The dowager-countess, Martha Sture, resided at the castle of Hœrningsholm, enlarged to a four-story structure and fortified with four corner towers by her consort. She was a sister of Queen Margaret, the second queen of Gustavus I., and was married to the renounced lover of that sister, Count Svante Sture. The countess was called “King Martha,” partly because of her stern power and great authority, partly because it was known to have been her ambition to see her husband’s family grace the throne of a country which their forefathers had ruled as uncrowned kings. She had lived to see her husband and two sons killed by the insane Eric XIV., but she had yet two sons who would carry high the glorious name, on which there was not a stain of any kind. There were five daughters, Sigrid and Anne, married to members of the influential Bielke family, and Magdalen, Margaret and Christine, as yet unmarried. There was another young lady at Hœrningsholm, besides the daughters, the little Princess Sigrid Vasa, the daughter of King Eric XIV. and Carin Monsdotter, who had received a home with the stern “King Martha” while her mother was following the tracks of the deposed monarch from prison to prison.
Between Magdalen Sture and Lord Eric Stenbock a passionate love sprang up. Lord Eric was a very fine young man, of an influential family and the brother of the queen-dowager, Catherine, third consort of Gustavus I. But, unfortunately, he was the nephew of Countess Martha, and, as a cousin of Magdalen, considered to be too closely related to her to make a marriage possible. Countess Martha was unwilling to listen to any appeals, and she was strengthened in her resolution by the old Archbishop Laurentius Petri, who still held the same opinions as when he, once upon a time, refused to grant his consent to a marriage between King Gustavus I. and young Lord Eric’s sister, because she was a niece of Queen Margaret. The years passed by, but no change came in the stubborn resistance of “King Martha.” Christmas eve of 1573, Lord Eric visited Hœrningsholm to remain until New Year. He brought with him costly presents which he offered as New Year’s gifts to Countess Martha, her daughters, chaplain and servants. He left to return on Palm Sunday with his sister Cecilia, the wife of Count Gustavus Tre Rosor. One morning a few days later, Lady Sigrid Bielke, who was visiting her mother, entered the so-called rotunda, a large room in one of the towers which Countess Martha and her daughters used as sleeping apartment. She was surprised to find her sister Magdalen kneeling and in tears. Lady Sigrid greeted her: “God bless you, you have a good deed in mind!” “God grant it were good,” answered Magdalen, rising. “Certainly it is good to make one’s prayers amid tears,” Sigrid said. Magdalen caught the hands of her sister and said: “My darling sister, if all the rest forsake me, you will not turn away your faithful heart from me.” Sigrid found the words and emotion of her sister strange, but did not suspect anything. “Why do you use such words to me?” she answered. “I do not believe that you are going to make an evil-doer out of yourself; there are none in the Sture family who have carried themselves in a way to make us turn our hearts away from them.” Tears came again to the eyes of Magdalen, but Sigrid was called into an interior room by her mother. Magdalen went to play with one of her little nieces, when Lord Eric entered. “Dear lady,” he said, “would you like to see the horse that I have given you? It is now waiting in the court.” Magdalen rose and left, escorted by her cousin. They met two of the women of the household, whom Eric commanded to follow them. A horse and sleigh stood in the vaulted entrance. Magdalen was placed between the two servants, while Eric took his position back of them on the runners, holding the reins. In the castle court they met the chaplain and several of the servants, who thought it a pleasure ride and let them pass. When they rode down on the frozen lake, the two servants in the sleigh grasped the importance of the situation for the first time, and commenced praying Lady Magdalen to return. Lord Eric silenced them by displaying his short musket. A few moments later they were surrounded by a force of one hundred men on horseback, who formed an escort. They were a loan to Lord Eric by Duke Charles.
The excitement at Hœrningsholm was great when the elopement was discovered. Margaret Sture happened to look through the window at the moment when the sleigh reached the lake. At her outcry Countess Martha and Sigrid joined her. The old countess fainted on the stairs when making for the court, and Sigrid was ordered to follow up the eloping couple. Countess Cecilia found her aunt on the stairs and hastened to assure her of the mortification that she felt at the daring and unsuspected deed of her brother, also expressing some surprise at the bad manner in which it was accepted. But then the old countess became wroth, exclaiming: “Go to the devil, and may God punish both you and your brother! And if you have any part in his scheme of robbing me of my dear child, betake yourself after him, so that no shame or dishonor may happen.” Countess Cecilia hastened to her sleigh and reached Sværdsbro, where her brother was stopping, ahead of Sigrid.
When Lady Sigrid arrived at Sværdsbro, she was admitted through the lines of soldiers only after some difficulty, finding tailors and seamsters busy cutting and sewing precious stuffs for clothing for Lady Magdalen and her servants, “for she left with uncovered head such as she went and stood in her mother’s house.” Sigrid tried to persuade her sister to return to her mother, who in her great sorrow was willing to forgive all if she only came back. Magdalen sat silent for a long time. Finally she said: “If you can vouchsafe me, that the lady, my mother, will grant that we shall belong to each other, since I have so dearly pledged myself to him, I shall return.” This Sigrid could not do, and Magdalen added, weeping sorely: “The last complication is then as bad as the first.” Lord Eric entered with his sister Cecilia. When Sigrid asked where he intended to bring Magdalen, he answered: “To Visingsœ, to the Countess Beatrix, my sister, where she shall remain until we obtain the consent to marry of the lady, her mother.” It was arranged that Cecilia should accompany Magdalen, and Sigrid try her best to win her mother’s consent. Magdalen sent home to her mother a piece of horn of the fabulous unicorn; “the only thing I have carried with me from my father’s house,” she added. This horn, which really was taken from the incisor of the narwhal, was in those days generally thought to be authentic and of miraculous power.
Countess Martha was, in her grief and dismay, taken ill. She soon gathered strength enough to write to King John, her nephew, pleading her cause. King John at once took action in the matter, calling Lord Eric to account, and issuing a command to all ministers of the kingdom, prohibiting them to unite in marriage the two cousins. Eric Stenbock was on his way to Stockholm when he received the order of the king. Upon his arrival at the capital, he was imprisoned and deprived of all his offices. But Lord Eric had powerful friends in Duke Charles and the Stenbock family. As the king himself did not wish to be without his service, he was soon set free and reinstalled in his offices. He succeeded in obtaining the goodwill of the whole Sture family, but “King Martha” remained irreconcilable. More than a year had passed since the elopement. One day Lord Eric suddenly appeared at the castle of Visingsœ. He made, with Magdalen and his aunt, Lady Anne, a journey into the province of Halland, where a Danish minister joined the two cousins in marriage. The wedding was celebrated at the home of Eric’s father, Baron Gustavus Stenbock of Torpa. But Lady Magdalen was not happy. She grieved because of her mother’s hostile attitude, and continued to dress in black colors, as she had done ever since she left her mother. Duke Charles, the queen-dowager, the royal princesses, and all the members of the state council, yea, the king himself, wrote letters to the indignant countess, whose ire was rather increased than diminished thereby.
Finally, after another year and a half, “King Martha” gave in to the tears and prayers of her daughters. Lady Magdalen returned to Hœrningsholm after three years of absence. She was not allowed to come up to the castle at first, but had to dwell in the building occupied by the baths. As the winter was approaching, and Lady Magdalen was soon to give life to a child, her brothers and sisters prevailed upon their mother to receive Lord Eric and his wife at the castle. The event was arranged in a conspicuous way. Countess Martha was seated in the place of honor in the great hall of the castle, surrounded by her daughters and sons-in-law, when Lord Eric entered with Magdalen. When the mother saw her pale and thin features, she was moved to tears, exclaiming: “Thou unhappy child!” Magdalen approached her on her knees, and the countess embraced her, stammering her forgiveness between tears. Magdalen remained at the castle, where she bore her husband a son, who was called Gustavus. Lady Martha invited the king, the duke and the princesses to be present at the baptism, at the same time granting Magdalen an equal share of inheritance with the other daughters. Lady Magdalen continued to dress in mourning as a self-imposed punishment for her disobedience to her mother. One day she was preparing to leave for a wedding, when her mother asked her the reason why she dressed thus. When “King Martha” learned why, she took a costly cross of diamonds intended for the bride and placed it on her daughter’s breast, telling her to put aside her black dresses. From that day joy and happiness seemed to return to Lady Magdalen, who commenced to put on lighter colors and to wear diamonds. Of Magdalen Stenbock—a child of these Stures, who so often had protected and preserved Sweden—Count Magnus Stenbock was a lineal descendant, he who during the reign of Charles XII. saved his country in the hour of its greatest peril and distress.
Sigismund, the son and successor of John III., was not apt to become more popular than his father. Born at the pleasant prison of Gripsholm, which yet was a prison, he was of a cold, unsympathetic disposition, a king of few words and hard to approach. At John’s death, Sigismund was twenty-six years of age and had reigned several years in Poland. Charles stepped to the front as the head of the government until Sigismund’s arrival.
The Protestants, fearing the worst from their new Catholic king, decided to take firm and early action. The duke ordered a Riksdag at Upsala in February, 1593, the deliberations being held by the clergy alone. The Liturgia was abolished with the majority of Catholic church ceremonies, Luther’s catechisms, L. Petri’s ritual, church visitations, etc., being reintroduced. Abraham Angermannus was elected archbishop, and decision made for the re-establishment of the Upsala University. The duke had not been present at the deliberations, and appeared displeased because not consulted. He, who was secretly accused of being a Calvinist, pointed out more Catholic ceremonies to be abolished, whereupon the decisions won the sanction of the duke, the state council and the bishops. By this act the Lutheran Church was re-established, the Augsburgian Confession being laid down by the meeting as its corner-stone. When this action had been taken, the chairman, Nicolaus Bothniensis, a young Upsala professor, exclaimed: “Now Sweden has become one man, and we all have one God.”
In August, 1593, King Sigismund arrived in Sweden, surrounded by Jesuits and Polish nobles, and with a sum of money wherewith to pay the expenses of a Catholic revival. To the demands made to sign the decisions of the Upsala meeting he gave a flat refusal. The conditions in Stockholm grew perilous, Jesuits and Lutheran ministers preaching denouncements upon each other in the churches and conflicts between the Polish troops and the populace taking place. In January, 1594, Sigismund, accompanied by the state councillors and the members of the Riksdag, came to Upsala for his father’s funeral and his own coronation. Duke Charles arrived with 3,000 men, whom he quartered in the neighborhood. He dismissed the papal legate, Malaspina, and his Jesuits from the funeral procession, before it entered the cathedral, and told the king, in behalf of all, that no coronation would take place before the confessional liberty of the Lutheran Church was confirmed. The Estates declared themselves ready to sacrifice their lives for the pure faith. The king still refused his sanction, whereupon the duke replied that the Riksdag would be dismissed within twenty-four hours if he insisted. Sigismund gave in, upon the advice of the Jesuits, who told him that pledges to Lutherans were not binding. Sigismund was crowned and returned suddenly to Poland.
The king had left matters in an unsatisfactory condition, placing six governors with great authority in various districts, but leaving the government to be conducted by the duke and the state council in common. This little pleased the energetic Charles, who soon called a Riksdag at Sœderkœping, in 1595, forcing the councillors to sanction this act and follow him to the Riksdag. In Finland, the governor, Clas Fleming, had tried to have a peace agreement with Russia postponed as an excuse to keep the navy and army at his disposal in the interest of the king. At Sœderkœping, Charles had himself chosen regent, the last vestige of Catholicism abolished, and the punishment of Fleming decided on. In consequence, the Catholics were dealt with in a merciless way through the instigation of the archbishop, whom the duke called an executioner on account of his recklessness. The convent of Vadstena was closed, its eleven nuns scattered and its property confiscated. In Finland a bloody revolt against the oppression of Fleming cost 11,000 people their lives. It was called the “War of Clubs,” on account of the rude weapons used by the peasants. The state council refused to consent to Fleming’s punishment, whereupon the duke suddenly resigned. But he convoked a Riksdag at Arboga, in 1597, at which the councillors and nobles were absent, also the burghers. The peasants and clergy were abundantly represented and cheered the propositions of the duke to the echo. It was then decided that the king should be asked to return, until which event the duke was to remain regent, and that peace should be restored in Finland. Fleming died in the meantime and was succeeded by Arvid Stolarm, who also was one of the duke’s enemies. The Riksdag at Arboga was the first in the deliberations of which the state council had not taken a part. The councillors were disposed to punish the duke; but, not agreeing as to means, they left the country to seek the king.