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,.„ Crown grants revoked. in«Tni)v (IV T1IF «Wl’llFQ Margaret of Norway. J a. d.
The steward Jonson. lliblUKY OI> Uih, SsW^jJ^b. The crown offered to her. i 1371—8
in the old Swedish verses, entitled " a pleasant
likeness of king Albert and Sweden 1". The great
number of Germans who are mentioned at that
time as members of the council and in command of
the royal castles, sufficiently indicate that these
complaints were not unfounded. Such was the
prevalent mood of men’s minds while the kingdom
was exposed at once to intestine war, and to
hostilities from Norway and Denmark. Albert’s allies,
the powerful towns of the Hanseatic league,
compelled indeed the foreign enemies to remain quiet,
but king Haco, having in vain endeavoured by
negociation to obtain his father’s release, broke
anew into Sweden, and pushing on to Stockholm,
laid siege to the town. In this emergency Albert
had no other resource than that of unreserved
submission to the council. The plenary grant by which
he in 1369 appointed Bo Jonson Grip "his managing
agent " over his court, houses and manors, his
revenues, bailiffs and servants, with the right even of
inflicting capital punishment, bestowed upon this
nobleman the same powers in all these respects as
were possessed by the king himself. In the
compact made with the council, August 9, 1371, he
admits that the royal commanders had, contrary to
his wishes, exercised many violences against men
of every class in the realm, for which reason he
now transferred all the castles and fortresses of
the crown, with the domains appertaining to them,
to the custody of the council, by whom they should
be bestowed only upon natives of Sweden. The
vacated places in the council were also to be filled
up by themselves, and no foreigners admitted to be
members. Thus the whole administration of affairs
passed into the hands of the council, now so much
the more powerful, because the great plague had
amassed extraordinary riches in the hands of a
few. No man in Sweden ever attained to greater
opulence than the high steward Jonson. Besides
enormous property of his own, he held in pledge
for loans which he had advanced to the crown the
whole of Finland and the largest portion of
Sweden, with the principal castles of the kingdom, and
the lands belonging to the Upsala estate. And
thus an old relation declares, that he ruled the
country with his beck. In what excesses men such
as he could sometimes give loose to their passions,
we may learn from the circumstance, that the baron
Matthew Gustaveson in 1372 assassinated
Gott-skalk, bishop of Linkoping, in a quarrel respecting
the title to certain estates, and Jonson himself, in
1381, being in feud with baron Charles Nilson
Farla, pursued his antagonist into the Franciscan
church at Stockholm, and cut him down before the
high altar. When such were the manners of the
possessors of power, it may well seem futile to
observe that in 1375 they confirmed anew with
king Albert the covenant of land’s-peace 2.
1 Script. Rer. Suec. i. 2, 210.
2 For three years, it is said.
3 Every third manor of their own property.
4 Post cujus mortem milites et optimates Sueciae cum rege
Alberto discordare coeperunt, eo quod idem rex ab ipsis
quandam partem honorum regalium, quam ipsi a multis
retroactis temporibus ac progenitores eorum tempore
guerra-rum sibi usurpaverant, juridice exigebat; quod quidem
praB-dicti nobiles regni indigne ferentes contra regem conspirare
coeperunt, allegando quod rex patrimonia ipsorum vellet
diripere ac Theutonicis suis elargiri. Script. Rer. Suec. i.
Chronologia xiv. 45, 46.
Unsuccessful attempts to reconquer Scania
aggravated the lung’s necessities, and occasioned new
inroads on the property of the church. These again
gave rise to new compacts, always ending 011 the
king’s side on more absolute dependence, till after
the death of Jonson in 1386 he ventured to come
to an open rupture with the magnates, and to
appropriate to himself, it is said, a third part of the
estates of the spiritual and temporal lords 3,
proceeding forthwith to exact by force compliance
with his demand. So runs the poetical account of
the Rhyme Chronicle, which has been understood
literally, and explained as a confiscation by the
crown of the third part of the spiritual and
temporal freeholds (fralset). But such an attempt is
wholly incredible, even on the part of so rash a
sovereign as Albert, and it is also clear from other
sources of information, that here the question
concerned only property of right belonging to the
crown; for a contemporary account declares that
" when Boece Jonson, the steward of Sweden, died,
dissensions sprang up between the knights and
nobles of the realm and king Albert, because he
required from them by authority of law a certain
portion of the crown estates which they and their
forefathers had for a long time held, having
appropriated them during the wars; wherefore the said
nobles being dissatisfied, began to conspire against
the king, pretending that he wished to seize upon
their patrimonies in order to bestow them upon his
Germans 4."
It was against the heirs of the steward more
especially, that this demand of revocation was
levelled, but it was sufficient to kindle a civil war,
and we now find the executors appointed under the
will of this powerful thane disposing of the Swedish
crown, and thereby preparing the union of the
three northern kingdoms. Waldemar of Denmark
had died in 1375, Haco of Norway in 1380. Olave,
son of Haco by Margaret, and by his father and
maternal grandfather king of both Norway and
Denmark, died young in 1387, the last male scion
of the royal line of the Folkungers, in virtue of
which descent he styled himself the rightful heir of
Sweden. After his death, Margaret was named
regent in Denmark, and queen regnant in Norway ;
and in the same year the executors of Jonson’s
testament, in whose custody were the principal castles
and strongholds of the kingdom, made an overture
to her of the Swedish crown5. They were not
diverted from their purposes by any scruples as to
the want of any authority better than their own ;
the disaffection generally prevalent among the
Swedes found them adherents, Margaret furnished
them with supplies of war and auxiliary troops ;
and Albert’s fate was decided by the battle of
Falkoeping 6, fought on the 21st September, 1381),
s His testament is to be found in Hadorph’s edition of the
translation of the " History of Alexander the Great," made
from the Latin into Swedish verse, at Bo Jonson’s instance
(Wisingsborg, 1672). In later times, indeed, we occasionally
find this versified translation attributed to Jonson himself;
but he had made so little progress in Latin that in his
will, which is written in Swedish, he styles his executors
invariably executoribus.
6 In West-Gothland. The 24th February, St. Matthias’s
day, in spring, is usually stated as that of the battle ; but the
Rhyme Chronicle names St. Matthew’s day, in harvest,
though it gives the wrong year, 1388. (Joannes Magnus also
says, on the day of Matthew the apostle, xxi. 14. T.)
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