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1543.] Assize of Tuna. Monasteries suppressed. GUSTAVUS VASA.
Tuna. On their arrival, they found him at the
head of 14,000 men, by whom, on the field of
conference, they were surrounded. A letter, in terms
of menace, from the deputies of all the realm below
the Dale country was read, in which they were
denounced as recreants from the league which united
them with the other provinces. The instigators of
the revolt were delivered up, sentenced to death,
and executed on the spot. The rest received grace;
and there were many who had expected pardon,
even for those who were really guilty, since the
royal safe-conduct, uuder which all had come,
excepted no one. From the Dales the king proceeded
to Helsingland and Gestricland, where obedience
was restored by the like method, but without
bloodshed.
Of the popular temper at this time the chronicles
give the following description :—" The king might
labour as much as he would that they might bear
goodwill to him and his labours, yet it was of no
avail. The reason was, that he had so few upright
servants, with understanding and will to order his
affairs for the best, nor could he obtain such before
the popish creed was mostly rooted out. Never
would the Dalesmen have been so lightly brought
to revolt, nor the West-Gotlilanders and
Smaland-ers beside, if they had not cherished a perverse
opinion of the king, that he wished to suppress the
Christian faith. With such charges did the old
folk, and especially old priests, fill the ears of the
common people, so that did the king show himself
mild or harsh, it was taken alike ill. If he
discoursed pleasantly, they cried that he wished to
tickle them with the hare’s foot; if he spoke
sharply, they then said, that for all their taxes and
burdens they had nought else to expect from him
but reproaches and bad words, and that he would
undo them and the whole kingdom. With the
provinces which remained quiet it was mostly feigning,
for they did it out of fear, because they heard how
with strong hand he had compelled the Dalesmen
and Norrlanders to obedience."
For the effects of the diet of Westeras to ripen
to maturity in Sweden, seventy years were
required ; it cannot therefore surprise us, that at
first the opinions expressed upon its enactments
should have been bitter, and often mutually
conflicting, or that they should have given rise to great
disorders. The convents, stripped of their revenues,
which had been granted in fief to the barons, who
were obliged in return to the maintenance of
soldiers for the service of the crown, were deserted.
When the Dominicans of Stockholm complained
that they had not wherewithal to live, the answer
was, that they might provide themselves elsewhere,
"since men were wont from hunger to deliver up
castles and towns, much more convents5." Of
their ejected inmates, the aged filled the land with
their tales of wrong ; the young for the most part
married, monks often becoming the husbands of
nuns, which, according to the feelings of that day,
awakened 110 less scandal than when the virgins of
the cloister were seen degraded to the condition of
public courtezans. There were many who took
occasion from the statutes of Westeras to withhold
from the priests every source of income, so that in
1528 the king was forced to remind men, by an or-
5 Minute-book of the town of Stockholm ; Troil, Hand-
lingar, ii. 283.
Decrees of the synod
of Orebro.
dinance, that the tithes and legal dues of the clergy
must continue to be paid conformably to the various
local usages. For this caution in changing the old
observances of the church he reaped scant gratitude.
By the decree of the Synod of Orebro hi 1523, most
of them were retained, but with an injunction that
then’ true sense should be made clear to the people,
whence Olave Peterson, in his Swedish Manual,
published at this time, says that he has " allowed
most of the ceremonies to stand which had been
theretofore used, and were not contrary to God’s
word." For this compliance the more vehement of
the Germans in Stockholm assailed him with
insults, as if he had fallen away from the gospel,
"wherefore they were reprovingly admonished that
they should raise no uproar in the town, and were
informed, that the people of this land must be
softly dealt with 6." Letters from the king to his
officers exist, in which he reprimands them for
their unseasonable zeal in pressing the Swedish
mass on the people, " though little improvement
could follow till the generality were better
instructed 7." With this view, it was further
ordained by the synod of Orebro, that a lection of
Holy Scripture should be held daily in the
cathedrals, and that learned men should be appointed
ministers in the towns, who could give instruction
to their more simple brethren in the country.
Persons capable of acting as teachers, however,
were too often not to be found. The seminaries of
Upsala and Stockholm, the former under the
superintendence of Lawrence Peterson, the latter under
that of his brother, had hitherto been the only
schools in which these could be obtained. Gustavus
himself took good note of the talents of the preachers
who, according to the decree of Orebro, were sent
to all the cathedrals. These were not every where
well received ; of two who were sent to Skara, one
was driven from the pulpit, the other stoned out of
the school, when he was about to prelect on the
gospel of St. Matthew. Soon afterwards tidings
arrived that the flames of revolt had broken out in
West-Gothland and Smaland.
The high steward, Thure Jenson (Roos), whom
Tegel calls the real root of this rebellion, was the
most powerful of those provincial magnates who
had been left from the times of the Union, and
resembled them in this, that he possessed property
in all the three kingdoms, a case not unusual in
this age, and which was provided for by a special
article in the Recess of Malmoe in 1524. He was
the oldest member of the council, and justiciary of
West-Gothland, an office which his grandfather had
previously filled. So extensive was liis influence
over the nobles of the province, that they
attempted afterwards to excuse their own disloyalty
by alleging the weight of his name ; he used to
style himself also "the head of all the
West-Goths 8." The king, whose lieutenant in this
division of the realm he was, had laboured to gain
him by the bestowal of large fiefs; for which the
steward, according to the custom of bygone times,
performed but small service to the crown, as the
king’s letters show. His being reminded of his
obligations in this respect was considered as a
proof, that even the new advantages which were
6 Id. p. 291.
? Id. iii. 171.
8 In his speech to the VVestgothlanders, in Tegel.
THE REFORMATION.
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