[39] General Evening Post, February 8, 1772.
The popular curiosity was heightened by the profound secrecy observed by the court and government. So far, nothing definite was known; the King and his ministers were naturally silent. The illness and death of his mother had hindered the King from taking action on Keith’s despatch, and while he was hesitating, another communication arrived from Copenhagen. This was a letter addressed by that wily diplomatist, Osten, to the Danish envoy in London, Baron Dieden, with instructions that he was to communicate its contents to Lord Suffolk at once. This letter threw a different complexion on the affair to that of Keith’s despatch. It assumed the guilt of the Queen, and urged that the King of Denmark was only within his rights in removing his consort from the contaminating presence of her favourite. The matter, Osten urged, was of so delicate and personal a nature that it could not be treated properly by ministers or envoys. The King of Denmark, when he had recovered from the affliction into which the knowledge of his consort’s infidelity had plunged him, would write to his brother of England with his own hand, and he trusted that his Britannic Majesty would suspend judgment until then. A few days later Dieden received another despatch from Osten, enclosing a sealed letter from Christian VII. to George III., and the Danish envoy delivered this letter into the King’s hands at once. This letter, which no doubt Christian had been induced to copy by the dictation of the Queen-Dowager and her advisers, took the same line as Osten’s despatch, though of course it was written in a more intimate and confidential tone, not only as between brother monarchs, but near relatives.
George III., who was already prejudiced against his sister by the way in which she had slighted his advice, and ignored his remonstrances, was not averse from dealing with the difficulty in this way. Though he greatly disliked his cousin, the King of Denmark, and knew the insults and cruelties which had been heaped upon his unhappy sister, yet, as he was of a most moral and domestic nature, he could not find in them any justification for her conduct, and he regarded her offence, if proved, with horror. Osten’s representations were so plausible that the King, when he received Christian VII.’s letter, replied to it in no unyielding spirit; he reserved his judgment, but demanded that his sister should be treated fairly, and every possible respect and indulgence be shown to her. He would not go behind his envoy’s back, in the manner suggested by Osten, for he rightly judged that Keith, being on the spot, would be thoroughly informed of the situation. He therefore gave his letter to Suffolk to transmit to Keith, with instructions that he was to have a personal audience of the King forthwith, and to deliver it into his hands. At the same time Lord Suffolk wrote a despatch to Keith asking for fuller information, and conveying to him in a special manner his Sovereign’s approbation of his conduct.
Keith all this time had remained shut up in his house, in Copenhagen, awaiting instructions from England, and unable, until he received them, to do anything on behalf of the unhappy Queen. The answer to his despatch did not arrive for nearly a month. When at last it came, “in the shape of a sealed square packet, it was placed in Colonel Keith’s hands, and they trembled, and he shook all over as he cut the strings. The parcel flew open, and the Order of the Bath fell at his feet. The insignia had been enclosed by the King’s own hands, with a despatch commanding him to invest himself forthwith, and appear at the Danish court.”[40] What instructions the despatch contained will never be known; but that George III. entirely approved of the way in which his representative had acted is shown by a letter which Lord Suffolk wrote at the same time to Keith’s father:—
“I cannot deny myself the satisfaction of acquainting you with the eminent merit of your son, his Majesty’s minister at Copenhagen, and the honourable testimony his Majesty has been pleased to give of his approbation by conferring on him the Order of the Bath. The ability, spirit and dignity with which Sir Robert Keith has conducted himself in a very delicate and difficult position has induced his Majesty to accompany the honour he bestows with very particular marks of distinction."[41]
[40] Memoirs of Sir Robert Murray Keith.
[41] Lord Suffolk, secretary of state for foreign affairs, to R. Keith, Esq., February 28, 1772.
Fortified with these marks of his Sovereign’s approval, and armed with the King’s letter, Keith, for the first time for many weeks, emerged from his house, and proceeded to the Christiansborg Palace, where he demanded a private audience of the King of Denmark. The audience was promised on the morrow, but when Keith again repaired to the palace, and was conducted to the ante-chamber of the King’s apartments, he was astonished at seeing, instead of the King, Osten and some of the newly appointed ministers, who informed him that, his Majesty not being well, they had been charged to receive the envoy’s communication, and convey it to the King. Keith replied with some indignation that his orders were to deliver his letter into the King’s own hands, and he did not understand why his Danish Majesty, after he had consented to give him audience, should refer him to his ministers. But the ministers only politely expressed their regret, and said they were acting under the King’s orders. The whole scene of course was planned by the Queen-Dowager, who had her own reasons for keeping the English envoy away from the King, as she was determined at all hazards that Matilda should be deposed and disgraced. Keith, who realised that there was something behind, and saw the futility of further remonstrance, reluctantly surrendered the letter; but he added that he should not fail to inform his Sovereign of the way in which he had been treated. He moreover said that his royal master’s letter was a private one to the King, but that he himself had authority to state to the ministers that, if the Queen of Denmark were not treated with all the respect due to her birth and rank, her royal brother of England would not fail to resent it in a manner that would make Denmark tremble. He then withdrew.
Keith must have written a very strongly worded despatch to Lord Suffolk, exposing the trickery of the Danish court, and probably hinting at the Queen’s danger, for though the despatches which passed between him and Suffolk at this time are missing, we know that they became graver and more serious in tone. The relations between the two countries seemed likely to be broken off, for the Danish envoy in England, Dieden, followed Keith’s example, and shut himself up in his house until he should receive instructions. When these instructions came, they could not have been satisfactory, for when the Danish envoy next appeared at court, George III. pointedly ignored him, which the minister resented by standing out of the circle, and laughing and talking with the Prussian minister, whose master also had a dispute with England at this time. Moreover, the Prussian minister had given offence to the King by talking too freely about the scandal at the Danish court. On one occasion he asked a court official with a sneer: “What has become of your Queen of Denmark?”—to which the Englishman made quick reply: “Apparently she is at Spandau with your Princess of Prussia”—a princess who had been divorced for adultery.