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ESSAYS Ef SWIDUH HI5TORT

kmę'3 Krrke.® AR dzreqrfL tfec firss twenty years of rhari^ sr> rejgg 3e lower nobśfity waged a grim banie against the magnaresy Ikr war enraged by tbe praemioro of tbe dtfed misk£y > ie. the eofmts and barom} to a zatoi decińzum in tbe Esate afMb: they refesed ta conrede tbe pa to counts and harcns wfeo were ddr afeaocs in tbe hierarchy of serróe. Jdśm Gyiknstierna hfimdf of the high nobihty, though at mar dzne nn-ddal and with fandly cormections treodmg ćowiiwards ndter rtran npwards}^a opmsed tbe feehitg with his usual cruderuess wkn he said Ii lin senior, no cotmt b walkniff bdbrc me⁷.*⁴The demand for a Precedence Ordinance, wioch drani# br down a Tabłe of Ranks based stpctly on Krrke and not ob birth, was one of the main poants in the programnie of the lower nobahty dnring the minofity. They tŁrśmeń k ai hsL, in 1680. And the deep dirision in the firn EiGsś edppłed rts powm of resstance to tbe monarchy. If tfear dhiśozL Ład not oked, absołntism might not k?e been ncssfhie: cenainlT k would not bave come as easiły.*⁵ Bel the sodal strains wbkh tbe monarchy was a ble to ezpłoif 3lenćeć tar beyood theinteroal tensions witbin tbe aristocracy. The noo-noMe    were damooring against the nobihty^s

aaral ar,rt socźal pritikgES. Clergy and Burghers looked to a rsnidLm. m Jeńtte tbe bcuden af tasaaon. Above aO, tbe peasans Seared lest the passing of crown lands into noble banda migŁt espose tbem to tbe oppresrion of aristocratic fcadferdk and perhaps degrade tbem to ^ca Lh onian seni-mót.⁵* Tbese Sears and resentments had lain at the heart of the aborted revołntk>nary siraadon of 1650, when for the first dme smee tbe 1590& tbe noo-nobłe Estates had found in the crown a temporary a% against tbe aristocracy. And though Christina had then płayed tbem false, and tbough the pardal reduktum U Charles z, tbe so-caDed fjardepartsrafst, had for tbe moment piastered over tbe sodal tdcer., tbe fundamental strife of Enates had not been ended. In tbe twenty years tbat folio wed, it was never far bdow the sorface of politics. On occasion, as at tbe Diet of 1672, it blazed furiously in tbe open.⁵⁷ A monarch wbo was reaDy seriom about a reduktum would always find entbnaastk ailies in the tbree lower Estates. To strengthen his band they would net hesi tatę to make constitutional sacribces, and were wflHng enoogh to shut tbeir eyes to political implications

if they coukł realne their sodal programme. And if at the Diet of 1680 h was the leser nobles who fint pushed (ffl the phn far a rrdkktim, the lower Estates soon turned the occaskm into a nussńe deinonstiatioii of hosdfity to the high aristocracy and loyahy to the throne.⁵⁸ In Olaf Thcgner they prodoced a great parfiamentarian. who took up the struggie where Nik Skunk had dropped it thirty yeais before. It was not altogether dtraragant for a can tank ero us WMg in the rcign of Queen Annę to describe Thegner and his alfie as a set ot ‘monarchio! fe^efasi⁸.®⁹

Absoludsm in Sweden was certainły not (to borrow Gdjer⁵s famous phiase) ‘an aeddent that looked fike an idea*: on the contrary, it was an idea which had long been gaining ground in the minds of derką. lawyers and pofitical theorists. The researches of Dr Nils Runeby have madę it possible fis- os to follow step by step the trends of Swedish politkal thought in the first three-qiiarters of the seventeenth cen tury; and it is now plain that already in the ^łfifties there had been a markedchange in the intellectual cfimate.® Althusius was out, Amisaeus was in, as fer as the dons at Uppsala were concemed. Predseły the same change of fashion in pofitical thought - with, once again, Amisaeus as the modish testbook - had occurred in Denmark in the two decades before 1660.*¹ In both countries the abso-lutist rev olution had been prepared in mens minds before it became a pofitical reafity. If Charles x had fived longer he might well have anddpated the work of his son.® The revolu-tion which Frederick m carried through in Copenhagen was not nnremarked on the other side of the Sound, and the Swedish aristocracy were intermittentły afraid that something of the sort might happen in Stockholm:*³ at the Diet of 1672 a member of the Estate of Burghers pointedły ailuded to it.®⁴ Some idea of the naturę of Kongeloom must have reached Sweden, espedally when, after the accession of Christian v, its eristence became generalły known. But indeed, the whole current of the age seemed setring strongly against constitution-alism and in fayour of monarchy. The victory of the Great Elector over the Estates of Brandenburg and of Prussia was necessarily an event of concem to Sweden, if only for its mili tary implicarions. The magnificent beginnings of Louis xrv⁵s personal rule were circumstantially reported by Swedish

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