Leonora Christina remained in prison for twenty-two years--that is, until the death of Sophia Amalia, the Queen of Fredrik III. This King, as well as his son Christian V., would willingly have set her at liberty; but the influence of the Queen over her husband and son was so strong that only her death, which occurred in 1685, released Leonora.
The Memoir of her life in prison terminates with this event, and her after-life does not offer any very remarkable incidents. Nevertheless, a few details, chiefly drawn from a MS. in the Royal Library at Copenhagen, recently published by Mr. Birket Smith, may serve to complete the historical image of this illustrious lady. The MS. in question is from the hand of a Miss Urne, of an ancient Danish family, who managed the household of Leonora from 1685 to her death in 1698. A royal manor, formerly a convent, at Maribo, on the island of Laaland, was granted to Leonora shortly after her release from the Blue Tower, together with a sufficient pension for a moderate establishment.
'The first occupation of the Countess,' says Miss Urne, 'was devotion; for which purpose her household was assembled in a room outside her bed-chamber. In her daily morning prayer there was this passage: "May the Lord help all prisoners, console the guilty, and save the innocent!" After that she remained the whole forenoon in her bedchamber, occupied in reading and writing. She composed a book entitled the "Ornament of Heroines," which Countess A. C. Ulfeldt and Count Leon took away with them, together with many other rare writings. Her handiwork is almost indescribable, and without an equal; such as embroidering in silk, gold embroidery, and turning in amber and ivory.'
It will be seen from Leonora's own Memoir that needlework was one of her principal occupations in her prison. Count Waldstein still possesses some of her work; in the Church of Maribo an altar-cloth embroidered by her existed still some time ago; and at the Castle of Rosenborg, in Copenhagen, there is a portrait of Christian V. worked by Leonora in silk, in return for which present the King increased her annual pension. Miss Urne says that she sent all her work to Elizabeth Bek, a granddaughter of Leonora, who lived with her for some years. But she refused to send her Leonora's Postille, or manual of daily devotion, which had been given Leonora on New Year's Day, in the last year of her captivity, by the castellan, Torslev, who is mentioned in Leonora's Memoir, and who had taught her to turn ivory, &c. This book has disappeared; but amongst the relics of Leonora Christina, the Royal Library at Copenhagen preserves some leaves which had been bound up with it, and contain verses, &c., by Leonora, and other interesting matter.