slandering the king and his councillors – per nilsén 211 a King’s jury not to death but to corporal punishment and forced labour.585 The later mitigations seem to have followed the pattern established for gross speaking against the King; in other words, corporal punishment and deportation, sometimes (but not always) combined with penal servitude. In 1689, a Jonas DeLeen had called Count Axel Stålarm (1630 – 1702), Councillor of the Realm and president of the Göta Court of Appeal, a thief - an accusation which attacked Stålarm’s honour. The Court of Appeal pointed out that while there was sufficient evidence that DeLeen actually had made the statement in question and therefore had forfeited his life in accordance with the regulation in the Book on the King chapter nine, he had said it in a heated dispute during a law-suit where his counterpart had dropped the councillor’s name first. Since the law of Sweden – according to the court – took a milder view of unpremeditated expressions586, the case was referred to the King, all in the hope of a more lenient judgement if DeLeen addressed the royal councillor with a humble petition. The King found the views of the court “just and fair” and required that DeLeen should petition Stålarm, run the gauntlet seven times and then work in irons for six years in Marstrand.587 That the outcome of a case concerning slander of a Councillor of the Realm was very often put into the hands of the injured party himself is demonstrated by several cases in the material. When the Court of Appeal in 1689 sentenced a person to pay a 40-mark fine or, alternatively, serve one month’s prison on bread and water for insulting Baron Christopher Gyllenstierna (1639 – 1705), Councillor of the Realm and governor of Stockholm, the King, in reaction to a petition for mercy from the person convicted, answered that he could do nothing if the convicted individual did not petition the injured councillor in question.588 According to the medieval legislation, the King and his councillors constituted a circle enjoying a special defence against slander. But in seventeenth-century Sweden, more manifestations of state authority called for 585 RA, RA:s ämnessamlingar, Juridica I: Becchius-Palmcrantz’ samlingar, Vol. 4, Cap. 2, causa 15. 586 Cf. King Christopher’s Law for the Countryside, Chapter on Procedure (tingmålabalken), chapter 43, printed inSweriges Rikes Lands-Lag, ed. Abrahamsson, p. 687. 587 RA, RA:s ämnessamlingar, Juridica I: Becchius-Palmcrantz’ samlingar, Vol. 4, Cap. 2, causa 15. 588 RA, RA:s ämnessamlingar, Juridica I: Becchius-Palmcrantz’ samlingar, Vol. 4, Cap. 2, causa 18.
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