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«2 Philippa of England. HISTORY OF THE SWEDES. The king’s exactions. j 1397_h
beyond its limits. This short and imperfect record
of the terms of union, hurriedly drawn up it is
plain, is subscribed by seventeen barons. Its real
contents were so little known in Sweden, that we
find among the Swedish claims on Denmark, in
1435, a demand that Sweden should be correctly
informed of the true purport of the Act of Union.
Our old chroniclers are entirely ignorant of the first
convention, and are acquainted only with the more
recent forms it assumed in consequence of the
alterations and renewals which the conditions underwent.
Margaret retained possession of the government;
for Eric was but in his sixteenth year when the
union of Calmar was concluded. Some years
afterwards he married Philtppa of England5,a princess
who brought him a rich dowry, and was
distinguished by her gentleness no less than by her
intelligence and courage. Her memory was
cherished in the popular affections, but her wedlock
was childless and unhappy, and she was even
personally maltreated by her husband. Eric may be
regarded as the co-regent of Margaret from the
year 1401, when he accomplished his Ericsgait in
Sweden. On this occasion a portion of those
extraordinary taxes which now appear under different
appellations was remitted. Margaret also
promised the abolition of the rest in a proclamation
two years afterwards, in which she humbly entreats
forgiveness for the burdens she has been obliged to
impose upon the people, laying the blame upon the
exactions of the crown bailiffs and the expenses of
wars.
Yet, not long afterwards, a new and extraordinary
tax upon every hearth was levied for the
redemption of the Isle of Gottland, which Albert had
mortgaged to the knights of the Prussian order,
and Margaret now repurchased, while she severed
it from the dominion of Sweden. The
above-men-tioned letter of apology enables us to understand
the incessant complaints of the people. From it
we learn, that the commanders of the royal castles,
who were chiefly foreigners, or adventurers
without a country, vexed the peasantry by arbitrary
exaction of labour and imposition of tribute,
quartering the soldiery with their horses about the
surrounding district, where these demeaned
themselves as if in an enemy’s territory. For the rest,
the same law, or absence of law, reigned in the
manor-houses of the powerful nobles as in the
court of the sovereign. In the former, as in the
latter, the privilege of private judicature over
retainers and servants, was exercised6 ; we even
find the magnates raising individuals of this
class to the rank of nobility for themselves and
their posterity 7. That the oppressions which
produced these complaints, however, were not inflicted
5 Daughter of Henry IV. of England, betrothed in 1401,
married in 1406. She presided over the government in 1423,
during the king’s foreign travel and pilgrimage to the Holy
Sepulchre, introduced improvements in the coinage, and
defended Copenhagen in 1428 against the combined squadrons
of the Hanse Towns and Holstein, while Eric lay hidden in
the monastery of Soroe. She died in the convent of Wadstena
in 1430.
6 According to king Magnus Ericson’s household law
(gardsratt), which Margaret and Eric of Pomerania confirmed.
1 Such a right was exercised by Bo Jonson and Charles
Ulfson [Sparre) of Tofta, patents issued by whom for this
purpose are extant. Eric of Pomerania first, of the Swedish
kings, granted letters of nobility with armorial shields.
by foreigners only, is shown by the example of
Abraham Broderson, who is praised indeed by the
Rhyme Chronicle (generally favourable to the
nobility) for his bravery and skill, but whose tyranny,
we learn from various other accounts, spared
neither men’s property nor maidens’ honour. Erie
brought this nobleman, in 1410, to trial and
execution, less however, apparently, from iove of justice,
than because the knight had been unsuccessful in
his siege of the castle of Sonderburg, during the
war of Sleswick, and because the fiefs which he
possessed, both in Denmark and Sweden, made
him too formidable a subject. He was the favourite
of Margaret, who sought to save him from his
doom ; she founded masses in memory of herself
and him conjointly, and did not long survive him.
She died, at the age of sixty, in a vessel before
Flensburg, some say of the plague, which in this
year (a. d. 1412) ravaged the north, extolled by
the Danes, and famous in Sweden for her sagacity,
but loaded by our chroniclers with all that weight
of hatred which was generated by the results of
the union.
Eric of Pomerania, as he is styled, sacrificed the
greatest part of his long reign, from the time when
he became sole king, in fruitless endeavours to
secure the succession for the ducal house of
Pomerania, and in a war for the possession of Sleswick,
which the ruler of the north waged for nearly
thirty years, without success, against the not very
powerful Counts of Holstein8. The former was,
doubtless, the chief reason why the king thought it
expedient to commit to foreigners the custody of the
Swedish castles ; the latter, conducted with equal
folly and obstinacy, although with frequent
interruptions and negociations, occasioned continual
levies of men, who for the most part perished
miserably in captivity, and new taxes extremely
oppressive, the weight of which was felt the more
severely as they were mostly levied in money, in
order that their produce might be transmitted to
Denmark. Every town ana mine-district was held
responsible for a certain amount which the
authorities did not blush to extort by means the most
violent and inhuman. Notwithstanding the
depreciation of the coins to which the king had recourse,
these were so rare, that the property of the
taxpayers was often taken in pledge for a small part of
its real value. Justice was no longer administered ;
not only the provincial diets and courts of
inquisition had fallen into disuse, but the ordinary
judicial offices were either left tenantless, or filled
by foreigners for the sake-of the emoluments ; and
" such right as they have had therewith, such also
have they shown to us," the peasants complain 9.
All affairs were left to the management of the
s The Holsteiners admitted the right of the king of
Denmark to feudal superiority over Sleswick, but claimed the
territory as a hereditary fief, which the latter refused, aiming
at the possession of the duchy. The contest began after the
death of Gerard of Holstein in 1404, respecting the
guardianship of his children, and did not end before 1435, when the
king was compelled by the expenses which it entailed to
make a treaty with Adolphus, count of Holstein, in which,
however, the matter in dispute remained undetermined, in
the same year peace was made with the Vendish towns
Hamburg, Luneburg, and Wismar, which in the nine last
years had taken part with Holstein.
9 See the remonstrances of the Swedish peasants in
Hvit-l’eld’s Danish Chronicle, Copenhagen, 1652, iii. 781.
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