the svea court of appeal in the early modern period 144 ed property of female relatives who married commoners or were found guilty of fornication.397 However, the law only stated that fornication or misalliance would lead to the loss of exemption of taxes; even in this case, a commoner could, according to the law, maintain the exemption if he accepted the cavalry service that justified the said exemption.398 According to the Giftobalken, the Chapter on Marriage, a woman forfeited her paternal and maternal inheritance if she married against the will of her parents and they did not explicitly forgive her.399 Claes Claesson may have had this chapter of the law in mind when he referred to Agneta losing the good will of her parents. All in all, the accusations were inaccurate, although they clearly resonated with the increasingly strict attitudes against misalliances in the seventeenth century. It was only in 1622 that the King, confirming the privileges of the nobility, officially confirmed that a noblewoman marrying a commoner would lose all her estates to her immediate relatives.400 To be fair, it has to be said that Agneta seems to have had problems in toeing the line. The accusations may have been exaggerated, but in 1582, her brother had declared that he sold his inherited landed property to an outsider and left her sister without a share, because she “has behaved herself so improperly, as is widely known”.401 While the law did not see fornication and promiscuity in precisely the same light as the male relatives of erring noblewomen, in practice, the inheritance rights of misbehaving noblewomen were already under scrutiny. At one Svea Court sitting, Claes Claesson even claimed that both Agneta and another sister had lost their inheritance rights because of misalliances. Thus, his wife would have represented the only surviving branch with the right to inherit. To this, Planting replied that the King had in any case reinforced the rights of the offspring of other sisters.402 397 See Nilsson, Sven 1952 pp. 26–27; Korpiola, Mia 2005 p. 157; Lahtinen, Anu 2009a pp. 178-186, 193-194. 398 KrL, Konungsbalken (Chapter on the King), sections 21 and 22. 399 For a maid forfeiting her paternal and maternal inheritance, see KrL, Giftobalken (Chapter on Marriage), section 3; Korpiola, Mia 2009 pp. 168-174. 400 Korpiola, Mia 2005 pp. 156-158; Korpiola, Mia 2009 pp. 283-296. 401 “[M]inn syster sig Så ottillbyrdellig hafue för hållet såm allemann witterllig Er,” landed property transaction document between Ivar Torstensson Ram and Klas Fleming, 1582, RA, Biografica, Ram, Ivar Torstensson; Lahtinen, Anu 2009a pp. 107, 236, note 67. 402 Court session 31 October 1620, RA, SHA, E VI a 2aa, Liber causarum 26.
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