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7 8
Engelbert’s success.
His administration.
HISTORY OF THE SWEDES.
Assassination of
Engelbert.
a. d.
14.16
were taken and destroyed, and the more easily,
that wood was the material of which many were
constructed. Everywhere the foreign prefects
were expelled, though none fell a victim to the
popular vengeance, excepting Josse Ericson, who
remained for some time concealed in the monastery
of Vadstena. Two years after these occurrences,
the peasants dragged him from his retreat and put
him to death, an outrage for which they were
obliged to pay a large fine to the convent|J. The
property of the crown was plundered, but the
effects of individuals were left unmolested, and we
have the evidence of a current proverb, that no
man lost so much as the value of a fowl by
Engelbert and his army. All this passed with incredible
quickness. On the 16th of August, 1434, the
letter of renunciation to the king was drawn up in
Vadstena. Before the end of October, the greater
number of the castles and fortified places in the
kingdom had been seized; Halland besides was
wrested from the Danes, Engelbert returned to
Westeras, and the peasant army dismissed to their
homes.
In November the king came for a short time to
Stockholm ; which occasioned the issue of a new
summons to the peasants to march towards the
capital, and the holding of a diet at Arboga in the
opening of the year 1435, by which Engelbert was
unanimously chosen administrator. From this
moment the magnates gradually fell into the ranks
of the royalist party. Their differences with the
king were adjusted by a treaty which, first
concerted in Halmstad, and afterwards guaranteed by
the councillors of Denmark and Norway, was
ratified by the king in person upon his return to
Stockholm in the autumn of the same year. The high
offices of steward and marshal of Sweden were to
be restored, the taxes determined by the consent of
the council, and judges again appointed throughout
the country ; the castles which had not been burned
down were to be delivered up to the king, and all
of them, with the exception of Stockholm, Nykoeping,
and Calmar, placed under the charge of native
governors. Orebro was to be granted in fief to
Engel-bert, and Halland to be restored to Denmark.
Christer Nilson Vasa, an aged noble, was nominated
high steward, Charles Canuteson Bond£, the most
brilliant of the young nobles of Sweden, was made
high marshal. When the latter requested
instructions for the discharge of his functions, the king
bade him be guided by the proverb, " not to stretch
the feet further than the coverlet reached ;" his
answer to the representations addressed to him by the
council was, that "he would not be their yea-lord."
On his return he himself plundered the Swedish
coasts, and among his new governors we find men
who obtained a bad distinction by their
inhumanities 7.
Engelbert and Charles Canuteson now made
themselves masters of the town of Stockholm,
although the Danish governor still held the castle.
At the election of a new administrator, instituted by
thirty barons, Charles Canuteson obtained nearly
all the votes. Neither Engelbert nor Puk£ con-
6 Diary of Vadstena under the year 1436, where it is said
that this oppressor was " a special friend of the monastery,
and conferred a great bequest."
7 See the account in the Rhyme Chronicle of the new
governor of Stegeborg.
cealed their discontent, and the murmurs of the
yeomanry were so loud that Charles Canuteson
found himself obliged to consent to a division of
power with the former. Engelbert, in an expe
dition towards the Danish frontier, checked the
tyranny of the new governors, once more reduced
Halland, and falling sick returned to Orebro.
In the neighbourhood of this town dwelt Bennet
Stenson 8, a powerful noble, and a partisan of King
Eric 9. Being at open feud with Engelbert, he
re-J quested and obtained a safe-conduct to hold an
in-1 terview, at which an agreement was made,
guaranteed by mutual sureties, that they should commit
their disputes to award of the council, and in the
mean time live at peace with each other.
Engelbert now welcomed his enemy as his guest, and
being called to Stockholm by the council,
determined, it is said, at his proposal, to cross lake
Hielmar on his route, the rather that the debility
which still clung to him made travelling on
horseback painful. In the evening, accordingly,
Engelbert, his wife, and only a few attendants were
conveyed in two boats for a distance of a mile and
a half, to an island over against Bennet Stenson’s
castle of Goksholm, and lying no great way from
itHere Engelbert intended to pass the night,
and caused a fire to be kindled, the cold, at the end
of April, being still severe. Another boat
approached the island, and Engelbert, who on seeing
it, believed that it brought hospitable invitation to
Goksholm, called the attention of his companions to
the circumstance, as a proof of the good will of its
owner. He beckoned to the new comers with his
crutch, pointing out a proper landing-place.
Suddenly Magnus, son of his new pretended friend,
sprang out of the boat, and vehemently demanded
whether he was to have no peace in the land on his
account. Upon Engelbert replying that he knew of no
unpeace betwixt them, Magnus Bennetson aimed
at him a blow of his poleaxe, which, though the sick
man tried to parry it with his crutch, wounded him
in the hand. Repeated blows on the neck and head
brought Engelbert to the ground. The murderer,
with the frenzy of a wild beast, beat in pieces the
head of his victim, stuck the body full of arrows,
and left him weltering in his blood, carrying his
wife and companions prisoners to the castle. This
happened on the 27th of April, 1436. Peasants
who dwelt near the spot took up Engelbert’s body,
and interred it in the church of Mallosa, whence it
was afterwards carried to Orebro. The strong
castle of Goksholm was stormed by an exasperated
force of the neighbouring yeomen, but the object of
their pursuit eluded them, and a letter of protection
was issued by Charles Canuteson, the new
administrator, forbidding any one to presume to molest the
criminal, or to reproach him with the deed. Thus
died Engelbert, who is said in a contemporary
narrative " to have ruled over Sweden for three years."
The powerful barons generally opposed him, but
some of the noblest among them loved and honoured
him. The valiant Broder Swenson was his brother
in arms, and Thomas, bishop of Strengnas, lamented
his death in verses which move our sympathies even
at the present day. Engelbert’s memory was kept
8 Of the family of Natt och Dag (night and day).
a Hence he was one of those whom the king intended to
nominate to the office of steward.
1 It is still called Engelbert’s Holm.
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