QUEEN’S PEASANT LOVER

Star (Christchurch), Issue 12735, 3 September 1919, Page 6

QUEEN’S PEASANT LOVER

STORY OF THE ENGLISH WHITE ROSE. It was an evil day for Caroline Matilda, sister of our third George, when, with streaming eyes and an aching heart she saw' the coast of her beloved England fad© away on her bridal voyage to Denmark and to an unknown husband. “ by,” she had sobbed in the arms of her aunt, the Princess Matilda, “do they want to send me away? I am so happy here—and I am so young.” This child—for she was no more—of the golden hair and blue eyes asked nothing better of life than to spend it among the beautiful flowers of her Kew Garden, surrounded by those she loved and who loved her. It was thus a cruel fate that banished her over the seas to become the bride of Denmark’s Crown Prince, a man on whom she had never even set eyes. When, however, she arrived at Koeskilcl and was greeted with warm embraces by a youth, little older than herself, comely to look upon gallant in bearing and courtly in manner, all her rears fell from her; for she could surely find happiness with one so pleasing to tne eyes and so obviously in love with . fonud he was an epileptic. But the “English White Rose” was not left long to enjoy so fair a dream. Her Prince, it was true, was a wellseeming youth, of brave and courtly extei lor, but he \vas, as she soon discovered, an epileptic, already under the cloud of the madness which 'was so soon to descend on him. Almost before Christian’s first kisses ot welcome were cold on her lips he began to treat her with aversion and cruelty.. At his wedding-banquet he was orunk when he took his seat by her side; and, when he saw the tears in her eyes, he declared aloud that he nad no use for a wife who was alwa vs weeping.” And, at its conclusion, Tie left her, to spend the night n a drunken orgy with his boon comrades. 1 Thus, in daily misery and humiliation passed a few years, marked by every exhibition of cruelty Christian’s disordered brain could devise. Then came for his unhappy Queen as she now was, a dramatic change, with the coming to the Danish Court of John Frederick ptruenseo, a low-born adventurer who posed as a physician of wonderful gits, and who had wormed himself into the favour of the w'eak King. With a handsome exterior, a clever tongue and brain and a magnetic power which few could resist, it was not long before this peasant’s son had gamed as great an ascendancy over the unhappy Queen as over her husband. Though she fought strongly against his influence, she found herself gradually drawn under the spell of his strange magnetism, as helplessly as a moth is drawn to the flame; nnral, as De Wyzewa tells us,- “she gave way at last, yielding herself entirely. She w’as soon the veriest puppet in the hands of her strong-willjd lover, cowering under his frown an I mute under his bullying and insn.is. IK controlled all her actions; refused to allow her to receive or send a leiter, or to see her mother or lu r children; and generally reduced aer to such a state of abject misery that “wuen-she could escape from her tyrant she spent hours weeping in her rooms.” DETHRONED THEIR IMITATION KING. With both King and Queen the puppets of his will, Struensce was now virtual ruler of Denmarii. Ho assumed all the airs of'a sovereign; filled a.T the high offices rf Slate with his romions, and his Court wuh Copenhagen shopkeepers and their wives. But his reign of mimic splendour was fated to be short. The nobles, mirraged and disgusted, conspired to dethrone the imitation King. • Armed with an order wrung from rhe mad Christian, they arres'.eJ Struenseo in his bed and carried him off to the dtadal, weeping and shou'/ng for mercy; while Matilda, who was regarded as his accomplice, innocent and to be pitied though she was, was flnng into a .loathsome cell in Elsinore prison. A few days' later Struensee was publicly degraded and dying with the execrations of the thousands of spectators in his ears. For the unhappy Matilda a less tragic fate was reserved. The intervention of her brother, supported by a threat of war, rescued her at least from the gallows, <mly, however, to exchange her ceil f-.r confinement in the Castle of Celle. Here, after three years of piety and good works, the “ Queen of Team ’ diet! of a fever caught at the bedside of a cottage child, just at the moment when a plot to restore her to her i.uone was ripe for execution.