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7- OLAUS PETRI AND HIS WORK. 219
step is to be taken in the Reformation, nothing printed
unknown to us ;
and you, archbishop, take you special
heed to yourself if
you wish to avoid disagreeables."
32
After this the king appointed George Norman, who had
come to him as tutor to his son Eric, by his first wife,
Catherine of Lauenburg, to be superintendent of the clergy
of the kingdom. Personal irritation, however, gave place
to deeper suspicion in the king s mind when he discovered
that his two former ministers had known of his German
mintmaster s (Anders Hansson) intention of murdering
him, but had kept it secret, because it came to them under
the seal of confession. At the end of 1539 they were
formally brought to trial at Orebro. The new chancellor,
Peutinger, drew up the bitter indictment against them,
which collected various indiscretions and freedoms of
speech and writing, but nothing worse than the charge of
not revealing treason. However, on the 2nd January,
1540, they were both condemned to death, without giving
them time or opportunity to reply. The archbishop was
one of the fifteen judges who pronounced the sentence,
and, it is said, that he was forced to sign it. Whether he
thought the sentence just we do not know, but it would
seem that all the judges were expected to subscribe what
the majority voted. The death penalty was remitted, but
both were heavily fined.33
Andreae lost nearly all his pro
perty, while Olaus friends in Stockholm paid for him.
32
Fryxell, 2, 230-1. See the full text in Celsii : Mon. polit.
eccles., p. 32, and the quotation in the Biogr. lex., xi., 175.
33
The contemporary account of this trial by Erik Joransson
Tegels, in a MS. chronicle preserved in the Royal Library at
Stockholm, was never printed until 1893, probably on account
of the bad light in which it exhibited the conduct of the king. It
may be found conveniently edited by Dean H. Lundstrom in
K. H. Arsskrift for 1909, Meddelanden, etc., pp. 54-84. Lund-
strom s own judgment on the archbishop s character as to this
sad moment in his history, and other occasions on which he is
blamed for weakness, may be found in the same review, vol. vi.
for 1905, 204 foil. Lundstrom s defence on this point is that
reservations on the part of minorities were not usual at that
period, and, indeed, not until a much later date.
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