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1654.]
Uneasy state of public
feeling.
CHRISTINA’S ADMINISTRATION. Controversy as to
popular rights.
337
of the spix’itualty were hereby taken into protection
against all assaults; yet, in respect to the dispute
with the nobility on pa,tronage, the privileges ap-
pear more conciliatoi-y in woi-ds than satisfactory
in reality. The special assurances of grace which
the superior members of this order, bishops, super-
intendents, and doctors of theology received ", con-
tributed to alienate the minor clergy fx’om them,
as was soon to be shown.
The two diets following the peace, in the years
1649 and 1650, bring us nearer to the solution of
the play. In both years the queen was obliged
to ask for new levies in the room of the foreign
troops who departed, and likewise the continuance
of most part of the taxes which had been imposed
during the war. These requests were granted
^
;
"
because," says the statute of the diet of 1649,
" a newly won peace after a long war, as her ma-
jesty’s self declares, is not unlike a gi’eat confla-
gration lately extinguished, wherein firebrands
abound that still smoke, and may easily be re-
kindled." The queen did not yet stand ill in the
popular affections. She was beloved for her fa-
ther’s sake, as well as for her youth and personal
qualities; nor were the sufferings of the country
laid to her charge. But the minds of men were
still in a high ferment. To the proofs of this be-
long, in an age when so little was written, the
appearance and efficaciousness of anonymous pam-
phlets, which were plentifully circulated through
the country, and furnish contributions to the in-
ternal history of the times not undeserving of
notice. We will confine our attention to two of
these, opposite in their tendencies. The one is a
kind of manifesto, composed in the name of the
people of Middle Sweden *, which closes with an
exhortation that all, especially the clergy, should
ponder and disseminate it. This treatise complains
that the future reserved for the peasantry is to
sink from the rank of a free estate of the realm
into the condition of bondsmen and thralls; that
the queen’s mildness was abused, so that she
would soon possess only the name of realm and
crown. With infeudations great frauds were com-
mitted, since it was not always mei-it that was so
rewarded; they were distributed from favour or
for bribes by subordinate functionaries, who took
even the calves and butter of jjoor widows by
thereby be distinguished from the secret Calvinists, who
conceal themselves under the Confession of Augsburg," as
they said. The queen did not accede to this request, it was
supposed by the advice of Johannes Matthise, who was ac-
cused at this diet, on account of his treatise Idea boni
Ordinis, as a secret Calvinist, and believed to have favoured
that project of union with the Calvinistic church, which the
Scotsman Duraeus brought forward in 16S8, although in the
book referred to no trace of it is to be remarked. The high-
chnncellor was especially zealous for the Formula Concor-
dise, and the subject was again in 1630 brought under con-
sideration in the commission issued for the revision of the
Church Ordinance, but without any result being concluded
upon. The Formula Concordiae was first acknowledged in
Sweden as a symbolic book in 1668. The revision of the
church ordinance was an old question. It had been already,
before the year 1644, confided to Joannes Matthiae, bishop
of Strengness, and his Idea boni Ordinis was a proposal
thereby called forth. In the year 1650 a commission for this
purpose, consisting of clerical and laical members, was issued
under the direction of the chancellor. It appears from the
records appertaining thereto, that the permission for free
exercise of his religion, as a Calvinist, which Lewis de Geer
process of law; the tallages had increased beyond
all capacity of bearing them, and were like the
poll-tax, unreasonable, since rich and poor paid
the same proportion. The complaints of the com-
monalty were not listened to at the diets ; per-
verters of justice were appointed for their notaries,
who mutilated their presentments of grievances,
which had no answer save words without per-
formance; in old statutes of the diets it remained
upon record that the yeomen had the right of
themselves choosing those who should bring their
suits for redress to the knowledge of the authorities.
The other treatise alluded to contains a colloquy
between four members of the four estates of the
realm ^, where the nobleman seeks to convince the
rest, that the power and honours achieved by the
nobility in fact tended to the security and profit
of the realm ;
that their opponents merely covered
their own designs with the false accusation tlJat
the nobility intended to change the constitution of
Sweden into an aristocracy or an elective monarchy;
whereas the nobility had given too many proofs of
their fidelity to king and country; it was also suffi-
ciently well known that the nobility tolerated no-
thing so ill as being governed by their equals; the
tendencies now prevailing with the unnoble estates
led, on the other hand, directly to "
popular regi-
ment,’.’ the disastrous consequences whereof were
now laid bare in England; thitherward looked the
attacks on the supremacy of the crown: for the
crown was assailed in order to endanger the pri-
vileges which had flowed from its bounty, and
were bound up with the existence of monarchical
government. Affairs of state at the diets, which
could be propounded only by the ministry, de-
pended for their resolvement in the last instance
on the decision of the ministry, not on the votes of
the estates, since these were only summoned to a
diet to confer loyally with each other, else would
the estates be able to vote the king from crown
and sceptre, and the nobility from honours and
welfare. The gentry were pre-eminently the cul-
tivators of the land; and thereby the revenues of
the crown were now fifteen times greater, than if
their estates had still remained its property. The
augmentation of the nobility, so much cried out
upon, was made from the order of burgesses; how
had received from Gustavus Adolphus, was again brought
into question.
•s
The twelfth section of the charter holds out to them the
hope of ennoblement.
7 The conscription was not by man-tale, but by grange, or
ham-tale (hemman-tal), which latter method had been intro-
duced at the diet of 1642. Permission was also given to buy
oneself off with money. The clergy were for the most part
released by the new privileges from their obligations in refer-
ence to the levies. So far had these extended, that by a
rescript of the administration, dated Feb. 1, 163S, ministers
and schoolmasters were enjoined to assist those entrusted
with the execution of the levies, in procuring individuals of
loose character. Reg.
8 It begins: "We, whilome reeves (lansman) and men of
the commonalty in Upland, Suthermanland, Westmanland,"
&c., and is preserved in the Nordin Collections, with the
inscription
" 1649 or 1650." The tract probably belongs to
the first-named year.
»
Colloquy between Younker Peter, Master Hans, Nils An-
derson, burgess, and Joen of Berga, yeoman (danneman),
held at St. Thomas’ fair, in Linkoeping, year 1650. It is
also found in a printed form. The author was Schering
Rosenhane, councillor of state.
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