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HISTORY OF THE SWEDES. Rupture with that town. [1524—
Designs of
Lubeck.
cock should be heard in it. He asked them where
they would have that border which their king must
not dare to overstep ? Whether it became them
as subjects thus to master their magistrates ? What
was the true reason why the Sture’s, although the
rulers of the land, had never ventured to cross the
stream at Bruuback without the leave of the
miners ? To such insolence he at least would not
submit. After this fashion the king spoke to them
long and sharply, and during the time the whole
of the commonalty were upon their knees. He
called upon them to deliver up the instigators of
the last sedition, which was forthwith performed.
Five of them were tried and executed upon the
spot; the rest were carried prisoners to
Stockholm, where in the following year three of them,
pursuant to the judgment of the council and the
town- magistrates, were put to death, and among
them Anders Person of Rankhytta, in whose barn
Gustavus had once threshed. The forfeited
property of the offenders was restored to their wives
and children3. Thus ended the third and last
rising of the Dalecarlians against king Gustavus.
At this time Lubeck was calling up its last
energies for the maintenance of its commercial
power ; for its citizens, who " wished to hold in
their sole grasp the keys of the Baltic, looking only
to their own advantage 4," had long seen with
reluctance the Hollanders dividing with themselves the
trade of the North. They had contributed to the
overthrow of Christian II., because he had favoured
these rivals, but they had not reaped the fruits
expected from his fall5, and they ended by wishing to
raise him from his prison to the throne. Gustavus
had already in 1526 formed a commercial treaty
with the regent Margaret of the Netherlands, and
although Christian had received support from that
quarter in his last enterprise, the misunderstandings
thereby created were eventually adjusted. Lubeck
on the other hand demanded that Sweden and
Denmark should declare war on the Hollanders, and in
the mean time postponed the assertion of its own
quarrel with them in order to kindle a new one in
the North. Marcus Meyer and Gorgen
Wollen-wever, two bold demagogues, were the men who,
having ejected the old council of Lubeck and
usurped the government in the name of the
populace, ruined the power of their native city by
the attempt again to make and unmake kings. By
the death of Frederic of Denmark 011 the 3d April,
1533, .and the disputes which afterwards arose
respecting the succession, their plans were
advanced. To excite new troubles in Sweden they
employed the name of young Suanto Sture’, a son
of the last administrator, who had fallen into their
hands. The generous youth refused to be the tool
of their designs, for which they found a more will-
3 So Tegel and the chronicles; but this must be
understood only of a portion of the property. By a royal letter of
investiture ot the 10th November, 1534, Stephen Henricson,
burgomaster of Upsala, received half of the property of
Anders Person. Reg. of the Archives.
4 Act of the diet of Stockholm in 1526.
5 The treaty formed with Denmark at Copenhagen in
1532, excluding the Hollanders from the Baltic, was not ra-
tified, the emperor and stadholder of the Netherlands having
declared that Christian’s invasion had been undertaken
against their wishes.
« Instructions for Rololf Matson, March 20, 1535. Archives
of Christian II.
ing instrument in the count John of Hoya, whom
Christian reckoned one of the persons " introduced
into the government by the towns6." Gustavus,
as has been mentioned, had united him in
marriage with his sister, placed him in his council, and
bestowed upon him a considerable territory in
Finland. Estrangement seems to have first arisen
between the count and his sovereign from the
computation of the Swedish debt made by the former at
Lubeck in 1529, fixing the amount at 10,000 marks
higher than Gustavus would acknowledge 7. The
debt was afterwards dischai’ged within the period
agreed upon, but the Lubeckers maintained that
from 8,000 to 10,000 marks of the same were still
wanting, while Gustavus asserted that the Lubecine
commissioners had omitted just so much from their
accounts, and applied the money to their own use 8.
The consequence was that the Lubeckers seized a
ship belonging to the king, whereupon he laid an
embargo on all Lubecine vessels in Swedish harbours,
the bitter hatred of the townsmen to him taking
vent in speeches, writings, overt acts of hostility,
and at last also in clandestine designs against his
life. The count of Hoya fled with his wife and
children from Sweden, and was received at Lubeck
with public testimonies of rejoicing. Associating
himself to the other Swedish exiles, he took part
with Gustavus Trolle and Bernard of Melen in the
war which now broke out. In the year 1534 began
the count’s feud, so called because the possessors of
power in Lubeck placed count Christopher of
Oldenburg at the head of their attack upon Denmark.
This was the last blow struck for Christian II.,
whose cause Lubeck pretended to lead ; it was the
last contest between the Reformation and
Catholicism in Denmark ; it was likewise one of the
burgesses and peasants against the nobles, waged
with furious exasperation, and at first with success,
since Malmoe, Copenhagen, the Danish islands,
Scania, Halland, and Blekinge in a short time
acknowledged the captive Christian as king. As soon
as all prospect of his liberation disappeared, Lubeck
supported duke Albert of Mecklenburg in his
pretensions to the Danish crown 9, and held out to his
nephew Philip hopes of obtaining that of Sweden.
At the same time count Christopher of Oldenburg
urged forward his own schemes, and Christian’s
son-in-law the palsgrave Frederic, afterwards
elector, sought to enforce his rights from Germany
by the emperor’s aid, obtaining adherents even in
the northern part of Norway ’.
The imminence of mutual danger occasioned a
closer alliance between Sweden and Denmark,
which, sanctioned by the Danish council in 1534,
received additional strength when Frederic’s eldest
son Christian III. a year and a half afterwards
mounted the throne 2. The Lubeckers were driven
out of Scania, Halland, and Blekinge, by the forces
7 See the reasons in Tegel, 1. 221.
8 See the different letters of Gustavus respecting the debt
to the council of state, the count of Hoya, the magistrates of
Stockholm and Lubeck, the latter of September 14, 1533.
Reg. of the Archives.
9 He was married to the daughter of Christian’s sister.
1 To punish their attachment to Christian and his family,
a resolution was passed after the end of the war by a baronial
diet in Copenhagen, "that Norway should for the future
have no separate council, but should be governed as a
province of Denmark."
2 He visited Gustavus at Stockholm in 1535.
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