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1569.] The king tried by the estates. ERIC AND HIS BROTHERS. His imprisonment, and sufferings. 159
tlie badge of their followers. The first intelligence
of the revolt affected the king so violently, that he
wished to kill himself by opening his veins4.
Thereupon he attempted to negotiate with his
brothers, and when this was refused, challenged
duke Charles to single combat, placed himself
finally at the head of those forces which remained
faithful to him, and himself fought in these last
battles with desperate bravery. After a check
which the dukes suffered at Botkirk, they took
another way, by Westeras and Upsala, to the
capital. The queen dowager and the princesses
repaired to them ; Ivar Magnusson Stiernkors, the
royal governor despatched to Finland, declared in
their favour. On the 17th September, Charles
and John pitched their camp before Stockholm on
the meadow of Rorstrand 5. When Eric and George
Person observed their banners from the castle,
the latter said ; " If you, gracious lord, had
followed my counsel and laid, according to the
judgment, duke John’s head at his feet, this would have
been undone." That detested counsellor was seized
by the king’s own people and delivered to the
dukes6. He was subjected to the question, and
suffered on the 18th September the tortures of a
most cruel death without complaining. On the
ensuing day the followers of the dukes were
admitted by a secret understanding with the burghers
and garrison into the town. Eric, who meanwhile
was at church, hastened to the castle. Steno
Ericson Leyonhufvud, who attempted to prevent his
flight, was cut down by a guardsman. Shortly
afterwards Eric was seen to mount the castle-wall,
and surrendered himself to duke Charles.
In the opening of the year 1569 Eric was brought
to trial before the assembled estates. He himself
conducted his defence, and inveighed with much
vehemence against the nobility. When John
interrupted him with the exclamation that he was out
of his senses, he answered, " Once only was I out
of my senses, when I let thee slip from prison."
His deposition was confirmed by the estates ; it
was vindicated in a diffuse memorial, filled with
true and untrue inculpations ; his children were
excluded from the succession on the ground of
their mean and illegitimate extraction ; he himself
was adjudged to be kept in perpetual, yet princely,
imprisonment. But John allowed his hate free
course against him whom he styled " his brother
and bitterest foe 7." His life indeed was spared, as
he himself writes, at the entreaty of the widowed
queen, duke Charles and his sisters ; but he was
obliged to endure the horrors of the most rigorous
captivity, even to corporal maltreatment from his
wardens, often from persons whom he had irritated
to revenge during his government. Olave
Gus-taveson, one of the ferocious brothers Stenbocks,
after a brawl with the captive prince wounded his
arm by a shot, and left him lying in his blood.
God knew, he complained in a letter to John of
March 1, 1659, how inhumanly he was tortured
with hunger, cold, stench, and darkness, stroke and
blow ; he could not believe that it was done with
his brother’s knowledge ; he conjured him to grant
release from his misery ; he would submit to
banishment; " the world was large enough to allow
fraternal hate to be stilled by distance from place
and land 9." But there are dumb memorials of his
sufferings which speak louder than words. His
menaces, his outbursts of frenzy, the repeated
attempts of his adherents for his liberation, were
regarded as justifications of this cruelty. In his
more tranquil moments he occupied himself with
reading, music, and writing, when he was permitted.
He wrote long treatises in his own defence upon
the margin of books with coal water instead of ink.
At first he was allowed to see his wife and children;
but in the last years of his confinement he was
deprived of even this consolation.
In the summer of 1569 a conspiracy for his
release was detected. " On Friday last, at eight
o’clock in the evening,"—John writes on the 21st
August to Charles—" we discovered a deep treason
against ourselves, whereby a company of king Eric’s
faction concerted to surprise the castle when we
were absent, to set free king Eric and assist him
again to the throne, as the traitors arrested did
straightway acknowledge without constraint." As
head of this conspiracy one Thomas Jacobson is
named, who, with several of his accomplicesof
names otherwise unknown, was condemned to death.
The latter appear to have belonged previously to
Eric’s body-guard, which was not dissolved, because
there was an intention of employing it against the
enemy, although Charles had warned John of the
dangers which might be feared therefrom. It
consisted mostly of young men, whom Eric used to take
from the schools and employ in different affairs.
That they were not deficient in ability we learn from
the circumstance that duke Charles, a good judge
of this quality, took several of them into his service.
Of participating in the conspiracy Nicholas
Peterson (Silversparre2) of Holma in Smaland, and
Jacob Bagge, a son of the famous admiral, were
suspected. They were incarcerated, but again
released ; both Jacob Bagg£ and his brother John
were afterwards advanced to important posts.
Peter Lewers, one of Eric’s admirals, who had
likewife shared in the plot, escaped to Denmark3.
From some writings of Eric to the conspirators,
who never disclosed their names to him, it appears
that hopes of Danish assistance had been held out
to him, and in a minute dated July II, 1569, he
4 Palmskold MSS. He inquired of Dr. William Lemnius
what veins should be opened in order to die the most easy
death, and attempted to throttle the doctor when the latter
answered that it was his duty not to shorten life, but to prolong it.
5 Rbrstrandsangen; ang, which so often occurs in Swedish
names of places, is probably the same word with inch, used
in tliis sense. Trans.
6 Rhyme Chronicle of Charles IX. Stockholm, 1759, p.
so. See Memoirs of king Eric by Magnus Stigtomtensis.
7 Letter to the lieutenant of Calmar, Oct. 2, 1568.
8 His brother Arvid Gustaveson killed colonel Ivar Mag-
nusson Stiernkors in Abo. (That this report was not false, as
Stiernman says in his Remarks on Werwing’s History, p
21, is proved by two letters of the widowed queen to
Catharine Steribock, interceding for his pardon, in the Registry
for 1574.) Another brother, Charles Gustaveson, murdered
a jeweller. See Duke Charles’ letter of Dec. 24, 1596. (The
surname Stenbock is literally stone-buck or mountain-goat.
Trans)
9 Nam mundus satis est amplus, ut odia inter fratres
dis-tantia locorum et regionum bene possint sedari.
1 Letter from John to the lieutenant of the castle of
Stockholm, Dec. 8, 1569, not to postpone the punishment of the
traitors adjudged to death, and of Thomas Jacobson, " who
first engaged in this treasonable business."
2 Lit. silverspar or beam. Trans.
3 Svenska Fatburen, v. 15.
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