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Taxation. Tithes.
Royal domain.
SWEDEN IN THE MIDDLE AGE.
Boundaries. Mines
of iron and copper.
109
which the Land’s Law ordained that a third should
be allotted to the crown. There was then no
regular rate of assessment on landed property,
although its division into Markland, Oresland, and
the like, might lead us so to conjecture. Definitions
casually occurring in the laws vindicate who were
to be regarded as full-stead yeomen (fullsuten
bonde). All these were taxed in like proportion,
in such wise that their payments should not be
raised by reason of any excess above the standard,
but lessened in the measure of their short coming ;
and especial care seems to have been taken to
preserve the old number of substantial yeomen
undiminished. On this account Christian I. complains
in an ordinance of 1459, that by yeomen
purchasing two or more granges, " the taxes and revenues
of the crown are much minished and wasted ;"
wherefore he enjoins, by the advice of his
well-beloved councillors, that " no yeoman shall
thenceforward take into his hands more assessable estate than
in the judgment of twelve unbiassed men is
sufficient for his establishment;" in case of disobedience
he should pay agreeably to the Calmar Recess of
1474, forty marks, and be called " the king’s full
thief." To the same penalty a nobleman became
liable by the Land’s Law, who acquired ground
assessed to the crown-taxes. On the other side,
excessive parcelling out of such land was
forbidden.
Various provisions are to be found in the law,
regulating the obligations reciprocally affecting the
labourer who tilled another’s fields and the
landowner. Nor did they leave indigence unrelieved
to its fate. The Law of Upland enacts that poor
and infirm men shall be carried from hamlet to
hamlet, every peasant being bound to keep him for
one night. On the other hand the yeomen had at
first the right to withhold that proportion of the
tithe which went to the poor ; for after the priest
had received his third, the residue was divided into
three equal parts, between the parish church,
the bishop, and the support of hospitals and poor ;
although this last share was gradually diverted to
other purposes, as to the uses of the chapter and the
maintenance of students. With the thirteenth
century tithes were introduced—and what other impost
so burdensome ?—in the face of strong opposition.
The church, though not contributing to the public
necessities, in fact possessed from tithes, donations,
and bequests, as well as the grant of temporal fiefs
to the prelates, greater revenues than the crown
itself, without including what the papal agents
drew from the kingdom, sometimes for the
recoil-quest of the Holy Land from the infidels,
sometimes for indulgences, or on other occasions.
But the king, says the Land’s Law, " it befits to
live from the estate of Upsala, from the crown-lands,
and the yearly legal taxes of his realm, and in
nothing to lessen these for any other king, nor lay any
new burdens on his land." Only in the four following
cases might an extraordinary aid be demanded ; on
the breaking out of war, for then the men of the
realm were bound to follow the king in his expedi-
9 South Helsingland, Angermanland, and Medelpad paid
their taxes partly in linen; thus long have the inhabitants
of these provinces practised weaving, which still constitutes
one of their chief sources of support.
1 The Law of West-Gothland l’orbids the iron-blasters to sell
iron of bad quality.
tions, yet not beyond the frontiers without their
own consent ; 011 the marriage of one of his
children ; 011 his coronation, or when he rode his
Eric’s-gait, or finally when he required an aid for his
buildings, for the repair of his houses, or the
improvement of the estate of Upsala. Then the
bishop and judge of each province, with six
household-men, and six yeomen, were to deliberate
among themselves " what supportable aid the
commonalty might and should pay to their
sovereign."
The ancient compass of the kingdom is shown by
the Eric’s-gait, embracing Swedeland and Gothland,
with Smaland. The remainder in part belonged to
Denmark, as the southern coasts, in part was
subject alternately to Sweden and Norway, as
Vermeland, in part was not settled until a later day, as
Dalecarlia and Norrland. We may besides observe
regarding its boundaries under the Catholic period,
that Jemteland and Herjedale, in the time of Ing£
the younger, submitted to Norway, though they
continued dependent on the see of Upsala ; that
Finland was annexed to the dominions of the crown
by three eminent chiefs, St. Eric, earl Birger, and
Thorkel Canuteson ; that the isle of Gottland was
lost to Sweden under Albert, and remained
disunited for two hundred and fifty years ; and that
under Magnus Ericson, the provinces of Scania,
Halland, and Bleking, were both won and lost.
Not the least important conquests were those
made by cultivation ; and in the time of the
last-named sovereign began the settlement of Upper
Norrland above Umea. Those portions of the
middle territory in which mining districts were
afterwards formed, remained longest in their original
wildness. Thus the law of West-Gothland, which
enumerates the churches subject to the bishopric
of Skara, does not mention one in all East
Vermeland, which therefore in that day was thinly
inhabited, while the account in the Heimskringla, on
the other hand, of the inroad by the Norwegian
king Haco llacoson into its early settled western
portion, mentions every where granges anil
hamlets which subsist at the present day. Thus too
the name of the mining district Skinskatteberg
shows that here the taxes were paid in the skins
of animals, as the Law of the Helsingers orders for
Upper Norrland 9.
The oldest mining charters in Sweden which
have been preserved are those of Magnus Ericson.
Iron furnaces existed in Gothland in the thirteenth
century 1; the charters for the mining districts of
Norberg and Nerike, in 1340 and 1350, mention
them in middle Sweden. Those of the copper mines
at Falun are of 1347 but refer to others which had
preceded ; and the antiquity of mining is attested
by the circumstance, that in 1268 an estate was
sold at that place for eleven skeppunds of copper 2.
That the Lubeckers had betimes acquired a share
in the mine is shown by the letter of Magnus
Ericson in 1344, confirming to them all the property
and revenues which they possessed there " by
ancient right3." In 1367, king Albert pledged to the
counts of Holstein, from the crown’s proportion of
2 Diplomat. Suec.i. 26S. (Eleven skeppunds are nearly 30
cwt., 100 about 13 tons.)
3 See the Latin deed in Sartorius, Documentary History
of the rise of the German Hanse, edited by J. M. Lappenberg,
ii. 378.
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