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1 1543.] Debt to Lubeck. New Taxes. GUSTAVUS VASA. THE REFORMATION. Prevalence of distress. Ill
rence Anderson, provost of Strengness, and
afterwards of Upsala, who had spent his early years in
Rome, and now in his old age was a pupil of these
younger men. The nature of the maxims now
prevalent respecting the property of the Church
may be perceived from the words addressed by the
chancellor to the monks of Vadstena, when they
complained of the aid demanded from the convents,
for the expedition to Gottland. He answered
them : " The monies of the congregation are those
of the people 3."
Three months after the king’s elevation to the
throne, when he rendered an account to the people
at the fair of Westeras of the revenues of the
kingdom, he stated the expenses of the war at 960,000
marks 4, wherefore he had been obliged to contract
large debts. Those due to Lubeck, as they were
acknowledged at the diet of Strengness, amounted
to 68,681 Lubeck marks for military stores, with
8,609 marks in cash advanced 5, not including
200,000 guilders for the payment of the soldiery 6,
which, however, were probably refunded in the
same year with the plate of the churches, since
this debt is not afterwards mentioned. To these
besides were to be added the expenses incurred for
the conquest of Finland, for the expedition against
Gottland, for the suppression of the revolts, the
establishment and maintenance of a new
government. Thus the first years of Gustave’s reign
were all marked by new and extraordinary levies
of money, which pressed with especial severity on
the church, and were excused by the king on the
ground of the public need 7. So early as 1522 an
aid was required from the clergy, and in 1523 a
tax in money, under the name of a loan, was
imposed on all the churches and monasteries of the
kingdom ; in 1524 a new benevolence was granted
on account of the expedition to Gottland, for which
end the king also sent his own plate to the mint; in
1525 the cavalry were removed into quarters in the
convents, and the chapters were charged with the
maintenance of soldiers assigned upon them, the
king receiving nearly the whole of the church tithes
for the year ; and 1526, two-thirds of their
produce, although he complains that " from some
concealed practice of the priesthood " these revenues
had by no means equalled his expectations. The
tithes were to be applied towards discharging the
public debt. For the same purpose the nobility
and clergy also granted an aid in 1526 ; the towns
were taxed, and a heavy tallage laid over the whole
kingdom, on such goods as the common people
were best able to spare, " because at that time
there was very little money to take in the lands."
Various unfavourable circumstances made the
pressure of all this to be more severely felt. The tokens
or need-money, called klippings9, which had been
current at four times their worth, were at once
cancelled in 1524, instead of being reduced to their
real value. Misunderstandings with the Hanse
Towns, combined with the piracies of Norby, cut
off all importation of foreign goods, by which the
price of salt was so much enhanced that the poorer
classes were compelled to boil sea water 1 ; and
when this want was supplied by means of a
commercial treaty which the king concluded with the
Netherlands, a grievous dearth took place in 1527
and 1528. Next year the kingdom was ravaged
by that wasting epidemic which received the name
of the English or cold sweat. Upon the famine the
chronicles remark, that "the people had nothing
for bread but bark-cakes, and any one who was
able to buy chaff or mash, looked upon himself as
to proclaim tlie word and will of God, and whether it is fitting
that any should be priests but such as do this. 3. Whether
their laws, injunctions, or ordinances, can load a man with
sin, if he act against them. 4. Whether they have power
by excommunication to sever any one from God, as a limb
cut off from God’s congregation, and to make him to be a
limb of the devil. 5. Whether the lordship which the pope
and his tribe have exercised be for or against the lordship of
Christ. 6. Whether God’s service be anything else than to
keep his commandments, not men’s inventions, which God
hath not enjoined. 7. Whether a man may be saved by his
merits, or only by God’s grace and compassion. 8. Whether
the monastic life have any ground in Scripture. 9. Whether
any man have or have had power to dispense the sacrament
in wine and bread otherwise than as Christ himself ordained
it. 10. Whether we should put faith in revelations which
are said to have been made, other than are proved by Holy
Scripture. 11. What ground may the Scriptures afford for
purgatory. 12. Whether men should honour, venerate, and
pray to the saints, and whether the saints are our defenders,
patrons, mediators, and intercessors before God." See the
whole in Troil’s Memoirs for the History of the Swedish
Reformation, v. i. (Handlingar till Svenska Reformationens
Historia.)
3 Quando dicimus ecclesise pecuniam, quid aliud quam
pecuniam populi dicimus ? Scan. Mem. xvii. 206.
4 The document (entitled " Thette wartt framsatt, &c.
This was explained to the common people at Westeras a. d.
1523, at Martinmas, and may be promulged in other places of
the country,") is published by Fant: Dissertatio de causis, ob
quas Gustavo I. contra Christiernum II. opitulati fuerint
Lubecenses, Upsaliee, 1782. If we reckon the Swedish mark
of that time at twenty skillings in silver, or (compare
Hallenberg, on the Value of Coins and Wares in Sweden
under the reign of Gustavus I.), the sum above-mentioned
will amount to 400,000 silver rix-dollars (which, taking the
rix dollar at Is. 8rf. is £33,333 of the present English money,
an enormous sum for Sweden in that day. T.).
5 Tegel. Sartorius, History of the Hanseatic League iii.
159. The Lubeckers demanded two marks Swedish for one
of Lubeck, to which Gustavus would not consent. (The
Lubeck mark is 14§rf., so that they would have made a good
bargain ; 77,290 Lubeck marks make about £4,720. T.)
6 Nine guilders were equal to about eight rix-dollars
(200,000 guilders would thus be nearly £15,000).
7 Loquutus sum majestati suae de gravamine ecclesiarum,
&c.; respondit profusis lacrymis, quod nulli mortalium plus
displicere possit eadem exactio quam sibi, et quod earn
ne-cessitas et nulla voluntas majestati suue imperaret.
Johannes Magnus, letter to bishop Brask, August 1, 1523;
Scan. Mem. xvii. 157. The archbishop no doubt set down
the king’s tears to the account of his own eloquence, for to
bishop Brask Gustavus holds on the same subject language
which is not at all that of lamentation : " This does every
honest man’s conscience tell him, that in a time of public
strait, when such burdens are imposed on the kingdom, all
must help to bear them ; both churches, convents, monks,
and preachers, specially when nothing else will suffice."
Scan. Mem. xiv. 50.
8 See Stiernman, Resolutions of Diets and Meetings, v. i.
under all the above named years.
9 The /clipping of Gustavus had passed for eighteen
so-called pennings, equal to three skillings five rundstycks
(about l^d ); its real value was nine rundstycks (-forf.). The
churches had been obliged to surrender their money for
klippings.
1 Circular of the king to the country and the towns, April
20, 1526, that "ships of Holland had arrived at Stockholm
with salt, cloth, wine, and other wares ; wherefore the people
should be of good heart, seeing that the dear time would
gradually cease." Registry of the Archives.
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