the svea court of appeal in the early modern period 194 During the seventeenth century, the Swedish nobility comprised less than one percent of the population, but at the same time, the noble Estate had the sole right to all higher positions in the military as well the civil administration. Two-thirds of all land was also under the control of the nobility.549 This led to a situation in which the disputes between nobles differed from disputes between other groups of the population. The nobility had special requests for legal solutions that suited the Estate so that its members could enhance and develop their wealth more easily. Various legal agreements such as wills, morning gifts and contracts were formulated and contributed to the ability of the nobility to secure its wealth. From the middle of the seventeenth century, the discussions of these legal strategies seem to have been appropriated by the new generation of trained lawyers in the higher courts. Law-making by the appeal courts was also enabled by the extensive jurisprudence which permitted the use of other sources of law than statutory law. This was especially evident in the typical noble disputes which were settled by the Svea Court of Appeal in the second half of the seventeenth century, namely, those about economic matters, landed property, land ownership and family law matters. These were all legal fields that the nobility was especially eager to influence since they all in some way or another regulated property law and property rights. Accumulating wealth and keeping the landed property within the family was of great concern for nobles in the early modern period. Another typical feature for the seventeenth-century appeal court cases was the disputes concerning aperson’s honour. Maintaining one’s honour was equivalent to maintaining one’s status in society, and this was especially important for the nobility. A violation of a nobleman’s honour implied a fundamental questioning of his whole noble identity. A nobleman’s honour was at stake in disputes about defamation of course, but also in cases about marital law, such as misalliances and broken promises of marriage. Since the law regarded honour as a concrete thing, a nobleman could also lose his honour and became infamous if he committed a disgraceful and ignoble crime such as theft. 549 Englund, Peter 1994 p. 11. Conclusion
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