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2. ENGELBREKT, KARL KNUTSSON AND THOMAS. 153
line of Ketillus Caroli Vasa, Bishop of Linkoping, who
was administrator in 1464. The Vasa family was at first
Danish in sympathies, but it was reconciled to the nation
alist party by the marriage of John Christersson with Brita,
a daughter of Gustaf Sture, and a niece of Karl Knut-
sson s.
5
Engelbrekt was not elected administrator a
second time, but the office was given to Karl Knutsson,
much to the disappointment of many of Engelbrekt s fol
lowers. Engelbrekt, none the less, went on labouring for
the public good, though with weakened health and spirits.
He was, however, foully murdered in April 1436, by a
nobleman whom he had, as administrator, checked in a
course of piracy, but who now approached him seemingly
as a friend.
6
This murder ranks with .the other public tragedies which
have profoundly affected the national imagination, and few
victims of revenge have more deserved popular sympathy
than this good man. He was buried in his native town,
where his memory and example, without doubt, appealed
to the two foremost leaders of the Swedish Reformation of
the sixteenth century, which was so closely connected with
the reaction against foreign tyranny. The brothers,
Olaus and Laurentius Petri, were, like Engelbrekt, born
at Orebro. Though Engelbrekt s career was short, it was
permanently fruitful. It revived in the peasants a sense of
their old position and their power, which they were well-
nigh losing, as for a time they quite lost it in Norway, where
they had no such leaders to encourage them. It broke
down the provincialism of Sweden, and created a fuller
sentiment of nationality and of the value of duty to the
country, as well as of affection for it. Two great
institutions may be said to have grown out of it, the national
parliament or Riksdag, and the national Kingship. The
5
See the table of the Vasa family in Sv. H. 2
, 2, p. 499. It
is more exact than Geijer s account of the family, p. 97.
6
This was Mans Bengtsson, son of Bengt Stensson, of the
family of Natt och Dag. The murder took place in an island on
Lake Hjalmar, near the Castle of Goksholm.
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