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1632.]
Backwardness of
the nobility
GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS. INTERNAL RELATIONS. in performing
military service. 217
which Charles had offered to confirm. Personal
relations made the greatest change. The young
king’s good inclination towards the old families per-
secuted by his father ;
his gentleness, which com-
pensated many hardships and dried up many tears ;
his gratitude for the harmonious settlement of the
succession ;
his righteousness, which first aboHshed
the arbitrary confiscations that were the most
terrible arms of his father and grandfather; his
bounteousness, and the hopes so universally fixed on
him ;
his very youthftdness, which took and required
counsel, all this operated reconcilingly. His as-
cension of the throne was as the atonement of
longsome civil distractions in Sweden. It was
solemnized in haste, amidst ingruent dangers,
without closely chaff’ering about conditions. This
important diet, which now regulated the succession,
the footing of administration, the defence of the
country, the taxation, and decided on the com-
plaints of the estates, took up the space of three
weeks ^
;
and the same day when Gustavus Adol-
phus confirmed the privileges of the nobility, he
set out for the wars.
A brief experience was sufficient to change the
tincture of his thoughts. Highly dissatisfied with
the conduct of the nobles in declining the horse-
service, and with many encroachments on his rights
repugnant to the import of their charter, he caused
a declaration to be drawn up after the close of the
Danish ^r in January, 1C13, for the right under-
standing of the nobility’s privileges, which he com-
mitted to the custody of John Skytt^ ’. Out of
grace and thankfulness, it runs, for that the nobility
of Sweden, with other indwellers of the realm, had
elevated his family to royal dignity, and lately
elected and chosen him to be their sovereign lord,
he had conceded to them such privileges, as hardly
any king of Sweden before ;
he had perceived that
many of them made little acknowledgment of such
liberality, but contrariwise misused the privileges
conferred, especially in this war-time ;
wherefore
they might know that he could revoke what he had
given, and define the true sense of their privileges,
that every man might not turn and twist them as
seemed good to him. But these privileges should
be so understood, that although it was therein
j)rovided that tax-free estates should not fall to
the crown, unless the nobleman bore arms against
his king, yet the law of Sweden should also hold,
which among other cases when freehold was for-
feited, enacted generally, that tax-free estates
might be laid under scot, if service were not per-
formed therefrom ;
wherefore those of the nobility
who neither themselves bore part in the Danish
war, nor fulfilled their horse-service, but slunk
away, while the king himself lay a-field against the
enemies of the realm 2, should lose their baronial
» The diet of Nykbping was from Dec. 10, 1611, to Jan. 1,
1612. The cliarter of privileges is dated Jan. 10, 1612. On
the same day the king began liis journey to the army.
1
Draught of an explanation of the privileges of the
baronage (ridderskap) and nobility, in the Palmskold MSS.
t. 153. Subjoined is the remark, "This sketch of an expla-
nation of the privileges before-mentioned was found among
the papers of Master John Skytte, upon which the wor. de-
ceased wrote with his own hand,
’
This shall be narrowly
observed : it treats of the abuses practised by sundry of the
nobles, and was delivered to me by his majesty’s self. The
late Michael Olofson (then secretary of state) penned it.’"
2 " God knoweth," writes one >of the king’s followers in
freedom, unless they had lawful excuse, and of
grace obtained a new confirmation. They are
reminded that heritable estates as well as fiefs are
subject to the burden of horse-service. It is noted
as an abuse, that the nobility released their pea-
sants, not only within the free-mile round their
mansions, but generally upon their lands held in
fief from the crown, from portages, lodgment, and
other works of succour (hjelp) ; that they built as
many seats (satesgardarna) as they pleased, and
claimed for them the same immunities as for their
individual place of abode ;
thus also withdrawing a
large number of persons from conscription ; that
whereas the houses of the nobles in the towns were
free from all civic burdens, they unlawfully, either
themselves or by others, pursued civic callings,
maintaining even in some cases tap-rooms and
places of dissolute resort ;
that they abused like-
wise their toll-free right for inland traffic and
foreign commerce as well on their own as others’
account ;
with nmch else to the same purpose.
Touching the restitution of property forfeited by
nobles to the owner’s family, it is laid down that
the conditions on which such a favour might be
granted must depend upon the king ;
" for if the
sovereign were to be bound continually to give of
the rents and property of the crown, without the
case ever occurring that such tax-free estates
should again fall to the king and crown, occasion
would thereby be given for the king to retake by
force of law what the crown had in this manner
lost of its rents, as the fifth article of the king’s
oath expressly declared and allowed." It was
this article of the old royal oath which had been
omitted from the warranty of Gustavus Adolphus.
At his coronation in ltJ17, he caused it to be again
inserted in the oath. That he knew his rights is
also shown by the statute passed in his second diet,
of the year 1612, to the eff"ect that all fiefs con-
ferred during pleasure should be revoked till the
investigation of the grounds of tenure was com-
pleted,
"
since, in a word, the largest portion of the
income and rents of the realm was bestowed in
fiefs 3."
This statute remained on the whole without
effect, and naturally enough, seeing that in such
infeudations, however great the inconveniences
they entailed on both governors and subjects, con-
sisted from of old the payment for the entire
service of the state ;
and the remedy of the evil
would thus have required a new regulation of
stipends in every department. For this the wars
that had broken out left no time, and the confusion
of the finances no means. We see the king for
the most part reduced to the necessity of giving
with one hand what he had taken back with the
other. Great merits and brilliant proofs of bravery
the war, Aug. 2, 1612, "what support his majesty hath had;
more than eight persons of the nobility have not been with
him during this whole expedition." Hallenberg, ii. 447.
3 " There had been for long and up to this time, abuse
with the fiefs, which may properly be called no other than
the ordinary revenues of the crown of Sweden, and were
distributed among those who were employed in the king’s
service. All such fiefs were recalled by public edict, till his
majesty should have examined what enfeofl^ment every man
held, and what persons possessed them, as also what service
they discharged for them." Widekindi, Life and History
(Historia och Lefvernebeskrifuing) of Gustavus Adolphus,
p. 116. Hallenberg, ii. 745.
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