Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 09.djvu/156

 Caroline &c. (1799), i. 77-87. He mentions the story, which also appears in Northern Courts, of her having, just before she was taken ill, inspected the corpse of a page who had died eight days previously, and also refers to the suspicions of poison which were rife at Celle with regard to her own death). A Lutheran clergyman (Pastor Lehzen) who attended her afterwards published an edifying account of her last days. The letter to George III declaring her innocence, said to have been written by her on her deathbed, is almost certainly spurious; her assertion in the same sense to the French pastor, Roques, rests on a secondhand statement made five years after her death (, 231 note). She was buried in the vault of the town church at Celle, where her coffin with a Latin inscription, in which she is entitled Queen of Denmark and Norway, is still shown near those of the Celle dukes and that of her unfortunate grandmother Sophia Dorothea (for an account of her funeral see, 89-92). In England the news of her death met with little public comment; but the faithful N. Wraxall contributed a 'character' of her to the 'Annual Register' of the year. Though of late she had grown stout, she must have been very attractive in person; she was fair to a degree which exasperated her husband (, i. 91: 'elle est si blonde'); her likeness to her brother, George III, which at once struck observers (ib. 174), is very perceptible in her portrait at Herrenhausen. The queen's male costume on horseback has become famous (cf., 73 note, as to her portraits at Copenhagen); the fashion was a common one.

[The existing English biographies of Caroline Matilda are that incorporated in vol. i. of the Memoirs and Correspondence of Sir Robert Murray Keith, edited by Mrs. Gillespie Smyth, 2 vols., London, 1849, and Sir C. F. Lascelles Wraxall's Life and Times of Queen Caroline Matilda, 3 vols., London, 1864. Both are uncritical, though the latter is valuable where based on the private papers of the author's grandfather, Sir Nathaniel W. Wraxall. The literature on Struensee's rise and fall and on Queen Caroline Matilda's relations to him is extremely large, and from the Memoirs of an Unfortunate Queen (London, 1776) onwards must be used with the greatest caution; and sensational versions of the story like that in vol. i. of John Brown's Northern Courts (London, 1818) may be left aside. It should in particular be noticed that every endeavour was made during the threequarters of a century which ensued upon the catastrophe to make a complete review of the historical evidence on the subject impossible. By far the best survey of it, together with a careful examination of special points, such as the queen's relations to Struensee, will be found in K. Wittich, Struensee (Leipzig, 1879). Here are only added the titles of some other works which have been used in the above article—Authentische und hōchstmerkwürdige Aufklärungen ūber die Geschichte der Grafen Struensee und Brandt ('Germanien,' 1788); Struensee et la Cour de Copenhague, 1760-72; Memoires de Reverdil, publiés par A. Roger (Paris, 1858); G. F. von Jenssen-Tusch, Die Verschwröung gegen die Königin Caroline Mathilde und die Grafen Struensee und Brandt (Leipzig, 1864); N. W. Wraxall, Memoirs of the Courts of Berlin, Dresden, &c., vol. i. (London, ] 799); id., Posthumous Memoirs, vol. i. (London, 1836); C. E. von Malortie, Beiträge zur Geschichte des Braunschweig-Lüneburgischen Hauses und Hofes, 2 Heft (Hannover, 1860); Horace Walpole, Journal of the Reign of George III from 1771 to 1783, edited by Dr. Doran (London, 1859), vol. i.; Annual Register, 1766, 1772, 1775; Adolphus, History of England from the Accession of George III (London, 1802), i. 541-5; Lord Stanhope, History of England from the Peace of Utrecht (5th edition, 1858), v. 306-9; Havemann, Geschichte der Lande Braunschweig und Lüneburg (Göttingen, 1857), iii. 579-82 ; C. F. Allen, Histoire de Danemark, trad, par E. Beauvois (Copenhagen, 1878), ii. 192-215.]  CAROLINE, AMELIA ELIZABETH, of Brunswick - Wolfenbüttel (1768–1821), queen of George IV, second daughter of Duke Charles William Ferdinand of Brunswick and the Princess Augusta of England, sister of George III, was born 17 May 1768.

The few anecdotes told of her childhood show that she was kind, good-hearted, and charitable. The court of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel was one of the gayest in Germany, and it had very little of the stiff etiquette which was characteristic of the other North German courts. She was extremely fond of children, and would stop in her walks to notice them. The Duke of York had, during the campaign, seen much of his uncle, the Duke of Brunswick, and he was so charmed with the Princess Caroline, that he mentioned her to his brother the king and the Prince of Wales as a suitable bride for the latter. There was no prospect of the Duke and Duchess of York having any family, and the king was naturally most anxious that the succession to the throne should be indubitably settled by heritage in the direct line. Hard pressed on all sides, the prince consented, on condition of the liquidation of his debts, and a large addition to his income, to marry his cousin, then twenty-six years old. He stipulated that his income was to be raised from 60,000l. to 125,000l. per annum, of which