Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - X. Gustavus Vasa. The Hereditary Settlement. A.D. 1544—1560
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
Below is the raw OCR text
from the above scanned image.
Do you see an error? Proofread the page now!
Här nedan syns maskintolkade texten från faksimilbilden ovan.
Ser du något fel? Korrekturläs sidan nu!
This page has never been proofread. / Denna sida har aldrig korrekturlästs.
1560.] New claims of the king. GUSTAVUS VASA.
while we often see him arranging the conditions
between them, and anxiously providing for the
appointment of evangelical preachers to the vacant parishes.
The extension which the Recess of Westeras
received in its execution beyond its letter, (and
how brief and imperfect is not the phraseology of
the written documents of this age !) is hardly to be
blamed, for the cause lay in the nature of the
subject-matter of the act. The participation to which
the nobles had been admitted in the " plundering "
(skofling, an expression of this age for confiscation)
of the church had furnished to their sovereign an
urgent motive for saving what might yet be saved
As already remarked, the nobility obtained by the
Recess a right to resume that part of their property
which had been possessed by churches or convents
since the inquisition of Charles Canuteson. There
was, no doubt, a condition annexed, that no one
should exercise his right till he had proved it
before the court by twelve witnesses, according to law.
But he who reflects on the notions prevalent in
relation to matters of law and right, when Sweden
emerged from the chaos of the Union, and
remembers that the judicial offices, of which the revenues
were granted away similarly to other feudal
tenements, were at the disposal of the nobles,—their
duties being discharged, as the king himself
laments, by persons " utterly unskilled in the written
law of Sweden,"—will be able to form an adequate
conception of the weakness of that defence which
was thus raised against the caprices of power. The
king found reason in 1528 to take under his own
especial cognizance the claims which had been
made in several individual cases. Ten years
afterwards this new condition was made universal in its
application, and the irregular appropriations of
individuals " who wrested and rent from the churches
and convents to suit themselves," were revoked.
Another infraction of the Recess of Westeras had
become not less necessary. The limitation of the
claims of the nobles to the interval which had
elapsed since king Charles’s reduction, as decreed
by the statute, was soon found to be impossible in
practice. The convents fell to decay, and who
could distinguish what of their property had been
acquired before or after 1454 I Claims were
advanced to the whole mass, and all would have been
plundered if the king had not interfered, to prefer,
no doubt, claims of his own, but which were at the
same time those of the community. Similar
motives produced that third extension of the Recess,
after the hereditary settlement, to all estates and
husbandmen generally remaining to the church’
and clergy, indemnity being found in return from
the part of the tithes which had been vested in the
Tenure in
commonry.
crown. The hierarchy, a fallen power, could no
longer protect itself, much less others. The clergy,
as they themselves admitted, were no longer able
to defend their property. In exchange, they at
least gained an accession of security; and even the
nobles had no just ground of complaint, since a
considerable share of the appropriations thus made
was distributed in new infeudations7.
So great a power in the affairs of the church
could not fail to exert an influence oil the king’s
civil authority, and from the Recess of Westeras
accordingly dates the establishment in Sweden of a
new state-law, by which it was considerably
augmented. Although the full powers which it claimed
were not at this period admitted, still ineffaceable
traces of its existence remained. All those rights
of the crown to commonable woodlands, lakes,
streams, fisheries, mines, which the spurious
statute of Helgeandsliolm pretends to derive from so
ancient an epoch as 1280, were now really asserted
and obtained validity. The extent of commonage
or common ground (allmanning) unoccupied by
individuals, in which the old laws comprehend not
only forests, but mountains and waters, may be
viewed as a fair measure of the developement of
civil society. This notion of one common property
varies widely in its compass, being expanded in
proportion as the community itself increases from
a village to a hundred, to a province, to a kingdom;
not seldom the larger type absorbs the subordinate
and limited, from which itself sprung, especially
where the crown, as representative of the public,
eventually lays claim to all commonable estate.
During our middle age we observe these claims
illustrating without entirely dissipating the
confusion which involves the relations of this species
of property, more indefinite in an extensive and
scantily settled region than in other countries. For
in Sweden, where so many parishes are still
possessed of similar property, the title thus sought to
be vindicated by the throne was never fully made
good, though it was more than once asserted, and
by the restorer of his country in the strongest
terms. His words are, " all tracts of ground which
lie unoccupied belong to God, the, king, and the
crown of Sweden8." In the days of Gustavus,
therefore, even commons of hundreds are styled
"the king’s," "the crown’s9," and the old right
of property in those lands which the people
possessed, obliterated by the new name, fell into
oblivion, and was declared to be one of mere
usufruct. The king extended this system still further.
He declared all the herring-fisheries in the Baltic
to be "the just property of the sovereign1," and
established in Sweden the maxim that " the flood
the hereditary settlement.
6 He complained, in 1544, that his bailiff Nils Westgote did
not give in an account of the plunderings (skoflingar) which
had occurred within his district.
7 Compare the Inventory of the Estates of Bishops, Canons,
Prebends, Churches, and Convents, with documents annexed,
drawn up by order of Charles XI. in 1691, by Ornhielm. MS.
8 Rescript of King Gustavus I. to Helsingland,
Gestric-land, and Angermanland, April 20, 1542. This is not,
however, the first occasion on which he had embraced the maxim,
as is plain from the circumstance, that in a charter of August
12, 1535, he grants permission, "out of special grace and
favour," to the people in Vermeland, without hindrance to
use, to settle, and to hold those commons which they had
anciently possessed, notoriously and of right. On the 17th
February, 1548, the king again wrote to the Vermelanders
in reference to the clearing of new settlements, that he
would gladly give leave for such to be formed, and that they
might retain the portions of wild land which they had
brought into cultivation, under tribute to the crown; on the
other hand, the king could not permit the nobility to hold
their clearings free from the payment of dues. On the 25th
November, 1548, he orders that in West-Gothland "those
enclosures of noble proprietors to which, peradventure, they
possess little or no title," should be reclaimed for the crown.
Friilsemen, or persons sitting tax-free, are forbidden (Feb
ruary 9, 1549,) to make encroachments on the commons of
the crown in Smaland. Register in the Archives.
9 On the land-taxes of Sweden, up to and at the beginning
of the seventeenth century. (Om Svenska Jordens
beskatt-ning, &c.) Academical Dissertation, by P, E, Bergfalk,
Upsala, 1832, i. 25.
1 Rescript of March 1, 1545.
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
