ABSTRACT
And when this awful deed had happened, that Anna had A laid violent hands on herself, and previously declared Grabow to be as guilty as herself in the crime previously mentioned, the tale was at once carried to the King, and Grabow was summoned to his presence, and was to be confined in the Blue Tower. But there were at that time many persons of the nobility recently come together in Copenhagen; and he sent in haste to these, and by their entreaties he was granted so much grace that twelve men of the nobility and six of the citizens were to stand surety for him that he would not escape before the session of the High Court was held in Copenhagen about Midsummer 1 . The King wished to have him executed at once, and said that if he had a hundred lives he would have forfeited them all, and for that reason the woman’s body was not to be buried before he could be placed in the same grave; and no one thought other but that this would happen. But when the High Court was held, all of the Danish nobility pleaded for Barabbas, or Grabow, that he should be delivered; and they pressed the matter against the King with such hardihood that, sorely against his will, he had to let it be as they and their wives and daughters prayed 2 , so that Grabow was released, and the King laid the responsibility to God on their shoulders and in their hands. But before her body was interred, her brother Morten came from Holstein, and paid 300 florins that it might be buried within the churchyard in consecrated ground; but he only obtained his wish for one-half of the body 1 .
