suum cuique tribuere – elsa trolle önnerfors 171 about half of the Estate consisted of newly ennobled families. By the end of the century, the lesser nobility had grown to about eighty percent of the Estate.462 It should be remembered that the early modern Sweden was a large but sparsely populated country. Around 1620, the approximate size of the Swedish population was 854,000 inhabitants.463 The nobility constituted approximately half a percent of the population in the period in question, which meant that by the mid seventeenth century the Swedish nobility comprised roughly 4,000-5,000 persons. This was a relatively small nobility compared to many other European countries. In England and France for example, the nobility constituted about three to five percent of the population, and in Poland, the number was a high as seven to nine percent in the same period.464 The initiative for the establishment of a court of appeal came from King Gustav II Adolf (r. 1611–1632) at the Diet of Örebro in 1614, where he presented a proposal for new legislation on judicial procedure. Among other things, the king suggested that the nobility would have a forum privilegiatumat a proposed court of appeal in Stockholm. The system with a privileged forum for the nobility was not a novelty in the early seventeenth century. One of the first regulations on this matter had already been established in 1483 in the Kalmar recess, and was later repeated in King John III’s (r. 1568–1592) privileges for the nobility in 1569.465 But at the Diet of Örebro, the proposal for acourt of appeal to function as a privileged forum for the nobility was criticized by several people. The Dowager Qqueen, Kristina of Holstein-Gottorp (1573–1625), pointed out the inconveniences that would occur if the appeal court in Stockholm was the only court that could settle the nobility’s inheritance and real estate disputes. The clergy 462 Englund, Peter 1994 p. 13. 463 Villstrand, Nils Erik 2011 p. 372. The estimate of the population comprehends the modern Swedish territory. The population of Finland is not included in the number. By the end of the seventeenth century (1699), the Swedish population had grown to approximately 1,363,000 inhabitants, Villstrand, Nils Erik 2011 p. 372. 464 Eriksson, Bo 2011 p. 13. 465 Carlsson, Gottfrid 1955; von Konow, Jan 2005 p. 88. The Svea Court of Appeal as a Forum Privilegiatumfor the Nobility
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjYyNDk=