the svea court of appeal in the early modern period 184 be given as a morning gift. Otherwise, there was a risk that the husband might give away too much of the family’s landed property.511 In spite of the legal regulation, the nobility tried to bypass the maximum by making so-called supplements to the morning gift. This was one of many ways that the noblemen tried to (mis)use the law as legal strategies to protect and distribute their private property. In a royal statute in 1644, the nobility’s way of life was criticized in several respects, including an attempt to regulate the nobility’s misuse of the morning gift. In the view of the Crown, the way that the noblemen used the morning gift supplement in order to give more land and property than the law allowed was contrary to both law and custom. The statute reduced the ways that the morning gifts could be used and supplemented.512 The system which allowed supplementing the morning gift was eventually prohibited in 1668.513 In the records of the Svea Court of Appeal, disputes about morning gifts are evenly spread throughout the second half of the seventeenth century. Most of the cases dealt with questions about the legal status of the morning gift: should it be regarded as the husband’s property or the property of the wife, and when did the morning gift change its legal status? And was a supplement to the morning gift to be regarded as legally valid or not?514 Inheritance regulation in the early modern period had both geographical and gender distinctions. According to the medieval Swedish laws, sons inherited twice as much as daughters in the country, but in the town the children had equal shares of the parental estate. This distinction was explained by the importance of landed property, such assets being of greater importance in the countryside than in the towns.515 The nobility wished 511 Korpiola, Mia 2004 pp. 47-51; Trolle Önnerfors, Elsa 2014 pp. 317-319. For further reading on morning gifts in seventeenth-century Sweden, see Petersson, Hans 1973. 512 Stadga och påbud öfwer åthskillige oordningars afskaffande, inrutade uti Adelige samqwämer, Morgongåfwor, och Klädedrächter, paragraph 7, 17 December 1644, printed inKongl. stadgar, ed. Schmedeman , pp. 243-244. 513 Kongl. stadgar, ed. Schmedeman, pp. 546 and 553. 514 During the period investigated, the Svea Court of Appeal handed down judgements in cases about morning gifts on 15 December 1660, 15 December 1670 and 8 March and 28 June 1690 (RA, SHA, B II a:32, 42 and 61). 515 Ågren, Maria 2000 p. 216. Inheritance and Wills
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