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1611.]
Severities against the king’:
adherents. John Sparre.
CHARLES IX.
Diet of Linkiiping. Royalist lords
of the council arraigned. 197
expressioii of the popular disposition towards many
of the leading men of that period.
After Sigismund had withdrawn, and the con-
vention of Linkoping was thus annulled, a general
persecution of the king’s party broke out in the
country. A prison, banishment, or death was the
lot of many. Their property was confiscated or
plundered; rapacity accused even the innocent;
many new rich and new poor were seen. And when
the first anarchy was appeased by the transference
of the government to the duke, vengeance was but
the more effectual in the hand of an individual.
For Charles knew not what it was to forget and
forgive after a civil war, and punished his own foes
as traitors to their country. Tiie town of Calmar
was taken by storm, where the duke himself was
for the second time seen uppermost on the storm-
ing ladder. The castle surrendered to the force of
hunger. Charles granted the Polish and German
garrison their liberty, upon tlieir promise never
again to serve against Sweden. But the eyes of
the whole kingdom, and especially the imprisoned
lords, were directed to tlie fate which awaited the
commander of Calmar, John Sparre, brother of the
chancellor. He was the first of the magnates who
had been taken with arms in his hand. On the
14th May, Charles propounded to him the following
queries, to make answer thereon as before God :
—
Where were the lettei-s of confederacy which the
faithless councillors had drawn out against his
princely grace ? whether the king and the disloyal
councillors had not intended to seize, expel, or kill
the duke ? whether the king had not promised
relief both to Calmar and the captive lords ? whe-
ther they and their ladies had not requested a year
previously that the king should come into the realm
with his forces ? whether they had not designed to
get the government mto their own power, and
bound themselves to grant a certain aid from every
province ? whether they had not purposed to make
Sweden an elective monarchy like Poland, and pro-
mised the king the free exercise of his religion ?
whether they had not sought and solicited both all
the fines devolving to the king from their own vas-
sals, as also that they and their dependents should
never be bound to pay suit to the hundred-court,
and they themselves should acquire tlie right of
judging in their own manor-houses all cases touch-
ing life and limb ? whether there had not been a
rumour that lady Anne should be regent of Swe-
den, and Gustave Brahe should obtain her hand *
?
What their answers were to all these questions is
unknown. But John Spari’e, with two other n ible-
men, and many of inferior class, were found, with
the assent of the councillors of state present, guilty
to death, and their heads fixed over the town gate
of Calmar ^. "Vengeance! vengeance! vengeance!
before God’s just tribunal !" wrote the chancellor
I Charles’ Re;;, for 1599. At the diet in Linkoping the
following year, Charles wrote to the estates, that the princess
Anne, foi her intrigues during many years with the dis-
loyal lords, deserved to lose her portion. In one of the notes
from his own hand, of wliicli a copy is preserved in tl\e Palms-
kbld Collections, it is said,
" And his (Eric Sparre’s) and the
others’ intention is no other, than that the king should have
the name and the trouble, but they themselves the profit,
expelling and setting up the king as often as it pleaseth
them."
^
Bergquara, Sparre’s estate, was given by the king to his
natural son, Gyllenhielm, who had had the command before
Calmar. He had in vain begged for Sparre’s life, and
in his testament on receiving intelligence of his
brother’s fate. With rigour as inflexible did the
duke act in Finland, whither he proceeded with the
fleet and army in the summer of 15!J9. The Finns
were routed, Wiborg and Abo taken, and the whole
country subdued. Eight-and-tweuty persons fell in
these towns by the sword of the headsman; among
them the young and chivalrous John Fleming, son
of Clas the marshal. On his visit to Abo two years
earlier, Charles had found there old Philip Kern,
who by John’s order had mixed the pc^ison for
Eric XIV. He is said to have so beaten him with
his own hand that blood flowed from the mouth
and nose. Now Olave Gustaveson Stenbock, who
thirty years bef(n"e, when Eric’s warden, had broken
by a shot the arm of the unhappy king, and being
accused of several crimes on John’s death, had tied
out of the kingdom, was apprehended in the vici-
nity of Abo. He was tied to a tree and shot by
order of Charles, his body being thrown into a
quagmire, whence it was taken out and interred by
Catharine Magnus’ daughter.
At the diet of Linkoping, on the 3d March, 1600,
was opened the process against the arraigned lords
of the council, who had been detained for a year and
a half in rigorous confinement, separated from their
wives and children. In consequence of late events
the indictment had been extended to several others.
The court cons’isted of one hundred and fifty-three
persons ; thirty-eight of the council and higher no-
bility, among whom were many relatives of the ac-
cused, twenty-four officers of the cavalry, all of
noble rank, twenty of the infantry, twenty-four
burgesses, twenty-three bailiffs and law-readers ^,
with twenty-four yeomen. The clergy regarded it
as unseemly to take the part of judges, and confined
themselves to a declaration that the evan<relical
faith would undoubtedly have been endangered in
Sweden if Sigismund had attained the superiority’.
The trial was held publicly, and in presence of the
envoys of John Adolphus, duke of Holstein *, bro-
ther-in-law of the administrator. Charles absolved
the judges from the oath which they had sworn to
him, and appeared himself as accuser against eight
lords of the council of state, Gustave and Steno
Bauer (brothers), Ilogenskild, Thure and Clas
Bielke (brothers), Eric Sparre’, Eric Leyonhufvud,
George Camiteson Posse, and five other noblemen,
Charles Stenbock, Arvid Stalarm, Axel Kurk, Chris-
tian Horn, and Bennet Fack, formerly royal com-
manders in Finland and elsewhere. The heads of
indictment were read by Eric Goranson Tegel, son
of the notorious Goran Person, who was afterwards
the historian of Gustavus I. and Eric XIV. The
prosecutors began with the well-known charges of
the time of John, in respect to which the reconcile-
ment formerly eflected was declared invalid, because
wished to restore the estate to his widow. This lady, Mar-
garet Brahe, (a sister of Eric Sparre’s wife,) writes to Sigis-
mund, that slie and her children were driven out of the
kingdom. The king promises her succour and vengeance
as soon as he should have subjugated Sweden, and augments
for her children the old Sparre arms by a tower planted
round with cannon, in memory of the defence of Calmar.
To lady Margaret, Warsaw, 28 Aug. 1599, and Sept. 26, 1600.
6 So was called the person who filled the office of judge of
the hundred, while its noble possessor drew tlie emoluments.
? See this declaration in the additions to the Rhyme
Chronicle of Charles IX. i. 346.
8 A Danish envoy had wished to be present, but was ex-
cluded.
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