every possible consideration would be extended to her, and that her name would not be mentioned in the sentences of Struensee and the other delinquents (Schiern ap. Wittich, 252-3). The latter promise, at all events, was substantially kept. When, however, after the sentence of divorce, the Danish government proposed to banish Caroline Matilda to Aalborg in Jutland, the British ministry resolved to make at least a show of active intervention. The protests of Keith (i. 192) seem to have been followed by a threat of the rupture of diplomatic relations, and a squadron was ordered to sail for Copenhagen. But a few hours before the time fixed for its weighing anchor the news arrived that the Danish government had promised the liberation of the queen (cf. the account in Walpole, 90-1, where the king is said to have known his sister s story two years before the catastrophe). Keith had further obtained the grant to her of an annual pension of the value of 5,000l., and notwithstanding the divorce she retained the title of queen (see Lord Suffolk's grandiloquent letters ap. Keith, i. 286-9). Two frigates and a sloop were hereupon ordered to Elsinore by the British government, and on 3 May the queen, over whom after her enlargement a 'deputation of noblemen' had been appointed to hold watch, quitted the Danish shores under a royal salute. She had been obliged to part from her daughter, whom in the lines supposed to have been written by her at sea (Keith, i. 299) she is absurdly made to commend to the care of Keith, the companion of her voyage.
At Stade, where Caroline Matilda arrived on 5 June, and where she parted with her Danish suite, she was received with much ceremony by the Hanoverian authorities, and held a reception on the day after her arrival. Hence she proceeded to the Göhrde, an electoral hunting-seat near Lüneburg, where she delayed for several months till the castle at Celle should have been put in order for her. On 20 Oct. she held a formal entry into this her destined residence, where a court was organised for her in due form, and whence she afterwards made occasional visits to Hanover of a ceremonial nature (cf. MaLortie, ii. 73-88 for details). At Celle itself her life seems to have been a quiet one, though she received visitors, among them her sister, the Hereditary Princess Augusta of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, who, according to Wraxall, was set to watch her conduct by George III (Posthumous Memoirs, i. 372, 375). A small theatre (still in existence) was constructed in the castle for her amusement. She read German assiduously, and requested her brother, George III, to send her some English books (Keith, i. 304); but the memory of her sojourn is above all associated with the charming jardin français in the immediate neighbourhood of the castle, where stands the monument, with her medallion in relief, erected by the Lüneburg-Celle estates (cf. Annual Register for 1775). Sir Robert Keith, who visited her in November 1772, reported to Lord Suffolk that he had found her in a contented frame of mind and with no wish for any communications with the Danish court beyond what immediately concerned the welfare of her children (Keith, i. 301-4). Another English visitor who first saw her in September 1774 was N. W. Wraxall, a young but travelled gentleman, ingenuously in search of adventure and employment. He returned in October as the secret agent of a number of Danish noblemen, exiles in Hamburg, and others, who were conspiring for a counter-revolution at Copenhagen, which should restore Caroline Matilda to the throne. To his written overtures she signified her assent, through a gentleman in her confidence, but she declined to take any steps until the approval of George III should have been obtained. Wraxall returned to Celle on three subsequent occasions, when he had personal interviews with the queen, whom three emissaries from Copenhagen appear likewise to have reached. He failed, however, in London to obtain an audience from George III, or to elicit more than that the king, while approving the project, could not undertake to support it with money or otherwise till it should have been successfully executed. Wraxall was still waiting in London when the news reached him of Queen Caroline Matilda's death; but he afterwards held that the scheme would have been carried out with or without George III (see N. Wraxall's Posthumous Memoirs, i. 372-414; and cf. L. Wraxall's Narrative, i. 173-241, compiled from the above, his grandfather's private journal, and a manuscript entitled Historical Narrative of the Attempt to restore the Queen; with Wittich's comments, 257-9. The existence of a Danish party in sympathy with the plan is corroborated by a letter of George III to Lord North; see Stanhope, v. 309 note).
The death of Queen Caroline Matilda, which took place 11 May 1775, was caused by a sudden attack of inflammation of the throat. She was of a plethoric habit of body, and had not been ill for more than a week (see N. Wraxall's account of her last days, based on the information of her valet Mantel, in Memoirs of the Courts of Berlin
