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a. d. ) Aristocratic league.
1319—43. J Influence of foreigners.
Ketilmundson, or whosoever should be appointed in
his stead to conduct the government until the king
should be of age. Promises were made to the
people, on the other hand, that the arbitrary tallages
by which some of the preceding kings and princes
had violated the old liberties of the kingdom,
should be no longer imposed, and that all should be
left in possession of their former rights. Should
the defence or welfare of the state require a new
tax, it must be proclaimed to the people by the
confederate lords ; in case it were approved, it was
to be collected by their commissioners with the aid
of two peasants from every province, and applied
only to its declared purpose. The true nature of
these leagues is still more clearly explained by the
union of Skara, which took place in 132*2. By this
act, thirty-five spiritual and temporal lords
confederated to govern the realm in such a fashion,
that they might be able to answer it before
God and the king. They engaged to defend one
another like brethren, to submit their mutual
disputes to the judgment of the league, from which
they were on no pretext to separate. This
association, which throws so much light on the nature of
those older confederacies among the nobility,
forbidden by Magnus Ladulas under heavy penalties,
is remarkable in other respects. It was an act of
reconcilement between the royalist and ducal
parties4, and contains an engagement mutually to
counteract the influence of foreigners in public
affairs. This latter condition, produced chiefly by
the circumstance, that many foreigners had
insinuated themselves into favour at court, since the
time of Magnus Ladulas, and taken an active part
in the intestine commotions of the country, was
directed especially against the partiality which the
young king’s mother cherished for Canute Porse,
a powerful foreigner, who had been raised by king
Christopher II. to the ducal rank, and governed
South Halland. Banished from the kingdom by a
compact with the confederated lords, to which the
duchess acceded in 1326, he nevertheless received
her hand in the following year. Both parties
forfeited by this step all influence in Sweden, and
death shortly afterwards set bounds to the ambition
of the duke. The counts of Holstein at this time
ruled with absolute sway in the internally divided
and dissevered kingdom of Denmark. The
peasants of Scania, impatient of its yoke, revolted, and
slaying or expelling the Holsteiners (a. d. 1332),
submitted themselves, with the inhabitants of
Bleking and South Halland 5, to the dominion of
Sweden. Yet for the redemption of these
provinces from the claims of Count John of Holstein,
as well as for the payment of other pressing debts,
so considerable a sum was required, that to procure
it, the Swedish government was obliged to levy
new-taxes, to appropriate the tithes, and to mortgage a
large share of the crown revenues.
Magnus Ericson, who now styled himself king
of Sweden, Norway, and Scania, personally assumed
the government in 1333, at the age of eighteen,
|
New general law. _
Congress of Warberg. j
and two years afterwards rode his Eric’s Gait, on
which occasion he declared, for the honour of God
and the Virgin Marv, and " for the repose of the
souls of his father and uncle," that in future no
one born of Christian parents should be or be
called a slave. In 1336, Magnus was crowned with
his consort Blanch, Countess of Namur, and in the
same year, died Matthew Ketilmundson 8, a man,
in whom the king is said to have lost his best
counsellor, and the strongest prop of his throne.
Nils Ambiornson7 was named steward with
authority almost unlimited. Not only did the king
himself defend him and all his partisans, but
twenty-three barons, as well as the king’s sister Euphemia,
subscribed a similar engagement. Renewed
ordinances against the violation of the land’s peace, and
the roving of armed bands for plunder throughout
the country, as well as the complaints made by the
king himself, that no man guided himself by his
wishes, whether he prayed, exhorted, or threatened,
all this shows the independence assumed by the
magnates, and after what fashion they were
accustomed to observe the laws that had been
enacted.
In respect to legislation, the present reign is not
destitute of memorials. During the minority of
the sovereign, the law of Sodermanland was
revised and amended, and in 1327 it received the
royal sanction for all its sections, that concerning
donations and legacies to the Church excepted,
upon which head it is remarked, that the clergy
and laity had not been able to come to an
agreement. The same obstacle was encountered twenty
years afterwards, when the work of preparing a
general code to replace the various provincial laws
was at length really completed. At the baronial
diet of Orebro, in 1347, the clergy entered their
protest, and the whole matter fell to the ground.
Nevertheless the Land’s Law of king Magnus
Eric-son, excepting the section on the Church, gradually
obtained acceptation, and became of established
authority.
At the congress of Warberg, in 1343, where
king Magnus, king Waldemar of Denmark,
together with the councillors of Sweden and Norway,
and deputies from the newly acquired Swedish
provinces were assembled, Haco, the younger son
of Magnus, was proclaimed king of Norway, and
Eric, the elder, his successor upon the Swedish
throne. The annexation of Scania, Halland, and
Bleking to Sweden was confirmed, and Waldemar
absolutely renounced all claims upon these
territories.
Hitherto the reign of Magnus had been one of
almost unbroken tranquillity, yet the people were
burdened with such oppressive imposts, that the
king, acknowledging that many landowners had
been obliged to abandon their estates, in order to
escape from the weight of them, granted in 1346
exemption from the taxes to all who would return
and again cultivate their fields. In one of the
MAGNUS ERICSON.
* Therefore we now find Canute Jonson appointed to the
dignity of king’s steward. He had before filled this office
under king Birger, and was one of those who refused to take
any part in the seizure of the dukes.
5 The northern part had been annexed to Sweden by duke
Eric’s marriage.
6 Both the old chronologies which state the year of his
decease have 1326, probably a clerical error for 1336 ; the
rather as the conclusion of the king’s marriage, which took
place in 1335, is mentioned in the Rhyme Chronicle as the
last public transaction in which Matt. Ketilmundson was
concerned.
7 Son of the Steward Ambiorn Sixtenson Sparre, formerly
mentioned. The son assumed the arms of his mother’s
family of Oxenstierna.
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