from well-travelled – marianne vasara-aaltonen 327 chief of police (polismästare) in Stockholm in 1792 before being appointed assessor at the Svea court the next year, two years before his premature death at the tender age of 28.959 The second half of the eighteenth century shows a court which employed men who had devoted their careers to legal affairs instead of general administrative work. Whereas in the first half of the century we saw the Great Northern War affect the careers of the judges, this is no longer true for the later wars of the eighteenth century. Nor are the assessors involved in diplomacy any longer. The division between civil, military and judicial administration seems relatively well established at this time compared to the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Another trait to be noted is that even those with high social standing now needed to work their way up through the system instead of simply being placed in the highest positions of the court. When looking at the educational and career backgrounds of the judges, one has to consider the trainee (auskultant) system, which was developed in the 1620s. At the time, there was a lack of competent officials, and university education was seen as too theoretical and oriented towards training clergymen. Through training at the Svea Court of Appeal (and later other courts of appeal and offices of the central administration) aspiring officials could learn judicial and administrative practice. The trainee system was important for the social rise of young commoners and, compared to young men trained only at university, those who had practical training had a greater chance of getting a position within the civil administration.960 When looking at the judges in this study, a noticeable change took place between the sample years 1694 and 1714. Hardly any of the seventeenthcentury judges had been trained at acourt, even though the trainee system had already been in place since the1620s. In1634, only one judge, Schering Rosenhane, had trained at the Svea court, in 1654 and 1674 three judges, and in 1694 two. In 1714, however, there are 12 out of 20, a good half of the whole corps of judges, who had been trainees – eleven at the Svea and one at the Dorpat court of appeal. This trend was to continue throughout 959 Anjou, A. 1899 pp. 16-17, 57 and passim. 960 Gaunt, David 1975 pp. 31-42, 159-161; Petrén, Sture 1964 p. 92. The Trainee Corps: Between Education and Career
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