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1654.]
Liberties of the yeomanry
endangered.
CHRISTINA’S ADMINISTRATION. Evil increased by the excess ooo
of the royal bounty.
"’’^**
It touched the existence of the order of yeomen as
a free estate in Sweden.
That the liigh-chancellor was an enemy of this
freedom, we cannot in general affirm. Several of
his expressions in the council, where he was by no
means the strongest aristocrat, attest the contrary.
" The Swedish yeomen are a free class, and have a
voice," is one of his sayings 2; but then he adds,
" it is but a contract, which subsists Ijetween them
and their masters^;" this infers that the nobleman
may be master, notwithstanding the personal liberty
of tlie peasant ;
and if we review the conse-
quences of the chancellor’s system in internal
administration, we discover no obstacle to the con-
clusion that the nobleman ought to be master.
The opinion of this great statesman appears in fact
to have been little different from that of the high-
steward, count Peter Brahe, who declared on the
same occasion: " we are all subjects of the realm,
the peasants mediately, we immediately," a dis-
tinction so little to the taste of king Charles X.,
that finding it stated with some verbal alteration
in Gyldenstolpe’s Polities, he threw the book,
which was dedicated to himself, out of the win-
dow*. Great progress was made to the end of
vesting the possession of the soil of Sweden in the
nobility, and the chancellor seems to have formed
the conception of making the order of yeomen,
with the privilege of representation, for the most
part a class of free farmers. Hence also his
preference for indirect taxes, as customs and
2 In the council, 1650. Palmsk. MSS.
3 Ibid.
* Memoirs for the History of Scandinavia, x. 115.
5 In the council, 1642. Palmsk. MSS.
6 As an example, may be quoted the royal confirmation,
issued June 9, 1645, of the purchase of estates from the crown
made by one of the guardians, the high-treasurer Gabriel
Bennetson Oxenstierna, cousin of the chancellor. It is
therein stated, that at the sale, made in the time of Gns-
tavus Adolphus, the estates were sold for 3 per cent, (at 100
rix-dollars for 3 rix-dollars’ rent), the rix-dollar being va-
lued at 6J marks, and only the fixed yearly rents computed;
and that afterwards, it was resolvLd to compute also casual
yearly rents, and to sell the estates for 4J per cent., valuing
the rix-dollar at 6 marks. Under these conditions, the high-
treasurer had bought, in the years 1638, 39, 40, 42, ninety-
eight and a half hydes, specilied in different provinces, for
28,450 rix-dollars in all. And when we consider the mo-
tives for this sale,
—it is said—in the impending exigency
and general danger of the realm, not to burden the estates
with higher imposts, it being also not convenient for us to
repay the money, and the good tendance of lands promoting
cultivation ; therefore, though we might object something
against the calculation of the rents for the Westgothic estates,
we confirm him in possession of these estates, with immu-
nity from taxation, as for others of his hereditary lands.
Among those ceded in this manner are both crown, taxed,
and cliurch estates, with two of the Gustavian heritage.
’’
Thus the children of the high-chancellor Eric Sparre
received compensation for the half of the Bergquara estates,
which the high-admiral Gyllenhielm now possessed. April
16, 1645. Reg.
^ Since our father, of happy memory, erected the soldiers’
house at Vadstena, from commiseration for all wounded
and frail warriors, and endowed it with rents of 2000 dollars,
which up to this day it has been found impossible in effect
to perform; therefore we give to the soldiers’ house of Vad-
stena, as many of our own and the crown-granges, as will
reach to this sum." Oct. 12, 1646. Reg. There are besides
a multitude of individual examples.
’ This statement is taken from a ministerial memoir,
written in Italian, of the year 1654, probably by count Monte-
excise, and his urgency that the nobility should
not shake these off, but rather support the crown
by separate grants, which reminds us of his ex-
pression,
" that all Sweden’s misfortunes sprung
from this root, that the sovereigns had wished to
receive in the measure of the public necessities,
and the nobles to contribute nothing*." This was
the only way of reconciling taxation with the im-
munity which the nobles claimed for their lands.
Christina confirmed without reservation all
alienations of crown and taxed estates made during
her minority, which were now assigned to the
possessors as perpetual freeholds ^. The same
expedient of which the guardians availed them-
selves with some reserve, was employed by the
young, vivacious, and open-handed queen without
bound or stint ;
and the registers of her reign are
filled with deeds of sale, infeudations, letters of
nobility, tokens of grace, and gifts of every sort.
She had brilliant merits to rewai’d, sometimes
ancient wrongs to redress ^, and the care which
she devoted to old or wounded soldiers *, deserves
all praise.
But favour was the source of benefactions ex-
ceeding all others in amount. We may well be
amazed at the profusion heaped by the queen upon
count Magnus de la Gardie, the handsomest and
most brilliant of the young nobles of her court,
who is said within a few years to have amassed an
income of 80,000 rix-dollars yeai’ly in landed es-
tates alone ^. We have mentioned the man whose
cuculi, copied in Venice, and communicated by Arckenholtz.
Mem. de Christine, ii. Appendix, n. xlvii. We subjoin a
summary of the promotions and donations granted to count
Magnus by the queen, chiefly from the state registries. He
began his public career in 1644, at the age of two-and-twenty,
when he was appointed colonel of the guard, and received
besides a pension of 1500 rix-dollars yearly. The following
year he was sent to France, at the head of a splendid em-
bassy; obtained on Feb. 9, 1646, the investiture of Magnus-
hof on the ffisel; in the same year was made colonel of the
life regiment, and in 1647, councillor of war and state at
once ; April 17, 1648, g-neral over all the Swedish and Ger-
man soldiery in Germany, as lieutenant-general of duke
Charles Gustavus, with a stipend of 10,000 rix-dollars ;
April 20, of the same year, he received the donation of
twenty-nine hydes in Upland ;
June 28, a pen.sion of
15,000 rix-dollars, from the French subsidies and the Ger-
man revenue ; April 16, 1649, 22,500 rix-dollars, from the
fund for the satisfaction of the Swedish army ; May 11, he
was made governor-general of Lifland ;
Jan. 15, 1650, he
received an assignment of 7000 rix-dollars, from the produce
of the customs, in compensation for some revenues in Bre-
men ;
Aug. 14, 1650, an augmentation of his arms as count,
and t’ne county of Arensberg on the CEsel; Aug. 23, of the
same year, a free gift of all the artillery and munitions in
the fortress of Benfeld ;
Dec. 24, the district of Wollin in
Pomerania, in perpetual possession; April 16, 1651, an aug-
mentation of the county of his father, Jacob de la Gardie ; in
the same year, he was made high-mar.-ihal ;
Jan. 31, 1652,
president of the chamber of accounts; March 27, lawman of
Westgothland and Dalsland ; May 30, he obtained the manor
of Raefsness, in Suthermanland, with several in East Both-
nia; and on October 19, estates in Nerike ; Dec. 30, he was
made high-treasurer; March 2, 1653, he received the church
tithes of the parish of Ilmola, and 30,000 rLx-dollars, for
Jacobsdale, now Ulricsdale ;
March 23, about sixty granges
in Medelpad and West Bothnia, the salmon-fishery of Umea,
and the salmon-tax on twenty granges; Sept. 30, a dona-
tion of the house in Stockholm, which the government
had purchased from his father for 70,000 rix-dollars, in con-
sideration of the surrender by count Magnus of a grant
of estates in Halland.
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