suum cuique tribuere – elsa trolle önnerfors 183 Disputes about sexual relations outside marriage (Sw. lägersmål) with noble parties only occurred in a small number of cases in the court records. Sexual intercourse did not oblige the offenders to get married unless the man had expressly promised marriage, but as we saw there was also the question of restoring the maiden’s honour to consider. This was the case in a dispute from 1650, where Erik Geete (1587 – 1651), the former vice president of the Turku Court of Appeal, accused Mattias Hushammar of violation of a virgin (i.e., defloration, Sw. mökränkning). Hushammar had promised to marry Geete’s daughter Märta (b. 1631), but got cold feet and did not fulfil his promise. The Court of Appeal stated that if Hushammar failed to marry Märta Geete he had to pay a substantial fine to her, and also give her a farm (as substitute for the morning gift she would never receive) and eight barrels of grain. Hushammar had to arrange all the payments within a year. If he failed do so, he was to be imprisoned and forced to confess his sins in public.509 On the whole, few members of the nobility were involved in sexual crimes in the Svea Court of Appeal. During the period investigated, only one case where a nobleman was accused of rape could be found.510 Another legal institution with a connection to both property law, marriage law and inheritance law was the morning gift. In contrast to what the name may have indicated, the morning gift was not voluntary but set by law. In the seventeenth century, the husband gave his wife the morning gift on the morning after the wedding. Since wives did not inherit from their husbands in the early modern period, the purpose of the morning gift was to secure the wife’s pension and livelihood as a widow. The law regulated the size of the morning gift, and the gift itself could consist of chattels as well as real estate. The principle of suum cuique tribuere meant that the maximum size of the morning gift was different for the various Estates ever since the Middle Ages. A nobleman was allowed to give more than a peasant. Out of consideration for the husband’s family and relatives, the medieval laws specified a maximum for the amount that could 509 Judgement on 5 December 1650 (RA, SHA, B II a:22). 510 Judgement on 18 February 1670 (RA, SHA, B II a:42). The defendant was acquitted of the accusation of rape, but was found guilty of adultery. Morning Gifts
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjYyNDk=