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170 The king and the duke at variance. HISTORY OF THE SWEDES. Division of the royal patrimony. [1569—
Bone, had endeavoured to raise a great tumult
against it, the councillors of state, and the nobles.
The priest was examined by the torture, and put
to death with several of his followers. In the year
1580 an order was given that the revenues of those
clergymen who did not observe the Liturgy should
be withheld ; in 1582 it was enforced under still
heavier penalties, and adopted. Priests who
refused to follow it were deposed, incarcerated, and
driven into exile. All resistance in this point
irritated the king to extreme anger. He was even
seen to lay hands on an arrested clergyman, and
trample him underfoot, exclaiming, " To the lions
and snakes thou shalt go 1" This person, Master
Eric Scheffer, rector of Stockholm, had retracted
the assent which he had given to the Liturgy;
rupture was produced by the violence with which he
was treated. The whole land was full of
persecution, disquiet, and confusion.
During this time the discords between John and
Charles grew more bitter. The first channel by
which they found voice was a letter of the 10th
October, 1571, from the king, who the year previously
had depreciated the coinage 6. By this measure
Charles profited to buy up and exchange the old
coins of better quality. John prohibited this
traffic, the gain of which he wished to reserve for
himself. Although the navigation to Narva was
made free by the peace of Stettin, the king had
placed it under supervision ; and, in order to show
his predominance in the Baltic, made his letters of
authorization necessary thereto. Charles allowed
his ships to go to Narva with papers issued by
himself, whereupon the king ordered the ships to
be seized, and did not release them until after a
long correspondence. A more important topic of
quarrel was the division of the heritage of their
father, which Eric, after the incarceration of John,
had deferred, under pretext of waiting for the
minority of Charles. It has already been
mentioned of what a disputable kind the hereditary
estates partly were ; on which account Eric had
permitted the law to take its course with respect to
them, and the nobles had profited by this
permission. This was in the outset of Erie’s reign. He
soon changed, and preferred his claims against the
nobility. The continuation of the inquiries
instituted in the time of Gustavus respecting the right
of resumption of church estates by the nobility
was commanded. As ground-work a declaration
was laid down, that all estates appropriated
contrary to the letter of the Recess of Westeras should
belong to the crown; 011 which account also king
Eric in 1504 caused all such to be struck off the
rent-books of the hereditary estates of Gustavus,
and entered in the rent-books of the crown. Two
years thereafter, as already remarked, the old foot-
ing was restored, and the estates are again found
enrolled as part of the heritage. The change hence
appears to have only been effected in semblance,
in order meanwhile to ground upon it new claims
against the nobility 7. This advice would seem to
have proceeded from Rasmus Ludvikson,
procurator for the crown in questions of reduction under
Ei’ic as well as Gustavus. This man possessed an
acquaintance the most extensive of his time with
public records and genealogical registers, and by his
manuscript chronicles of both the beforementioned
kings has won lasting honours in the field of
Swedish history; but in several reigns he was the
unconscionable tool of the possessors of power, and
under Eric, in the year 1507, was condemned to
death for embezzlement and forgery8, although the
judgment was not executed, and he found means to
make himself useful in after-days. With his aid an
allotment of the patrimonial estates among the
brothers was effected at Borkholm, (June 27, 1572,)
in which the share of the weak-minded duke
Magnus was divided between John and Charles. The
latter however was highly discontented, and was
heard to complain that several thousand manors
had been deducted from the amount by John, of
which more than five hundred were already
distributed among the nobility. John also insisted that
all taxable lands which had been bought by
Gustavus from peasants, if situated without the
principality, should be reckoned crown property ; and
upon this maxim he pi-oceeded. Thus we find the
royal cattle-farms9, on which many unprofitable
hands were employed, (and hence Eric desisted
from keeping them up 011 his own account,) now let
out as crown-lands, with the right of hereditary
occupancy’; and in 1582 John declared that since
certain of his bailiffs and officers, from corrupt
motives, turned peasants off their farms and placed
others thereon, ’* to rot more than to bote," all
peasants upon crown, church, and patrimonial estates
might purchase the property of the lands, and hold
them in perpetuity by paying a yearly rent2. But
this proffer hardly met with general acceptance.
On the contrary, we find that the fears of the
peasants were awakened, as well on account of the
short term of payment, as of the insecurity which in
this day attended all compacts with the crown.
Herein they were not wrong ; for Charles, when he
succeeded to power, acknowledged in reference to
the estates of the royal patrimony 110 other guide
than the rent-books of his father, and claimed anew
all the estates which had been alienated, even those
recovered by the nobility from adjudication.
Concerning royal and princely rights, a contest
was to be expected, and the earlier that this
matter, in the time of John, became still more
fi Coinage-warrant of April 30, 1570.
7 Rasmus Ludvikson’s new complaints respecting the
heritable estates which the nobles had resumed from the
Cburch, are chiefly founded on the circumstance, that the
nobility had in this exceeded the limit appointed in the
Recess of Westeras, of 1454, or rather 1453, when king
Charles Canuteson’s inquisition began. (Omhielm’s
Relation.) The circumstances which induced Gustavus himself
to exceed this limit, have been already stated.
8 On the 23d April, 1567, because he had made out false
registers of the Danish estates in the kingdom, of which the
king commanded the appropriation, and, when they were
granted away in fiefs, often issued letters of enfeoffment for
the same holding to two persons. See the Doombook
(Dom-bok) of king Eric’s Namnd, fol. 239.
9 Afvelsgardar (cattle-yards), so called because used as
breeding farms for the king. Sometimes, too, the priests
were required to keep the king’s cattle; thus at John’s
coronation all the registered cattle were required from the clergy
of Upland.
1 King John’s Register, June, 1576. The example here
appearing relates to Stromsrum in Smaland; but the
principle is declared general.
2 In 1584 the king reserves to himself the right, if he
should so think fit, of redeeming the property which he was
now obliged, from want of money, to sell. Deliberations in
king John’s time, in the Archives of State. (Merrota an biita.)
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