in the most part to the border provinces^' the provincial governor was instead given the title guvernör. In the instruktion issued for provincial governors in 1635, the authority of the Council and the colleges was underlined even further. For example, this instruktion stated that: since now the king, aside from the spiritual establishment, rules the entire secular establishment of the realm through five councils, or colleges, which are the court of appeals, the court martial, the admiralty, the chancellery, and the chamber of accounts: Thus, too, should the provincial governor, as the king’s representative, or as the deputy of the five colleges, aside from religion and religious services, especially have an eye on five main things, namely justice, the military, the naval establishment, the provincial government, and the rents. The provincial governor’s tour of duty was to be no longer than three years, after which time he was to come to Stockholm “and there, before all five of the councils of the realm, make a report and account for his entire administration of each matter, since it affects each and every council and its instruktion." Provincial governorships carried high social status and provided a lucrative source of income. During the period being considered here, these positions were held exclusively by members of the leading noble families.-" Together with the civil servants in the central administration, the provincial governors formed a nobiliar civil service class whose social and political importance increased steadily during the seventeenth century.-^ The deterioration of the state finances that followed upon the alienation of crown estates and rents was as detrimental to the local administrative officials as it was to those in the central administration. Mergers of provinces were carried out in order to reduce the salary costs of the local administration, especially between 1648 and 1654, Savings in the expenditures of the provinces, then, were to be made by eliminating administrative positions.-- In connection with the measures of economy introduced by the kanslikollegium under the presidency of Gustav Bonde, an instruktion for SÖRNDAL, 41. Instruktioner I, 193—194. Ibid., 217. -® Sten Lewenhaupt, Svenska högre ämbetsmä?! från 1634 (Stockholm, 1961), 55—63. Between the middle of the seventeentli century and the first decades of the eighteenth century, nearly 1,400 families were ennobled, most of which had a military background. Thirty-seven percent came from the civil service. See David Gaunt, Utbildning till statens tjänst. En kollektivbiografi av stormaktstidens hovrättsauskultanter (Uppsala, 1975), 110. -- SÖRNUAL, 38.
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