ed the crown rents to pay for the expedition, and had asked their
bishop to make a loan from his rents for the same purpose, to which
Brask had replied that he would lend the money, but would raise it by
imposing a tax upon his churches. This Gustavus declared was not his
desire; all he wished was a free-will offering. From this letter it is
clear the monarch sought to cast upon Brask the odium which this new
levy had brought upon himself, and it is equally clear that in doing so
he exceeded the bounds of truth. In calling upon Brask for a
contribution he had in no way specified the mode in which the money
should be raised; and Brask, so far from refusing to apply his own rents
for the purpose, had distinctly stated, in every letter which he wrote,
that he would do his utmost to furnish the desired sum.[92]

A further cause of disaffection lay in the general impression that the
monarch was tampering with the coinage. This impression had its origin
naturally enough in the fact that the general diet held in January had
repudiated the Swedish "klippings." The reason given for that act was
that, the Danish "klippings" having been repudiated in Denmark the year
before, merchants were bringing barrelfuls of them into Sweden; so that
the Swedish "klipping," being scarcely discernible from its Danish
namesake, fell constantly in value, its fluctuations depending upon the
importations of the repudiated coin from Denmark. In the Act repudiating
the Swedish "klipping" that coin was declared to be worth four "hvitar;"
that is, about one half of the amount which the crown had received in
issuing it. The outcry which this Act called forth was universal, and
the king was forced to issue a letter to the people in which he
endeavored to allay their wrath. "We have never," he declared with
brazen falsehood,--"we have never altered the coinage either by raising
or by lowering its value, but have permitted each coin to pass for the
same value as it had before;" and he added with bland simplicity, "the
coin has fallen by its own weight." The striking feature in this matter
is the audacity of the king. He trusted that the people generally would
not have access to the documents which we now possess to contradict him.
After issuing this mendacious letter, he approached the Stockholm
merchants, and, by certain persuasive arguments whose nature it is easy
to conceive, prevailed upon them to deposit all their "klippings" in the
treasury, to be wei