228 provincial bookkeepers was issued in 1662 requiring the bookkeepers to maintain a rigorous level of supervision of the provincial administration of finances. The instruktion called for a more permanent allotment of the crown’s agrarian rents, whereby the regency for Charles XI hoped to be able to secure the regular payment of salaries to the discontented service nobility. The bookkeepers were to see to it that “no revenue post which, in the appropriations budget, is destined for the payment of certain posts, may be diverted to other expenditures or be assigned, but instead each and every income ... is to be employed and used for the payment of [those posts indicated] in the disposition of the royal kammarkollegium. The political revolution of 1680 did not bring any changes in the organization of the provincial governments,^^ although a series of new instructions for local administrative officials expressing the political aims of the absolutist regime was issued during the 1680s. In these instructions, the principles of fiscal administration based on the allotment system were given a very detailed legal form. According to the instructions, the primary aimwas to create a stable basis for the future payment of the salaries of the military and of the civil administration. From the estates recovered by the crown through the reduktionen, military officers were allotted residences, or so-called boställen, the size of which varied according to rank. The rents from certain homesteads were allotted, partly in produce (mainly grain) and partly in cash, to cover the officer’s salary, which was defined as a certain sum of money. The peasant was to deliver his produce directly to the officer’s residence, but he was also required to deliver it to any town in the judicial district {lagsaga) which the officer might indicate.-^ A permanent allotment of the crown’s agrarian rents was also made to cover the salaries of the civil servants in the provinces. In the annual state budget drawn up by the statskontoret, these appeared in such a manner that it was possible to see exactly which homestead rents were to cover each official’s salary.^® The rents might be paid in kind or in cash, and in the latter case the bailiff of the district was to see to it that the peasant’s surplus was sold at the highest official price {markegångspriset) allowed in that judicial district and to deliver the cash so produced to the provincial bursary for further transfer to the räntekammaren in Stockholm.^"^ ” 23 Instruktioner I, 440. SÖRNDAL, 51. Sven Ågren, Karl XI:s indelningsverk för armén (Uppsala, 1922), 60—61, 84. See above, p. 191—192. Instruktioner I, 51—52. 26
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