the state resolved to use their influence in preventing the son of the former king from being chosen as his successor. But the nobles, together with the burgher-classes who had begun to make their power felt, refused to set aside the old dynasty, and in spite of the opposition of the prelates chose the young prince Erik, son of Christopher I., to be king.

Erik, surnamed "Glipping," or the Blinker, was only ten years of age when he was crowned King of Denmark, and his mother, the widowed Queen Margaret of Pomerania, therefore ruled in his name during his childhood. Her first act was to release the primate Erlandsen, whose captivity had brought such troubles on the land during the former reign, but he refused to be reconciled with the royal family, and availed himself of his newly-gained freedom to hasten to Rome in order that he might appeal to the papal chair. In the meanwhile Denmark continued to be disturbed by a civil war, excited by the late King Abel's grandson, Duke Erik of Slesvig, who on one occasion defeated the royal troops and seized on the persons of the Queen Regent and the young king, the latter of whom was kept a prisoner in Nordborg Castle by his daring vassal for three years, and only released on his pledging himself to acknowledge the hereditary rights of the descendants of King Abel to the duchy of Slesvig. The differences between the king and primate were not finally settled till 1273, when Erik Glipping was forced to pay a fine of 15,000 marks silver to the archbishop to atone for the wrongs inflicted upon him by King Christopher, on which the interdict was removed from the kingdom, after having been enforced in name if not in fact for fourteen years.

The king had tried to evade the fulfilment of his promises to Duke Erik as soon as he found himself safe out of his power, but the question of the terms on which the duchy of Slesvig was held was at last laid before the imperial court at Ratisbon, and that too was decided against Denmark. In consequence of the decision of the Emperor and the commands of the Pope, young Valdemar, the heir of Duke Erik, was in 1283 formally put in possession of the lands claimed for him, but which the Danes regarded as part of the crown domains, not to be separated from the monarchy

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except as feudal fiefs to be held by a vassal of the Danish King.

After these questions were settled and all excuse for war was at an end, Erik might have given his kingdom some rest, and tried to repair the evils of past years. But he was a weak, vicious man, so fond of pleasure and of indulging his own evil passions, that he wasted on himself the money that ought to have been spent for the good of the country, and raised up a band of formidable enemies. At length, after having done many private wrongs to men who had served him well in the times of his troubles, a plot was formed against him by some of the highest nobles of the land. After several attempts against his life which failed, the conspirators carried out their purpose of slaying him, in the autumn of 1286, when fifty-six of their number, disguising themselves as monks, fell upon him in his sleep and slew him in a barn where he was resting after a long day's hunt. The king who had always feared violence had caused the doors to be barred and guarded before he lay down, but by the treachery of his page, or chamberlain, Rane Jonsen, the conspirators were admitted, when, rushing upon their unarmed king they all struck at him with their swords, and after completing their work by leaving fifty-six wounds on the body, hurried away, and dispersed before Erik's friends could detect or secure them.

PART II.

DECLINE OF THE ROYAL POWER.

Erik Menved, 1286-1319.-The early part of the reign of the young king Erik Menved, "With a But," 1 must have seemed to those who could remember his father Erik Glipping's childhood as a coming back of that older time of trouble. There was again a boy-king under the care of a foreign mother and Queen Regent, who could not speak the language of the

1 He was so called, it is said, because he never made up his mind to anything.

country which she was called upon to rule. There was again the same want of loyalty among the nobles and richer clergy, who thought the times favourable to their own increase of power; and there were rebels swarming over the country and keeping up ill-will against the royal family. A few brave knights and nobles, headed by the learned chancellor Martinus de Dacia, whose fame had spread to every part of Europe, proved themselves true friends to their young king and his mother, and it was chiefly by their help that Queen Agnes of Brandenburg was able to keep up any show of power. She was bent upon punishing the murderers of her husband, but it was not very easy to lay hands upon them, for the king of Sweden, although he had married a sister of Erik Glipping, gave them his support and helped them to get ships and men, so that they were able to do great damage to the lands near the Danish shores. Each of the leaders of the rebel murderers of the late king seized upon some strong point, and then kept a part of the coast for his own special pillage-ground, and many years passed before the kingdom was relieved from the attacks of these traitors. But when their fiercest chiefs, the Marshal Stig and Rane Jonsen, were no longer at the head of this pirate-like war-the former having died in 1293, and the latter having been taken and broken on the wheel in the same year-this frightful scourge ceased.

The young king and his brother, Prince Christopher, were in the meanwhile being very carefully trained in all knightly exercises under the Marshal, or Drost Peder, and they became brave and accomplished princes; but unfortunately Erik when he was a boy had learnt to take such great delight in trying his skill in all kinds of mimic warfare, that when he grew to be a man he was not happy till he could make war in earnest. So in spite of all the distress and want in Denmark he entered upon costly and useless campaigns against the christian, as well as the pagan lands of eastern Germany. In later years when his poor subjects were no longer able to supply money for these foolish schemes, or for the splendid tournaments which he held in honour of his empty success in Pomerania and Esthonia, he pawned or sold nearly all the crown-lands, till at last there was scarcely any dominion remaining to the

monarchy. Amongst other districts Erik had sold to the German Hanse traders a long line of coast land with all the herring fisheries in the Danish seas.

By these and other acts of folly and wastefulness, this king of Denmark had sunk so low that at one time the Hansers had power enough to forbid the servants of his household from fishing more than one day in the year off the Danish coast of Skaania; while they kept armed boats to enforce their orders that the Danes should leave the fishing ground as soon as they had salted one day's haul of herrings for the royal kitchen. Notwithstanding these and many other proofs of the abject condition of the sovereignty at this period, Erik plunged his kingdom into fresh troubles by his quarrels with Johan Grand, the successor of the primate Jakob Erlandsen. The young king and his mother, who had good reason for believing that Grand, together with the Duke Valdemar of Slesvig, had given their support to the murderers of Erik Glipping, even if they had not been present when he was slain, felt that the raising of this man to the primacy was an insult to themselves, more especially as they had informed the Danish clergy generally of the grounds of their objections to his being chosen to be Archbishop of Lund. Grand was nevertheless elected, and for a time he and the king avoided giving open proof of their mutual ill-will, but soon the primate's arrogance and the young king's hastiness of temper led to a rupture between them. Then Erik, losing patience, allowed his brother Prince Christopher to arrest the primate as a traitor, and to shut him up in the castle of Söborg, where he was kept for eight months in close confinement. The harshness and even inhumanity with which young Prince Christopher had carried out his brother's orders made this outrage the more unpardonable in the eyes of the pope, Boniface VIII., who, when he heard of the indignity that had been inflicted on the primate, excommunicated the royal brothers and laid the Danish kingdom under an interdict. In the meanwhile Grand, whose health never recovered from the bodily injuries which he had received in having been carried in a storm of rain and hail in an open boat by night to his prison, escaped from Söborg by the help of some of his monks and made his way to Rome, where he

did his utmost to keep the Danish king out of favour with the Church and the pope.

Denmark under an Interdict.—As in former times the interdict could only be imperfectly enforced in Denmark where the people took the part of their king, and braved the authority of the Court of Rome. They even refused to suffer the penances enjoined upon them, and when the clergy tried to close the doors of the churches, the peasants rushed to arms and forced their priests at the peril of their lives to perform all the services of religion for them. But although this resolute conduct on the part of the Danes took away some of the evil effects of the interdict, it did not save the king from the consequences of his unjust act towards the archbishop. At the end of five years Erik was forced to write a humble letter to the pope praying for pardon, and to pay a fine of 10,000 silver marks to the papal treasury; and thus the Church gained another victory at the expense of the nation.

King Erik was as unhappy in his family concerns as he was in public affairs, for he had the misfortune to lose all his fourteen children in their infancy. His Queen Ingeborg of Sweden was so deeply distressed at the death of her youngest son, who was killed by falling off her lap while she was driving with him in an open carriage, that she went into a convent in 1317, and died there two years later and only a few months before the king. When Erik found himself left childless he felt great concern in regard to the choice of his successor, and knowing the ambitious and deceitful character of his only brother Duke Christopher, he called together the nobles and prelates of Denmark, and telling them that he feared his own life was near its close, he begged them to take counsel together, and settle upon some prince for their future king who would prove a just ruler. At that time, however, there was no other heir of the royal house whom the people cared to choose, and therefore on the death of Erik Menved in 1319, the Council of State proclaimed Duke Christopher king; but as they had no better opinion of him than his brother had expressed, and saw a good chance of increasing their own power, they drew up a very hard agreement which they made him sign before they would permit him to be crowned.