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143 Administration of justice. HISTORY OF THE SWEDES. Eric’s proposals of marriage. [1560—
that justice may be the better dispensed to every
man, as it is not possible that the king’s majesty
should hear all complaints and declare every
sentence." The governors are enjoined, so to deal
with the people that it might assist in maintaining
the court, which was erected for the behoof of every
man ; the king would not allow the judges to be
paid by fees on suits which gave occasion to abuse,
and yet the revenues of the kingdom were not
adequate to the support of such offices. This court
was one of the first institutions founded by Eric;
for although its short and incomplete record,
preserved in the public archives, begins with the 11th
February, 1562, it was nevertheless in operation
during the previous year 6, and is already mentioned
in king Eric’s court regulations of the 19th
November, 1560. Its doom-book even appeals oftener to
these articles than to the law of Sweden.
Gustavus I. had before ordained that all processes, not
only betwixt the royal commanders and officers,
but between these and other subjects, priests,
burgesses, and peasants, should be adjudicated
according to the law of the royal household. And doubtless
it is in reference to such decree that we find this
injunction to the judge (preserved in a collection
of statutes and court ordinances in the library of
Upsala) ; " Sometimes we must use the ordinances
and sometimes lay them aside, and if a portion
of them have their ground and reason in the Land’s
Law, yet the law is sharpened by the ordinances;
another hath not so especially any express ground,
but is profitable according to the circumstances of
the time ; and another is somewhat burdensome to
the people, and appears to be the cause why so
many gaudy foreign fashions come into the realm,
and some one must pay for it, as the proverb says,
’ who binds his shoes with bast must pay the
cobbler’s wage.’ A just-minded judge or officer must
know and take heedful note when lie is to apply the
ordinances and when to pass them by."
In general, the outset of Eric’s reign was
distinguished by beneficial enactments. In order to
deliver the people from the extortions of
travellers 7, the erection of taverns or guest-houses on
the high roads was enjoined ; superfluous fast-days,
and divers Catholic ceremonies still preserved in
the service of the altar were abolished, and the
king proclaimed that he had thrown open his
kingdom as an asylum for all oppressed Protestants.
Of this refuge many availed themselves, especially
French, who were invited by their countryman
Dionysius Beurreus. The Calvinists hoped and
expected much from the known inclination of the
Swedish monarch to their creed, and Calvin
himself congratulated him by letter upon the news of
his suit to Elizabeth 8.
But in his overtures of marriage Eric soon
displayed his unstable temper. On the 29th July,
1561, he writes to his new envoy in London, the
high chancellor Nicholas Gyllenstierna, that, upon
the comfortable assurances which the queen had
conveyed to him through Beurreus, who was now
recalled home, he had again resolved to repair to
England, and therefore had forwarded his people,
namely," pearl-broiderers, tailors, and others." Not
long afterwards arrived eighteen piebald horses,
with several chests of uncoined gold and silver, as
presents to Elizabeth ; and in the month of
September, the English court was thrown into the greatest
perplexity by the intelligence, that he had set out
upon his journey. Eric iiad in fact embarked at
Elfsborg, in a fleet thereto equipped with his two
brothers Magnus and Charles, but was compelled
by a storm to put back. He then resolved to make
a land journey across Denmark, Germany, and the
Netherlands; his ministers received orders to
negotiate respecting safeconduct and warranty for
the security of his person, and the nobility of the
realm were enjoined to meet in Jenkopiiig and
convoy him to the border. At this very time he
inquires of the council whether it might not be
expedient also to open negotiations of marriage in
some other quarter ;—to Scotland he sends a
confidant to inquire whether queen Mary " were so
beautiful as every man said," and shortly after
Peter Bralie to solicit her hand ; but he renews
nevertheless his wooing of Elizabeth, commanding
Gyllenstierna to bribe the English council with
money, and to procure the death of the queen’s
favourite, the earl of Leicester, if it should even
cost the king 10,000 dollars9. Meanwhile, he
likewise offers to wed the princess Renata of
Lorraine, grand-daughter of Christian II., and
heiress to his claims on the northern kingdoms,
but breaks off this negotiation to conclude a
contract of marriage with Christina of Ilesse. An
embassy was sent for her reception and a fleet
equipped ; but a letter to queen Elizabeth,
intercepted during the war with Denmark, in which he
excuses himself and declares that he was not in
earnest with the Hessian marriage, likewise
annulled this overture. Yet the king in 1565 enjoins
his envoy in Germany to make further inquiry in
Hesse, and at the same time to send him a more
exact description of the person of the Lorrainer
princess ; whether she were fresh, fair, and
well-grown, not too lean and thin-limbed, ofwhitely and
undisguised complexion ; if her hair shaded
somewhat into black, it would not matter so much, if she
could please only in the beforenamed points, were
of good manners and decorous behaviour, not a
scoffer but cheerful. He espied already treason
and murder in every place. If the princess were
really adorned with these qualities, and would cross
over to Sweden, the ambassadors were to employ
all precautions, lest poisons should be administered
to her by evil men In the year 1566 this
princess sent troth and ring to Eric, by the hands of
the unfortunate Nicholas Sture’.
These matrimonial affairs cost sums almost
incredible. One of the grievances of the dukes was
6 "Sentences of the year 1561 are left out, although the
originals of some in that year are still found in the hands of
private persons." Ornhielm’s Relation.
? To be exempted from the oppressive burden of furnishing
free carriage and entertainment, the commons at Arboga in
1561 charged themselves with the payment of post-money
(skjutsfardspenningar); but the king soon complained that
this was not sufficient to replace the cost of despatching his
messengers and letter-carriers, and we find him on the 22nd
June, 1562, soliciting an increase of the tavern-money, or the
restoration of the old system of conveyance.
8 Messenius, Scondia, v. 116.
9 Letter to Nils Gyllenstierna, March 28 and 29. Registry
for 1562. In the previous year, on June 12, be commands
Gyllenstierna to inform the earl that the king proffered him a
public duel by his owu royal person, either in Scotland or
France.
1 Instruction for the ambassadors; Arboga, July 14.
Registry for 1565.
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