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Cruel treatment of
Nicholas.
lie was cited by George Person for laches before
the king’s court, where "the poor men," as the
judges are called, were precluded by the articles of
the household from freeing his life, unless his
majesty should be disposed to pardon him by his
special grace. The king had left it in his option to
appear before the tribunal, or to submit to a
shameful entry into Stockholm. Now the punishment of
death was remitted to him, but not the disgrace.
Set on a wretched nag, and with a straw-wreath
smeared with tar on his head, he was led through
the streets of Stockholm, amidst shouts of " See
here a traitor to the state." The soldiers loudly
expressed their discontent, and called that he had
borne himself against the enemy like a worthy
Swede. In a fit of remorse the king again sent
him his pardon, forbade on pain of death all further
mention of what had happened, and despatched
him in haste abroad, as envoy to the princess
Renata of Lorraine. Upon the insult to which he
had been subjected, Nicholas Sturd wrote to his
parents, " I drank a draught in Stockholm which
hath crushed sense, joy, and all my welfare in this
world ;" and upon the stain to his honour, " I hope
one day to be able to defend myself with other than
letter and seal."
With 15(»7 "arrived king Eric’s most unhappy
year," as he himself says in his journal3. That the
king at this time believed a great conspiracy to
have been formed against him, especially by the
house of Sture and its powerful connexions, is
incontestable. He felt that he had injured this
family in a manner which could not be forgiven.
He lived in perpetual alarm, augmented his
bodyguard, and kept spies in the houses of his subjects4.
Reports of examinations by torture and nightly
executions spread terror among the people.
February 4, 1507, a servant of count Suanto Sture was
condemned to death by the royal court, because he
had met the king in the street with a musket in his
hand. In how far such a conspiracy really existed
opinions are divided. Many fell victims to
suspicion, " and because there were many," says the
great Gustavus Adolphus, "the world judged that
they were all innocent." Eric himself afterwards
wrote from prison to his brothers, that the
conspirators had designed to overthrow the house of
Vasa, and to change the kingdom into an elective
monarchy. The dissatisfaction of the higher
nobility with the hereditary settlement was afterwards
sufficiently manifested. But even if the intention
Supposed conspiracy.
Diet at Stockholm.
existed, we discern neither plan nor means for its
accomplishment. We believe in no separate
conspiracy among the nobility, because John and
Charles were the natural chiefs of such a league
(the party against them was formed later and
under other circumstances), and least of all do we
believe in a conspiracy of the Store’s, who then
united moderate ambition to a spotless reputation,
but possessed none of the qualities of heads of
dangerous undertakings ; and this is confirmed by
all the knowledge we have gathered from the
records of that time. Expressions of discontent,
grief, or revenge, such as those just quoted from
the letters of Nicholas Sturd, and naturally
extorted by the contumelies he had been made to
endure, are all that is alleged in the investigation
against the so-called conspirators, and the wretched
subterfuges to which George Person was obliged to
have recourse, in order to give these words some
significance, prove at the most only the
embarrassment of the prosecutor.
In the beginning of the year we find Eric
occupied in negotiations with his brother Charles, who
had now attained the age of eighteen, and asked
to be invested with his dukedom. The king
proposed an exchange of certain other provinces for
those mentioned in their father’s will. This
discussion had no result. Both he and his favourite
secretly occupied themselves in collecting proofs of
the conspiracy above-mentioned, which were to be
disclosed to the estates at the diet convoked in
Stockholm for the 1st of May. It was necessary
to summon the nobles also, and those lords whose
life was involved, the foremost of the whole
kingdom received gracious letters to present themselves
before the king himself, who was residing at
Swart-sioe. Most of them appeared ; Eric Sture first,
then Abraham Gustaveson Stenbock, Steno Axelson
Baner, Ivar Ivarson of Stromstad, Steno Ericson
Leyonliufvud, and last of all old Suanto Sture’, who
took the sacrament in Telje, when he heard that
the barons above-named, with his own wife, who had
hastened to see her son, had been arrested.
Meanwhile the king had caused it to be proclaimed
throughout Stockholm by beat of drum, that in
consequence of the discovery of treasonable coniplots
the diet should be removed to Upsala, and
postponed to the 18th of May, whereby probably the
rest of the lords who were suspected and had been
summoned were dissuaded from appearing 5. The
trial at Swartsioe is veiled in obscurity, and although
history of the swedes.
Copenhagen to effect the release of the Swedish admiral
Bagge. He is said to have bound himself at the same time
"to lay some plot against the king of Denmark, which it
was not needful to reveal at this time, but which must have
been of no light importance, since during his interview with
king Eric all persons had been excluded." lie indeed
protested that he had not subscribed or promised any thing of
the kind, but was nevertheless condemned " to be held as a
dishonoured, pledge-breaking, and faithless man." And on
occasion of this sentence the court is said to have been
augmented by the council of state, several nobles and
burgesses, German officers and Danish prisoners !
3 Infelicissimus annus Erici regis. This journal had a
singular fate, and is in more than one respect an evidence of
the misfortunes of Eric’s family. It was pawned by his exiled
son Gustavus Ericson to an innkeeper of Wilna, again
redeemed by Gregory Larson, a Swede in the service of king
Sigismund, in the year 1603, and saved by Aco Ralamb
(Nov. 22, 1673) from destruction in a grocer’s booth at Paris,
where it had been sold with many other Swedish records by
the dwarf of king John Cassimir, who had followed his
master to France. The library of Upsala possesses a copy of
the journal of the year 1567, but has the original of that for
the preceding year, with the title : Commentaria historica
regis Erici XIV. cum directionibus et profectionibus
planeta-rum pro anno 1566. It is written in a very neat hand.
From the astrological observations we find that the king
often read in the stars of " brothers’ envy." On the last leaf
he wrote,
Quem non formosae delectant casta puellae
Oscula, non homo, sed truncus habetur iners.
4 July 22: Ordinavi exploratores domesticos Holmije.
King Eric’s Journal for 1566.
5 These were Peter Brahe, Gustave Olaveson Stenbock,
the aged father of the queen dowager, bis son Eric
Gustaveson, brother of Abraham, Tliure Bielke, his brother’s son
Hogenskild Bielke, Clas Fleming, and Clas Akeson Tott.
Messenius.
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