382 secretaries, who were entirely dependent upon the monarch for their economic, social, and political well-being.^ During the subsequent decade, there began to arise a collegial system consisting of five colleges under the five highest officers of the realm, and the chancellery was given a more structured organization in this direction when procedural instructions issued in 1618 called for the dlvision of its responsibilities along functional lines, thus replacing the existing division based on the specific individuals who held the various posts.^ The principle of collegial organization itself, however, was not introduced in the chancellery until 1626. New instructions issued in that year stated that the leadership of the college was to consist of the chancellor and two councillors, one of whom was to head the chancellery and one of whom was to head the archives, but both of whom were subordinate to the chancellor. The councillors were to be aided by secretaries, who were to attend to the day to day routines, and the secretary in the archives of the realm was to serve simultaneously as the state historiens. The new instructions also clarified the chancellery’s position vis-a-vis the other colleges, equating it with them in status, but charging it with the tasks of preparing business for presentation to the king and the State Council and overseeing the general operation of the collegial system as a whole. Nonetheless, the primary mission of the chancellery was to be the conduct of foreign affairs.'”’ In practice, however, the chancellery became an administrative organ for the State Council and came to have a monopoly on the presentation of matters to the king and council. Literally all government business was presented by the chancellery, thus negating the stipulations in existing regulations calling for direct contacts between the State Council, on the one hand, and the kammarkollegium, krigskollegium, and amiralitetskollegium, on the other. This situation existed in spite of the fact that the presidents of all the colleges were members of the Council.** The chancellery’s leading position in relation to the other colleges was also evident in the Form of Government of 1634, which stipulated that since the chancellery was the forum for “all deliberations that the king normally holds with the state councillors, or with some of them, or with the chancellery councillor (kanslirådet), . . . the regular meetings of the State Council shall be arranged by the chancellor and held in the innermost Sven A. Nilsson, “På väg mot reduktionen," in Studier i svenskt 1600-tal (Stockholm, 1964), 59; Nils Forsell, "Kansliet från Gustav II Adolf till 1660," in Oscar WiESELGREN et al., Kuugl. Majas kanslis historia (2 v., Uppsala, 1934—1935), I, 20. ^ Ibid., 22. •> Ibid., 23—28. « Ibid., 38.
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