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ESSAYS IM SWEDISH HISTORY

one reason wity councfl-eonstitutionalisin was ncver a really popular canse.

Meanwhik, it migfat seem tfaat Erik Sparre had lived and died in vain. Por a decade aft er 1600 Charles ruled Sweden much as Gustav Vasa had ruled it, through secretaries and hailiflfs: estorting, by periodic threats of abdication. parliamen-tary support lor unpopular policies and parliamentary con-donation of actions morę high-handed than any that had ever been laid to Sigismund⁷s charge. The council was drastically remodelled; and a ńksdag resolution of i6o2~lai3~iT down that ‘henceforth the council shalł giv e counsel, and shall not gov-era¹.⁴¹ But in fart Sparre had gained one virtory of the trtmost sigmfieanee. By forcmg Sigismund in 1594 to grant an Accession Charter⁴² as a condition of his recognition as king, and as a preliminary to his coronation, he had in fact established the principle that hereditary monarchy did not mean absolute monarchy: the king was stOl to be bound by the fundamental law of the constitntkm. It is tnie that he had been able to gain his point only because Charles for his own purposes concurred in pressing it, and because the consdtutional quesdon was nrbted up with a rdigious issue. It is true too that Charles himself gave kis Charter only after his coronation, and that the only import-ant guarantees in it coneemed rehgion. Nevertheless, some of the ideas of the *nineties did survive the destruedon of the men who had propounded them. The so-called ‘Rosengren Draft⁷ of a rerókm of the Land Law (1605) would have głven the council the right to try canses in which a subject complained that the crown had iflegalły deprived him of his property; and would even have madę the king^s power of granting patents of nobihty subject to the nobflity^s consent. Erik Sparre⁷s theories crop up surprising^y in the writmgs of men in dose touch with Charles ix; and thmigh this had httle eflfert on Charles’s actions, it can at kast be said that Sparre’s principles had to some eztent become the mmmnn rant of his enemies.⁴* And it was a matter of real importance that from 1611 to 1697 every Swedish sove-reign AwiM have accepted the obligation to subscribe to a Charter as a condi tion of accession. Nothing morę plainly mreals the despoiic naturę of Charles nfs govemment than hś refusal to confbrm to this precedent.⁴⁴

The cźrcumstances of the accession of Gustav Adolf did

OK AKISTOCRATIC COKSTITCTIOKALISM

indeed appear to proride Sparre with a posthumous triumph. The council and the Estates, ał-k i^ djr*a*rd tema tpjhc. monarchy. The Charter of 1611 with its detaikd ezpcńtioD of the abuses and lilegalities of Charles nt reige, was an ałmott explicit vote of censure. Gustav Adolf was madę to pronńse to abstain from such practices in futurę; the council was gńren a guaran tee that its memben should be free to discharge their consdtutaonal functions without hazard;* the great officers of State were promised security of tennre dnring good behaviour; the prinapks of the Land Ław were reaffirmed. Aid Osen-stiema seemed to be emergmg as Erik Sparre's połilkal faeir. In the seąuel, it did not tum out qtńte Hke that. The crias of 1611 was followed by twenty years of consdtutional harmony. The monarchy appeared to have leamed its kssou. Gustav Adolf on the whole took care to sbck to the spirit of the Charter, and Qxenstiema was wise enoogh to avoad any pedantk attempts to tie him to the letter of it. No doubt Gustav Adolf was less com-plaisant to the men of 1611 than has sometitmes been im-i agined;⁴⁷ and Osensdema, as was to appear after 1632, had not fbrgotten the experiences of Charles ix^Js unie. But sblL for a whole generation the intiinate collaboration of king and chan-| ceDor ramę near to maAmg the underłyiiig coostitntional [ eonfhcŁ It was only when the great king was dead that the traditkm of cotmdl^raistitntianafismreróred; to pcodnce, in the Form of Gm emment (regermgrfom) of 1634, its most daborate achievement — and, as it proved, its last.

The Form of Goremment* implemcnied umnhaneously

I bódł wings of Erik Sparre*s programuje. On the one hand it provided Sweden with an ocdeiły, logical and modem machm-ery of govenunent,⁴* and thus brought to a cnhninalion the great administraturę refbrms whkh Osensdema had inangiu-ated in the preceding reign: in its coocem for efficiency, in ńs belief in centraHzatkm as a means to efficiency, it was a typka! esample of the ‘progresróe’ thought of the age. On the other hand it put the coutrol of the country mto the hands of the regents and the council, with morę than a soggestiou that it might remain there after the minority was over: it was, after aD, declared to be an ‘eteraal’ Jaw; and one cootempocary legał espert compared it to the Gofden BuŁ* Its preamhle stated, in words wfaich were to acąuire rlauar authocity, the

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