison, and that she should be ordered to see it there; but that the king refused his consent.
[E29] The date of Ulfeldt’s death is variously given as the 20th or the 27th of February, 1664. The latter date is given in a letter from his son Christian to Sperling, and elsewhere, (for instance, in a short Latin Biography of Ulfeldt called ‘Machinationes Cornificii Ulefeldii,’ published soon after); but the better evidence points to the earlier date. Christian Ulfeldt was not, it seems, at Basle at the time, and may have made a mistake as to the date, though he indicates the right day of the week (a Saturday), or he may have had reason for purposely making a misleading statement. In Copenhagen the report of his death was long suspected to be a mere trick.
[E30] Ulfeldt and Leonora had twelve children in all, of which seven were alive when Corfitz died; and it so happened as, explained before, that the youngest, Leo, was the only one who continued the name. It is from him that Count Waldstein, the owner of the MS., is descended.
[E31] This hymn-tune is still in use in the Danish Church.