Gustavus had, since the end of the work of liberation, crushed the power of the Church, punished the revolting peasants, kept the aristocracy within bounds, and put an end to the supremacy of Lubeck. But he went still further, trying to deprive the Church of its last vestige of authority, to introduce a minute administration of the provinces and to enforce the absolute power of the crown. To these plans he was led by two foreign advisers, Georg Norman and Konrad Pentinger. But it must be said to the credit of the king that their influence vanished when he saw that their “reforms” were not acceptable to the people. From this period of his reign, one noteworthy and wholesome measure remains, the reintroduction of the former hereditary order of succession to the throne. It was formulated and accepted at the Riksdag of Œrebro (Jan. 4, 1540), memorable also through death sentences pronounced upon two of the apostles of the Swedish Reformation. The king had long regarded his chancellor and the two brothers, Olaus and Laurentius Petri, the latter archbishop of Upsala, with suspicion. The climax was reached when a conspiracy by German burghers of Stockholm against the king’s life was discovered, and it was proved that Olaus Petri and Laurentius Andreæ were conscious of its purport, without making it known to the king. They were condemned to death, Archbishop Laurentius being forced to take a seat as one of the judges, but pardoned at the request of the burghers of Stockholm, on the grounds that the ministers had received their knowledge on the pledge of secrecy through confession. Laurentius Andreæ lost his position as the king’s chancellor. In the following year each church in the country was presented with a copy of the complete translation of the Bible, the work of the two reformers.
The greatest, most serious and most expensive of peasants’ revolts was that called the Dacke Feud (1542 and 1543), after its leader Nils Dacke, a peasant born in Bleking, emigrated to Smaland, which became the scene of his revolt. The peasants were resolved to make war on the royal bailiffs, the nobles and the new religion, and found in Dacke an excellent leader, ferocious, daring and of some military ability. The forces sent by the king to meet him were repeatedly routed. The king was seriously alarmed, particularly since the revolt attracted attention abroad and was encouraged by Emperor Charles V., in the interests of the deposed Christian, his brother-in-law, and by several German princes. The emperor wrote to Nils Dacke a letter, preserved to this day, although it never reached its destination, in which Charles, with pride, recalls his Gothic (that is, according to the views of his time, Swedish) origin: “Sumus et nos de gente Gothorum.” Nils Dacke’s plan was to place Svante Sture on the throne. He wrote him a letter to this effect, which the noble Sture handed over to the king, together with the messenger who brought it. After much effort the king gathered an army of considerable strength, which was ordered against Dacke, who was defeated at Lake Asund. He fled and was pursued by the troops into Bleking, where he was captured and shot. This revolt cost Gustavus dearly, but was a good lesson in regard to the more immature of his reforms, against which it, to a great extent, was directed.