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1-20
He volt of the
West-Gothlanders.
history of the swedes.
Meeting on Larfs
Heath.
[1524-
promised to the nobles at the expense of the
Church were not so secure as had been hoped.
The ancient league between the hierarchy and the
baronage was not yet dissolved. At the diet of
1527, Thure Jenson had been the most zealous
defender of the bishops ; after bis return home,
he omitted to promulgate in his province the
Recess and Ordinance of Westeras ; and a
judgment passed against him by the council in a
question of inheritance between himself and the king
at length brought forth an ebullition of his
long-cherished hostility. He conspired against
Gustavus with Magnus, bishop of Skara, and the
principal barons of West-Gothland, and began to
agitate the common people in the spring of 1529.
Two years before the Smalanders had already
refused to pay the tax imposed for the cancelling of
the public debt, and shot arrows at lord Thure
Trolle in the forest, when he came on the side
of the king to open a negociation on this subject.
They now put to death the king’s bailiff, who had
received a grant of Nydala abbey, with several of
his servants, and took captive a sister of Gustavus,
the widow of Joachim Brahe who had married the
count of Hoya. From JenkcBping they issued letters
to both the Gothlands, calling upon the inhabitants,
with invectives, the bitterness of which betrayed a
clerical pen, " to chastise the cruel king and his
Lutheran faction." Thure Jenson, with his
adherents, wrote to the Dalesmen in the same sense ;
his son Joran, provost of the chapter of Upsala,
repaired himself to Norrland, to raise the
Ilelsin-gers again in rebellion, and a thousand men who
had drawn together in West-Gothland, under the
command of one Master Nils of Hvalstad, a priest,
guarded the road leading from that district to the
upper country.
Of all the insurrectionary movements in the time
of king Gustavus, the revolt of the West-Goths
was the only one which was called into activity at
the instigation, not only of the clergy but the
nobility. Yet the lords sought to push forward the
peasants ; a proof sufficient that the barons were
no longer so powerful as they had been. The
energies of democracy were never more vigorous
in Sweden, than after the massacre of Stockholm
had bi’oken the strength of the magnates, and the
diet of Westeras that of the bishops. Gustavus
stood amidst a turbulent stream of popular force
which had burst its bounds. This had first raised
him to a throne, which during twenty years it
struggled to overturn. His accustomed mode of
action, to follow the torrent when it was about to
overpower him, until he should gain firm footing,
was dictated to him by necessity, and it must be
acknowledged that he well knew how to guide
himself among the dangers of his position.
" Might good words help, we have spent largely
enough," he writes to the count of Hoya. "Treason is
so mighty and so widely spread that we wist not whom
we may believe ; come therefore to us with the
greatest power of horse and foot that ye can bring
up. In our town of Stockholm, as also in the free
barons and knights of Upland, who have sworn
homage to us anew, we can place assured trust.
The commons of East-Gothland, the Dales, and
Upland, have promised us to remain quiet. Our
messengers to the seditious are not yet come
backThe insurgent Smalanders, doubtless
to their own amazement, received from the king
the following letter: " We have heard that ye
took our sister into your ward, upon the false
rumour that Upland had risen against us and that
Stockholm was besieged, wherefore we give you
gracious thanks, but pray you to send her to us ;
further, we have heard that our bailiff Godfrey
Sare has been slain in your country, for what
cause we know not; peradventure he has offended
in somewhat and overstepped our command,
which might well have been changed without this
mishap. We wish but the best to all of ye, and
thereupon will stake our neck." Letters of the
king and his council were despatched to all the
provinces, to the effect that he would gladly mend
whatever might be wrong in his government;
touching religion and the Church,nothing had been
determined without the assent of the council and
the estates, nor should be hereafter. The
Smalanders were besides wheedled with a pledge, that
two convents2 should be preserved ; the clergy
he engaged to exempt from entertaining the royal
troops, if they would give their aid in appeasing
the commons; to the Dalesmen he promised the
remission of the tax they had so keenly contested,
and to the miners an acquittance from some of the
demands of the crown. The abundance of the
sovereign’s good words seemed not to suffice ; he
begged that others too would employ the like. It
was usual at this time when one province was in
revolt, to invoke the mediation of the rest, in
reference to the ancient league by which they had
been united. Thus the town of Stockholm now
wrote to the Dalesmen, praying them to refrain
from taking part in this insurrection. The
Dalesmen and tlie miners on the other hand, although
two years afterwards they were themselves ready i
for a new rising, addressed on this occasion a
special letter of admonition to the factious
West-Goths and Smalanders ; but the East-Goths
in particular, the neighbours of the latter, were
employed as mediators. Delegates from Upland and
East-Gothland, with the royal envoys, hastened to
West-Gothland and Smaland, bearing an offer of
full pardon for the men of these territories, if they
returned to their obedience.
The result was, that when Thure’ Jenson
convoked a meeting of the West-Goths on Larfs
Heath, April 17,1529, and harangued them from a
great stone, on the expediency of electing another
king, Magnus, bishop of Skara, also assuring them
that the Pope would absolve them from their oaths,
the yeomen made answer, that " a change of lords
seldom made matters better, therefore it seemed to
them most advisable to hold fast to the fealty
which they had sworn to king Gustavus."
Thereupon both the West-Gothlanders, and the
Smalanders, who had informed the royal commissioners
that they would be guided by the decision of their
brethren, laid down their arms. In the writ of
accommodation pledges are given to them, that
what had happened, should be as a matter dead
and forgotten ; and that no heresy should be
introduced into the kingdom ; yet, the king adds, " the
Recess of Westeras shall be observed in every
9 His wife was Anna Vasa, and was half-sister to the
father of Gustavus.
1 April 29, 1529. Reg. of the Archives.
2 In Calmar and Kronoback.
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