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11(5 Diet of Westeras assembles. HISTORY OF THE SWEDES. Speech of the high chancellor. [1521—
intimated, that with the assistance of the council
and the wisest men of the realm, he would make
inquiry into the dissensions which had arisen in
religion. Since his accession, general or baronial
diets2 had been held yearly, often twice a-year, the
position of the king requiring it, although the
frequency of these meetings was a subject of
complaint. They appear to have been attended for the
most part only by the neighbouring inhabitants
and the councillors resident in the province in
which they convened ; sometimes too their acts
were drawn up only by the king and councillors.
In Westeras the numbers of the assemblage were
for that day considerable. There were present
four bishops3, four prebendaries, fifteen lords of
the council, one hundred and twenty-nine nobles,
thirty-two burgesses4, fourteen miners, with one
hundred and five peasants from all quarters of
the kingdom, excepting Dalecarlia5, from which
no members were sent, and Finland, whence
none appear to have been summoned, although
the statute of the diet was afterwards
promulgated there, as well as in the remainder of the
kingdom. Warning had been given to the nobles
that they should attend well equipped ; the king
reckoned upon their support in the decisive step
which he meditated against the authority of the
clergy. At the banquet with which he welcomed
all the estates, it was noticed that the bishops
who formerly on all public occasions were entitled,
in right of their office, to the highest place, even
above the administrators, if there were no king,
should now be seated below the councillors. On the
day following, the prelates met in the church of
St. Egidius with closed doors, and subscribed,
mainly at the instigation of bishop Brask, an
anticipatory protest against all aggressions on the rights
of the church. They concealed this instrument under
the floor of the church, where it was found fifteen
years afterwards.
The deliberations of the estates were held in the
hall of the Dominican monastery at Westeras, and
were opened with an exposition of the state of the
realm, which was read by the chancellor Lawrence
Anderson. He reminded them of all that the
king had done for the country, and under what
circumstances he had taken on himself the burden
of the government ; he might have found good
reason to excuse himself, in the fear that such a
game might be played with him, as beforetime
with many othersc, from the unsteady humours
which possessed the nation against authority and
government; he was young, and had given consent
to that which afterwards he had often rued. It
was not possible for him to rule a people who,
whensoever the king wished to abrogate aught
that was faulty in the state, straightway took to
their pole-axes, and called the ill-disposed to revolt
by " the looped and charred staff of summons7 ;"
and most of all up in Dalecarlia, where they
boasted that they had raised his grace to the
throne, although the Dalesmen, after the victory
at Westeras, which indeed was the beginning of
the liberation, but far from its close, had mostly
gone home. Now they pretended that all had been
wrought by their hands ; they would set in or out
of the government of the kingdom whom they
listed, and bawled for more freedom than other
good men of the realm, just as if these were to be
looked upon, in respect of themselves, as but slaves
and bondsmen 8. The German envoys were now
present, and demanded payment of their debts ;
the Dalecarlians might come and see whether they
would hold an insurrection for good payment. All
was laid to the king’s charge, both the dearth
which he had sought to mitigate to the best of his
ability, and the assessment of churches and
monasteries which was to be excused by the necessity
of the case ; .although it was otherwise reasonable
in itself, that the superfluity which the commoners
had accumulated should also be used for their
requirements, and for the lightening of their burdens,
when need was. Lastly, it was imputed to the king
that he was introducing a new faith into the land,
because he, and many with him, had now learned
to consider how they were cozened and oppressed
in money matters by the churchmen, who were
under the shield of the Pope in Rome. The rulers
of this land had been long enough exposed to the
danger of provoking the Romish confederacy, and
had been obliged to endure the insolence of the
bishops who revolted and levied war before their eyes,
according as the archbishop Gustavus Trolls had
declared to the lord Steno Sture, that he had
received from his pope a sharp sword to bear upright
before him, and that he would use other weapons
than a wax-candle in the conflict. The same
administrator, lord Steno SturiS, had not been able to
maintain more than 500 soldiers from the revenues
of the kingdom, because the crown and the
baronage had scarcely the third part of that which was
possessed by priests and monks, convents and
churches. The king acknowledged that he had
permitted God’s word and gospel to be preached.
But he had caused these preachers to be summoned
to defend their doctrine, and some of them were
now present and ready to do so. This however,
2 Riksdag. Herredag.
3 Namely Brask of Linkoeping, Magnus Haraldson of
Skara, Magnus Sommar of Strengness, and Peter Magnuson
of Westeras, the latter being the only one besides Brask who
had received his consecration, which was performed at Rome
by the king’s special request, after Peter Sunnanvaeder had
been deposed. This Peter Magnuson afterwards consecrated
the bishops appointed by the king. Of the four prebendaries,
two were from Upsala, of which the archiepiscopal chair was
vacant, and two from Vexio, the bishop of which was
prevented by age from attending.
4 Besides the representatives of Stockholm, who, singularly
enough, are not named in the catalogue in Stiernman, although
they were present, and had great influence with the diet.
5 So the king himself complains (letter to the common
people of the Dales, February 14, 1528, Reg. of the Arch.).
Deputies were present, however, from the district of the
Kopparberg, and negociators were afterwards sent by the
Dalesmen.
6 " That the like Shrove-tide mumming might be tried
with him as with many others." Tegel, whom along with
the Chronicles we have followed for this exposition. In the
king’s " Propositions," Stiernman, Resolutions i. 57, it is
stated that he had offered so early as 1521, in the congress in
Vadstena, from which his regency is usually dated, to lay
down the chieftaincy (hofwidsmansddmet), which is merely
another word for the former; whence we see that he
considered himself as Administrator by the choice of the people
in Upper Sweden, before he was confirmed in the office by
the nobility at Vadstena.
7 " As has lately happened in West-Gothland," the king
adds. The epithets applied to the staff of summons have
been explained in Chapter VII.
8 " Esthers and thralls," it is said ; therefore the r.ame of
this people is used as synonymous with bondmen.
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