[64] Memoirs and Correspondence of Sir R. Murray Keith, vol. i.
“St. James’s, May 1, 1772.
“For your own information, I enclose a list of the ships which were intended to enforce the demand for the Queen of Denmark’s liberty, if it had been refused. Those from Plymouth would have been sailed if the countermand had been a few hours later than it was. The others were just ready to proceed to the Downs, and the whole fleet would probably have by this time been on their way to Copenhagen, under the command of Sir Charles Hardy.
“I am, etc.,
“Suffolk.”[65]
[65] Memoirs and Correspondence of Sir R. Murray Keith, vol. i.
The public curiosity in London, which had been keenly aroused by the news that a fleet was being hastily fitted out for the Baltic, was no less excited when the preparations were suddenly stopped by a counter-order, sent to Portsmouth on April 22. Though no official information was vouchsafed, people shrewdly guessed the truth. Horace Walpole gives a fair idea of the gossip which was floating about London:—
“The King, as Lord Hertford told me, had certainly ordered the fleet to sail; and a near relation of Lord North told me that the latter had not been acquainted with that intention. Lord Mansfield, therefore, who had now got the King’s ear, or Lord Sandwich, First Lord of the Admiralty, must have been consulted. The latter, though I should think he would not approve of it, was capable of flattering the King’s wishes; Lord Mansfield assuredly would. The destination was changed on the arrival of a courier from Denmark, who brought word that the Queen was repudiated, and, I suppose, a promise that her life would be spared, for though the Danes had thirty ships and the best seamen next to ours, and though we were sending but ten ships against them, the governing party were alarmed, probably from not being sure that their nation was with them.”[66]
[66] Walpole, Journals of the Reign of George III.
Again: “They gave her [the Queen of Denmark] the title of Countess of Aalborg, and condemned her to be shut up in the castle of that name. The King of England had certainly known her story two years before; a clerk in the secretary’s office, having opened a letter that came with the account,[67] told me he had seen it before the secretary gave it to the King. It was now believed that this intelligence had occasioned the Princess of Wales to make an extraordinary journey to Germany, where she saw her daughter, though to no purpose. Princess Amelia told Lord Hertford on the 26th [April] ... that Queen Matilda had a very high spirit, and that she believed the Danes would consent to let her go to Hanover. ‘But she will not be let go thither,’ added the Princess, meaning that the Queen’s brother, Prince Charles of Mecklenburg, commanded there, ‘or to Zell, but she will not go thither’ [another of the Queen’s brothers was there]; ‘perhaps she may go to Lüneburg.’”[68]
[67] The account of the Queen’s alleged intrigue with Struensee.
[68] Walpole, Journals of the Reign of George III., vol. i.