manland the divided court also worked in Gästrikland further south. Both parts of the court passed sentence without consulting Sparre. As he was still the formal president this led to a struggle over competence. In connection with this Sparre began to give stronger voice to his hitherto vague distaste of the turn which the trials had taken. The evidence of the children, the most important proof against the stubborn, was conflicting and uncertain. Before this and other legal and practical problems hade been authoritatively solved he refused to participate in any further executions. The commission was terminated with the approval of the king. Just much too late. 3.5. After four years of trials in Norrland the craze was on its way south. In Uppland, the province north of Stockholm, isolated cases had occurred by the beginning of 1675. They increased in extent during the year, clearly influenced from the north, chiefly Gästrikland. In October at the coronation Riksdag in Uppsala peasants from the northern part of the province presented the king with a petition ”to receive a commission against witchcraft”. .\fter Sparre’s intervention in Norrland the government had decided to postpone further investigations until the legal problems had been discussed and new directives for the trials had been formulated. For this reason the cases in Uppland continued for a time to be dealth with by the local court and the Court of Appeal. Only in the summer of 1676, when Stockholm was also involved, w’ere new commissions appointed, one of which was in Uppland. Its president was Anders Stiernhöök who had supported Rosenhane’s critical views of the trials in Hälsingland in 1673. In consequence the investigations in Uppland proceeded with such caution that only a couple of death sentences had been passed and carried out by the time the decisive events in Stockholm put an end to the great persecutions once and for all. 3.6. Thus it was in Stockholm that the end was to come. For the first time Court of Appeal judges and politicians saw the craze at close quarters. Gradually they were able to assess the criticism which had for a long time been voiced by clear-sighted persons in the provinces. But it took a long while, almost two years, before the change definitely took place. In the beginning the matter was given little serious attention. In the summer of 1675 it was more or less an entertainment to see and hear the possessed children in the nursing homes which had been set up for their protection. Some councillors invited the French Ambassador Feuquieres to see this spectacle. In a letter to his king the sceptical Frenchman comments, ”J'ai vu quelquefois cette petite comédie, que j'ai trouvée au moins fort bien jouee.” In spring 1676 matters began in earnest. At royal command the Court of Appeal started investigations with some ten suspects in the city. These had previously been questioned by a predominantly clerical commission without 333
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