SERVANTS AS CREDITORS: NAVIGATING THE MORAL ECONOMY OF AN EARLY MODERN ARISTOCRATIC HOUSEHOLD

ABSTRACT

In this article, we argue that servants working for Count Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie (1622–1686) were part of an intricate system of economic and social dependencies. Focusing on the indebtedness of the aristocracy to its workers, we examine how deferred payment of wages opened up for negotiations between servant and master, and suggest that servants became de facto creditors to their master. In a moral economy built on trust, credit and the idea of aristocratic paternalism, servants negotiated arrangements for the future, keeping close track of what was owed them or their spouses in deferred payments. From an investigation of over six hundred petitions, written from people in the lower strata of servants, including, among others, milkmaids, gardeners, stable boys, bird-catchers, lackeys, jesters, and wet nurses, and from which we have chosen to exclude high ranking employees such as bailiffs or chaplains, we showcase the strategies available to people on the margins of society. The arrangements suggested by petitioners show a surprising amount of detailed consideration, at the same time appealing to Christian compassion, paternalistic concerns and a sense of reciprocity between master and servant, thereby both confirming and using hierarchies and asymmetrical power relations to secure advantages.

KEYWORDS:

• Servants
• moral economy
• credit

Introduction

According to his widow, when master mason Swen Jonsson Murmestare was employed by Count Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie in September 1666, he was promised a yearly salary of 40 riksdaler and a cadastral unit.¹ Although he had signed the contractual letter in the capital of Stockholm, it seems as if the count had not worked out all the details. Swen had first been promised a place in the village of Hushagen but was then informed that he would instead get the cadastral unit of Lycke in a nearby parish. This, however, came to nothing. Having already started his job, he received an increase in his yearly salary amounting to 10 riksdaler to compensate for the loss of revenue from the interest on the cadastral unit that he did not receive. Two years later Swen died in his service, leaving a widow and many children with neither a home nor means to support themselves.²

Karin Swensdotter, Swen’s widow, sent two supplications to the De la Gardie office, in which she explained the case in great detail. Although humble, her argumentation was elaborate and her requests specific. Allegedly, on De la Gardie’s instructions, her husband had also employed an apprentice whose salary he had paid, receiving only a barrel of salt as compensation, much to his dismay. He had, the widow writes, hoped for a reimbursement of his expenditures. Following the genre of petitioning described in contemporary epistolary manuals, Karin had thus stated the circumstances of her case, moving on to the main request. Facing high debts and great poverty with no house or income, she explained that she saw no other way out of her predicament than invoking the mercy of the count, praying that he would consider her cause deserving. Having conveyed her prayers in this moment of utter despair, she moved on to a more concrete set of arrangements that would help her situation. In a straightforward manner, she concluded that receiving the deferred wages that De la Gardie still owed her husband, the interest from the cadastral unit for his last year of service, and, finally, some reimbursement for the apprentice would suffice in helping her and her fatherless children survive. In the last section of this letter, as in the very first, the mandatory praise ensured that God would offer eternal rewards to the count for his great mercy and clemency towards the vulnerable and poor, thereby appealing to the benevolence of the reader.³

The supplication of Karin Swensdotter is a typical example, illustrating how De la Gardie’s servants or their relatives would approach their master and request his help in varying situations, not seldom where the risk of poverty, starvation, and homelessness was described as immediate. The supplications clearly show that servants not only begged for their master’s mercy, but also kept track of what he owed them or their spouses in deferred payments, while also noting other pertinent credit relations, such as the employment of other servants or workers or expenditures for housing, food, clothing, and other goods. This kind of forced credit relationship, through which employees were kept waiting for their payments or were expected to extend credit for the wages of other workers or for purchases made on behalf of their master, was a common feature of the economy in which the servants of the De la Gardie household made their living.

Count Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie (1622–1686) was one of a group of twelve to fifteen aristocrats who constituted the elite segment of the Swedish nobility.⁴ They combined being Councillors of the Realm with holding various other high offices, while simultaneously owning and developing land and estates throughout the country. Together with his peers in the Council, De la Gardie ruled Sweden through a minority government for the young King Charles XI in 1660–1672. De la Gardie had an extraordinary network including members of the royal family, and his sphere incorporated a combination of political, social, cultural, and financial practices. As head of a household, he held power over his employees and as count of Läckö and Pernau, as well as lawspeaker, he had jurisdiction over his domains. In his capacity as chancellor at Uppsala University and as regimental commander, he influenced lives and opportunities. Finally, as a servant of the state – and for a long period its highest servant – he also made decisions concerning state affairs.

In the 17^th century, Swedish nobility actively sought to strengthen its judicial powers over estates and employees. Albeit unsuccessful when trying to establish the so-called gårdsrätt, which was comparable to the court leet in England and the justice seigneuriale in France, many aristocratic households still possessed extensive privileges through their counties or baronies, where they served as courts of first instance. De la Gardie thus exerted influence over penalties for crimes committed in his county, also shouldering a responsibility for incarcerations in the Läckö castle dungeon. This, however, was not the only way to control servants. The royal statutes regulating master and servant relationships emphasized the contractual dimensions, in particular the obligations linked to the one-year contracts that all servants (and masters) must obey. As an employer, De la Gardie had the right to demand that servants stayed on for this period and that employees who defected from work were captured and brought back. For those leaving their position for employment under a different master, the count was responsible for issuing passports, certifying that the servant had legitimately left his or her position. For servants, male and female, the prohibition of vagrancy made such passports an urgent issue, as they could not support themselves through ownership of land.⁵

The lifestyle of Swedish aristocracy was, similar to that of aristocrats elsewhere in Europe at the time, a lavish one requiring large numbers of employees.⁶ At his palace in Stockholm alone, the De la Gardie household employed some 100 people ranging from the head of the household through secretaries, bookkeepers, ladies-in-waiting, tutors, footmen, and house chaplain down to cupbearers, lackeys, maids, and various stable, kitchen, and garden staff. At the very bottom of the hierarchy were the washer women. At estates around Sweden or the Baltic, bailiffs oversaw the day-to-day business, supervising – among others – bookkeepers, fishermen, timbermen, milkmaids, and cattle tenders. Additionally, De la Gardie and his wife launched what would become an extensive programme for building and decorating houses and churches and for laying out new gardens or expanding old ones. To enable this extravagance, they invited experts such as architects, sculptors, stucco workers, painters, and gardeners from all over Europe.⁷

Based on a study of more than six hundred supplications written to Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie by his servants, we argue that working within the De la Gardie sphere – including domestic households, administration, trade, agriculture, forestry, and iron mills – not only constituted temporary wage labour but was perceived as a component of a more intricate system of economic and social interdependencies. In line with the work of Laurence Fontaine, we emphasize the role of credit, poverty, and trust in this particular economy, discussing how these phenomena intersected and created an economic system that servants had to learn to navigate. Contrary to Fontaine and in line with the recent findings of Sebastian Kühn, we focus on the indebtedness of the aristocracy to its workers and examine how this configuration of forced credit created a space for negotiations but also preserved and reinforced the asymmetric power balance between servant and master, increasing dependency and securing future loyalties.⁸ We thus show how deferred payments were an essential part of this moral economy, which laid the foundations of a sometimes lifelong or even transgenerational relationship between master and servants. Our analysis highlights that because of deferred payments, the servants of the De la Gardie sphere were required to negotiate their wage claims and mobilize moral resources to support their case. Wage claims were often extended with additional arguments, thus indicating that the right to be paid for performed services could not be invoked by itself but needed to be strengthened further. Through these deferred payments and the subsequent negotiation of arrangements, we suggest that the servants, either voluntarily or involuntarily, became de facto creditors to their master. The credit relationship with De la Gardie, together with allegiances such as geographic origin and loyalty, built a foundation of trust upon which they could try to negotiate other benefits, including protection against poverty, funds for baptisms, weddings, and funerals, as well as retirement insurance and cadastral units that could serve as sources of income for generations to come.

The moral economy and the ‘webs of credit and compensation’

In her seminal work, Laurence Fontaine insists on viewing economy not as a distinct activity, but rather as embedded, a ‘human activity in which religion, politics and society were intertwined’.⁹ This fundamentally sociological definition of economy opens up for a contextualized approach, drawing attention to the local variations and circumstances influencing economic relations. Fontaine highlights the role of credit, poverty, and trust, while arguing that these perspectives are necessary for our understanding of the ‘very essence’ of the old regime, European economy.¹⁰ Stressing the interrelatedness of these perspectives and the practices surrounding them, Fontaine gives a detailed account of their expressions in various European contexts. She concludes that her study reveals two economic cultures ‘upholding different values’ – the feudal, aristocratic economy and the capitalist, market economy. However, contrary to previous notions, they are not successive but concurrent, coexisting, clashing, and influencing each other, thus challenging the division between an early modern feudal economy and modern capitalist society. With the objective of laying bare ‘the multiple tensions that run through societies’, recognizing the parallel and even contradictory processes that characterize collectives, as well as the demands, aspirations, and possibilities of individuals, Fontaine shows how these opposing economic cultures influenced the everyday experiences and practices of individuals in early modern Europe.¹¹

One of the distinct conditions of the early modern economy was the indebtedness affecting lives and relations across the social spectrum. Servants were indebted to their masters, peasants to landowners, and merchants were paid with promises of future reimbursements. The ‘webs of credit and compensation’ cut through the hierarchical society, making reciprocal bonds the ultimate feature of the ‘moral economy’, where the activity of lending and borrowing was an ordinary, everyday practice.¹² The aristocracy, which staged its social position through a lavish lifestyle, was in some areas more indebted than any other group, not only in terms of monetary value but also with regard to degree of indebtedness. Furthermore, debts were not necessarily settled over a lifetime but passed on through generations.¹³ As recently argued by Sebastian Kühn, masters were also indebted to their servants to a higher degree than previously assumed. Kühn highlights deferred wages and smaller expenses for daily business that were covered by servants, but he also shows that masters borrowed larger sums of money. An important result is the transformation of these debts in the wills of the nobility. To resolve them, Kühn shows, they were not settled as loans but rather turned into gifts to the servants, thus obscuring the original context of the transaction.¹⁴

Cash was a commodity in short supply, and all over Europe, credit was routinely used when money supplies failed to expand at the same speed as demand, as pointed out by Julien-François Gerber.¹⁵ In France and England, it has been estimated that money only comprised one-fifth of the value of exchanges.¹⁶ What existed, according to Craig Muldrew, ‘was a credit economy in which everything was measured by monetary prices, but where money was not the primary means of exchange’.¹⁷ In a study of wages of servants, casual labourers, and workers in seventeenth-century Sweden, Jonas Lindström and Jan Mispelaere point to similar conditions. Partly due to the shortage of cash, nominal wages did not correspond to real sums of money, and the forms of payment consequently varied both between workplaces and between different employees. Wages were constantly negotiated based on the social circumstances of the employee, and, Lindström and Mispeleare argue, they need to be analysed from this perspective.¹⁸ Another aspect to bear in mind is that working for wages did not necessarily provide the necessary funds for living but was rather a supplement in an economy where people were expected to support themselves through other means; for instance, by cultivating garden plots or using common resources. Lindström and Mispeleare thus argue that labouring families ‘formed their households on the basis of interdependencies’.¹⁹ The early modern economy, be it in France, Germany, England, Scotland, or Sweden, revolved around networks, dependencies, and the practice of borrowing and lending. The credit relationships that were formed, Laurence Fontaine argues, consisted of either vertical or horizontal ties. Whereas the horizontal ties linked relatives, neighbours, and people working together, the vertical ties usually ‘covered the elite classes to which the city dweller and peasant alike were bound by ties of work or power’.²⁰ All relationships, however, exhibited the common feature of being debt-ridden. The commonalities set aside, Fontaine points to the variation and geographic and social modalities of these relationships and their role in the overall economy. The social environment, she says, defined the relationship in which people negotiated their debts and credits, but this environment, in turn, was dependent on geography. Whether or not people turned to employers, aristocracy, religious institutions, merchants, local elites, or foreign creditors was determined by where they lived. In some European states, the law demanded that children help their parents when they failed to support themselves. In other states, such aid may have been part of the social contract, although not stipulated in any formal ruling.²¹

An economy relying this heavily on credit relationships also suggests a form of precariousness, which the parties involved were compelled to deal with. As Fontaine has highlighted, creditors must ‘respect the culture surrounding debt, wherein the social relationship was protected’.²² The importance of trust, predictable action, and, ultimately, the mutual understanding of conditions thus becomes evident. The underlying force that would fuel such credit relationships, namely poverty and the threat of impoverishment, must also be recognized. Depending on the context, several groups in society may indeed have been only one step away from a life below subsistence level. Crop failure, illness, or death in the family would rapidly change the economic conditions under which people were living, as would obviously also major events such as wars, plagues, or economic crises. Estimates suggest that the structurally poor (i.e. people who could not support themselves because of their age, illness, or physical disabilities) represent 4–8% of the population in the main cities in Europe in the period between 1400 and 1700. Other groups, ranging from those carrying unstable jobs to minor craftsmen and retailers, would live on the brink of poverty, thus being vulnerable to any changes in the circumstances of their households. In sum, a total of 50–70% of urban households are estimated to have been poverty-stricken.²³ In the face of such conditions, mobilizing social networks and maintaining credit relationships would have been strategies for coping.²⁴

Researchers have stressed the role of moral obligations in financial relationships, pointing to, among other things, the relationship between masters and servants. In her study of early modern France, Sarah Maza has highlighted the fact that although practices varied widely, there was a clear, normative idea regarding the relationship between servant and master. Maza argues that the bonds were reciprocal and that while the master’s duty towards his servants was cast in terms of compassion and responsibility, a servant’s loyalty and obedience were more important than his work. Maza thus speaks of an ‘aristocratic paternalism’, which she sees as fundamental to a wide range of prescriptive literature published during the Ancien Régime.²⁵ Seen from another perspective, the notion of aristocratic paternalism may have contributed to a certain set of behaviours and activities. Fontaine has claimed that throughout the old regime, the aristocracy as a group showed the greatest generosity towards the poor, both in terms of providing credit but also in their levels of toleration with regard to their debtors. ‘Their attitude retained something of the contracts of an earlier age in which the weak would place themselves under the protection of the mighty’, Fontaine concludes.²⁶

Petitioning the master

While supplications to the Swedish crown have only recently started to attract more systematic attention, particularly through the work of Martin Almbjär but also through a digitization project headed by the research programme Gender and Work at Uppsala University, other venues where this medium was heavily employed have remained largely unexplored.²⁷ Internationally, researchers have noted similar gaps in our knowledge of the role of petitioning among less privileged groups in society.²⁸ The role of supplications as an arena of political interaction in early modern Sweden has been highlighted. Nevertheless, as Almbjär recognizes, by the mid-18^th century, mainly the middle and upper segments of the population used it. ‘The egalitarian potential of the supplication channel was seemingly never realized’, Almbjär concludes.²⁹ With this in mind, it is striking that the lower strata of workers employed by the De la Gardie household and sphere to a rather large extent used the possibility of petitioning their master. Studies of petitioning the aristocracy have shown that supplicants were aware of their right to complain about unfair treatment or plea for help in times of need.³⁰ Kerstin Sundberg, who has studied supplications from peasants to their landlords, has pointed out that these sources reflect ‘the way in which the social model functioned’ at a particular estate.³¹

Supplications, or petitioning letters, exist in most Swedish aristocratic archives, but the De la Gardie archives are unusually rich and well-preserved.³² Supplications written to Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie originate from both men and women who were or had been in his service. A smaller number of people in our collection were related to, or the spouse of, someone who was or had been in De la Gardie’s service. The supplications are similar in form to supplications found in the archives of other aristocrats and most likely – but not necessarily always – the petitioner had received help in writing. Nonetheless, the circumstances surrounding the creation of the petitioning letter and how it was delivered are unclear. Together with their professional titles, the petitioners generally presented themselves as servants [tjänare], a general term that may have alluded both to their work position and to their position as De la Gardie’s loyal subject. We must keep in mind that this was a heterogeneous group and that the tasks they performed varied significantly, some being domestic servants working in the house, while others performed their work as day labourers or outdoor workers in gardens, forests, or fields. R. C. Richardson has argued that household servants in early modern England did not constitute a distinct class, but that this was a group of people exhibiting large regional and social variations.³³ The same seems to hold true for the people working in the service of De la Gardie. In this article we have chosen to take into account those petitioners presenting themselves as servants while simultaneously referring to their service in the De la Gardie household, thus accepting a rather wide definition of the term. As there was no formal distinction in relation to legal status between, for instance, cupbearers, silver chamber boys, and lackeys, on the one hand, and bird-catchers, stable boys, and milk maids on the other, we see no reason to exclude such groups of employees from our account. We have, however, chosen to study the lower strata of servants, from milkmaids, gardeners, and stable boys to carpenters and lackeys, cooks, jesters, builders, and soldiers acting as workers. We also exclude high-ranking employees, such as bailiffs, factors, clergymen, tutors, or chaplains from our survey. In total, we have gathered approximately 600 supplications from the abovementioned groups of employees, stretching from approximately 1655 up until the death of Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie in 1686. What we have then is a remarkably large collection of records voicing a social group and segment of society that, apart from when they appeared in court, has largely been invisible in research.³⁴

The supplications show a range of common features in both content and form. As in the introductory case of Karin Swensdotter, most letters follow the established characteristics, well-known from contemporary epistolary manuals as epistolae petitoriae, potentially combined with a section describing the lamentations of the supplicant, thereby enabling us to categorize some of them as epistolae lamentatoriae.³⁵ Although the framing suggests that the petitioning letter should be organized according to a predictable scheme, the possibility of arguing an individual case was apparent. After the necessary salutations and praise, a typical supplication indicated the kind of work relation of the petitioner in relation to De la Gardie (if he or she was a servant, a relative or spouse of a servant, and how long and where the person had been in service) before stating the case. As regards the petitioner’s circumstances, cases differ and exhibit distinct individual expressions. This was expected of the genre. Most letters have different senders, but there are cases in which we have several letters from the same individual concerning the same case. At times they also present different circumstances, thus indicating that people could try to employ more than one strategy to reach a favourable resolution.³⁶ The petitions or requests presented in the letters generally range from highly specific demands concerning arrangements to more general calls for help in situations of need. All are directed to De la Gardie as master, although often mentioning other titles as well, depending on when the letter was written.³⁷

The supplications sent to De la Gardie have been categorized according to subject matter and argumentation strategies with the aid of a database created specifically for this purpose.³⁸ This database currently catalogues close to five hundred individuals. A little over twenty percent are women, the majority of whom had worked for De la Gardie themselves. In many cases it is likely that both husband and wife worked for the aristocratic household, even though we cannot always confirm that this is the case.³⁹ In the database, we have registered 120 different professional titles, all of which were actively used by petitioners in their letters.

Assessing the frequency of petitioning in relation to the entire workforce is difficult if not impossible, as it would require extensive records of employees over time at all the various estates in the De la Gardie sphere. Using the household in Stockholm as an example, however, we know that it employed up to one hundred people at its height, and we may even follow certain categories of employees over a longer period of time. Estimates based on these categories of employees are thus possible to some extent. If looking at, for instance, the lackeys [lakejer], a group consisting of 38 individuals in total between the years of 1660 and 1685, the results indicate a petitioning rate as high as at least 37%. However, it is unlikely that this number looks the same in all categories of employees.⁴⁰

While the sources do not enable us to systematically assess the success rate of the petitioners, they can provide clear patterns in what was considered reasonable requests to the master. This highlights the expectations of the moral economy and its confines, indicating that there was a perceived possibility for negotiations, from which the supplicants could try to benefit. The people at the centre of this study also used the relationship based on their own employment or that of their spouse/relative to argue a form of reciprocity between them and their master or employer. They thus presented themselves as involved with the aristocratic household and sphere, not simply randomly asking for help but invoking more particular reasons for De la Gardie to take their requests into consideration.

Deferring payments

Tracing the logic of debt and credit is essential to our understanding of the economic landscape that people in the service of De la Gardie had to learn to navigate. Being part of the workforce was not only a matter of contributing with one’s skill and loyalty but seems to have been a way of entering into an economic system revolving around debt and credit on different levels. As Fontaine has pointed out, workers often owed money to their employers and relied upon them in difficult situations, using their work as pay back.⁴¹ Judging from the supplications to De la Gardie, however, the opposite could also be the case, as several letters indicate that De la Gardie himself was lagging with payments. Workers noted in their petitioning letter that they had not received their salaries, but they also used the deferred payments – De la Gardie’s indebtedness to them – to make other requests. Examining the supplications, it seems as if De la Gardie used the credit created by deferred payments to keep his business running. It is, however, also apparent that this was an intricate system, creating credit and debt relations on several levels, which involved servants paying for other servants and bailiffs, foremen, bookkeepers, and other middlemen shuffling around the responsibility for paying wages and debts to complaining workers.⁴²

While supplications cannot tell us whether or not transactions were made, they do provide a unique opportunity for challenging the information presented in payrolls and account books. The latter rarely let us know whether wages were paid or in which currency (in cash or in kind), leaving us with little more than the estimated (and promised) value of the work performed. Supplications, however, take us one step closer to the situation of the servants, where yearly payments were not necessarily to be expected and where being in service thus prompted workers to actively seek reimbursement in different forms. The bulk of supplications we have analysed suggest that deferred payments were frequent and that they were also vital circumstances when petitioners argued their cases and the subsequent desired arrangements.

A striking feature seen in several cases is the duration of time passed before the petitioning letter was sent to the master, suggesting either a patient attitude amongst servants or the prevalence of face-to-face negotiations. The boy Reinholt Ersson, who had worked for Simon the bird-catcher for one and a half years, pointed out that he had been diligent in his work but had not received anything at all for the time he had worked there.⁴³ The bird-catcher Johan Andersson, on the other hand, had worked for eight years without any pay and had neither had food nor drink for the past five weeks when he wrote to De la Gardie in despair.⁴⁴ Some wrote because they had only received a smaller portion of what was owed them.⁴⁵ Others wrote joint letters where they requested their promised salaries. A group of eight carpenters in Västergötland wanted payment for their last two years of work, claiming they had not received salaries nor food.⁴⁶ Another group, consisting of 21 people working at Läckö castle, told a story of utter despair. Times were tough, they said, and they could not get the proper sustenance since they were not allowed to leave the castle. They humbly requested help in the form of food and materials for shoes, while also asking to get paid for the past six months.⁴⁷

Some people seem to have been paid, at least in the eyes of their fellow servants. Jonas Mörk, a former lackey to De la Gardie’s son Count Gustaf, writes that he would like to get paid for his services just like the other lackeys, suggesting that he was the only one being left out in the group of workers to which he belonged.⁴⁸ Another complaint came from the stable boys Oluff and Anders, who unfortunately had been away when the other stable boys received clothes at the Kägleholm estate, thus prompting them to petition De la Gardie for the same benefits given to their co-workers.⁴⁹ Just as in this case, several supplications suggest that servants differentiated between monetary wages and clothes, shoes, and food, keeping track of when they had been promised one thing or the other.

In the autumn of 1671, the former wet nurse Karin Andersdotter had her petition presented in Stockholm. The letter, stretching over two pages and with an elaborate text of godly praise and references to the healing archangel Raphael forever being Magnus Gabriel’s right hand, conveyed a clear message. On 1 July 1668, De la Gardie had signed a resolution giving Karin the benefits of food and clothing for the rest of her life. He had now lagged behind with this compensation for nine months and she ‘had been dismissed with evil words’ when she had tried to claim what had been promised to her. She conveyed the hope that her wishes would be heard and that the resolution would be maintained on De la Gardie’s behalf. Being old and unable to earn her keep, she lamented her desperate situation of having neither firewood nor money.⁵⁰ To Karin it seems to have been clear that there were differences and that cash payments were expected and not necessarily translated into benefits in kind. Parallel to this, there were promises of material benefits as a payment in their own right; for instance, monthly food or animal hides.⁵¹

Supplications also show how servants intervened to help other servants. Albricht Falknär (possibly a falconer) complains about not getting paid for his work but also asserts that two of his assistants⁵² have gone without compensation for the past two years. This was apparently not the first time that Albricht intervened on behalf of the two, as he began the letter by thanking his master for the coat and trousers that a valet had brought them earlier. However, no wages had been paid, and Albricht himself had recurrently been forced to support them.⁵³ Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie’s unwillingness – or inability – to pay wages echoed through the social and economic relationships that people in his service were involved in. When servants who had not received their wages were unable to pay rent, landladies turned to De la Gardie complaining that they needed to be reimbursed.⁵⁴ Some supplications show that unpaid wages and promises of compensation could live on through generations. A woman whose grandfather had accompanied Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie’s grandfather – Pontus De la Gardie – when he emigrated from France to Sweden wrote about a broken promise. Having worked as a cook in Pontus De la Gardie’s household for 14 years, her grandfather still had an outstanding payment of salaries amounting to 200 riksdaler. As reimbursement, the grandfather had been given a cadastral unit called Österby, which, he had been promised, was going to pass on to the next generation for as long as the debt remained. However, Österby had been revoked by Jakob De la Gardie, despite a signed document in the granddaughter’s possession proving her rights. Her final request was that she receive the money that she was entitled to as compensation for her grandfather’s insignificant but faithful service.⁵⁵

Deferred payments seem to have been an overarching problem, affecting different kinds of credit relationships, both vertical and horizontal.⁵⁶ One reason may have been the lack of cash and the habit of turning monetary value into other forms of value, which may have been seen as beneficial for both parties. On occasion, the unclear division of responsibilities when it came to reimbursing the people in service seems to have been part of this system. Although petitioners suggest that De la Gardie was a generous man, having promised them remuneration and relief, they are nonetheless sent around to different people in charge, getting turned away at every instance. A curious but illuminating case concerns the widow Chierstin Perssdotter. According to her supplication, she had been granted a resolution of 50 riksdaler for the burial of her son, a former bosun in the service of De la Gardie.⁵⁷ Three months prior to her supplication, her son had been executed for manslaughter, she recounts, but shortly thereafter, the inspector Sneckenskiöld directed her to the bailiff at Wenngarn, whom she had approached twice with her writ.⁵⁸ With tears in her eyes, she had urged the bailiff to pay the amount that De la Gardie had promised her, but he had continuously turned her away, claiming that he had no resources for this. She had then approached the head of the household, but he too denied her help. As a result, she turned to the source of the decision, once again asking De la Gardie to provide the means for her to bury her son.

Pursuing the case further, it turns out that the initial claim of 50 riksdaler concerned an unpaid salary that her son had earned while working for De la Gardie on a boat going between Venngarn and Stockholm. On the backside of her letter, there are two additional messages from said inspector Jacob Sneckenskiöld to the bailiff at Venngarn, Christopher Sellman. The first concludes that De la Gardie had promised the remaining salary to the widow, urging the bailiff to pay it immediately. This letter is dated 1 December 1671. In a second message, the same inspector renewed his orders. On 10 March 1672, Sellman was reminded once again to pay Chierstin Persdotter the remaining money. ‘You better watch yourself and indulge the widow, or this shall be on your head’, Sneckenskiöld writes.⁵⁹ The case of Chierstin and her executed son may be a peculiar and difficult one. However, there are several others with less grim features pointing to the somewhat unclear division of responsibilities, thus encroaching on the servants’ chances of being properly remunerated.⁶⁰

Negotiating positions

In a supplication from the 1660s, a group of soldiers wrote to De la Gardie complaining about their poverty and the harsh conditions under which they were forced to live. Wherever they turned, they were dismissed, they said, claiming not to have received anything for the work they had carried out for him in 1661. Their lament and humble request soon turned into a more decisive and provocative statement, namely that ‘he who requests our work should also see to our wages’. The reply from the count, noted at the bottom of the letter, was a clear rejection: ‘When they do not work, they shall get nothing’.⁶¹

Seemingly, simply asking for wages was not a good idea, and those who expected to be reimbursed for their work may have needed to come up with additional arguments. A group of six men and boys working in De la Gardie’s stables had an alternative strategy to that of the soldiers above. Their supplication concerned clothes they had not received for over three years. Now almost naked, not only exposing them to the danger of becoming ill but also preventing them from working, they adhered to a line of reasoning that was more common than the one utilized by the soldiers.⁶² Their inability to work likely carried more weight as an argument, as working was considered not only a moral value but also a judicial one – every adult person must work according to Swedish law or else risk being convicted of vagrancy.⁶³ Being prevented from making themselves useful to the count, as well as failing to live up to moral and legal requirements of the time, was a shrewder argument than simply claiming one’s rights. It appealed to an aristocratic form of paternalism while at the same time making the supplicants appear morally unquestionable.

When asking for wages – be it in the form of cash, clothes, or other kinds – we only have two cases where petitioners did not provide De la Gardie with additional arguments to support their claims, compared to hundreds of cases where the petitioners did the opposite. The overwhelming majority have thus tried to add convincing reasons for why their requests should be heard. A common method was to present one’s case in the light of urgent or life-changing events. In January 1683, the cellar groom Gustaf Larsson pleaded to De la Gardie for clothes, facing a cold winter. Over the previous four years, he had received clothes worth only 28 riksdaler, however claiming that 120 riksdaler were owed him. In order to manage, he had relied on support from his parents, but they had now died, which is why he turned to his master, hoping for mercy and, more particularly, for the clothes to which he was entitled.⁶⁴ The bird-catcher Simon Andersson conveyed a similar message of despair along with his request for payment and food. He too recounts that he and his family are ‘almost naked’ and ‘ashamed to show themselves among people’.⁶⁵ Immediate issues concerning hunger, social exclusion, and homelessness – in other words, acute poverty – were common features when servants petitioned De la Gardie for the wages they had earned.

Some requests concern situations that were likely to be of social and religious importance, such as christenings, weddings, and funerals. ‘The Lord has blessed me with two children who now lay unburied, but I, a poor woman, cannot put them into the ground’, the washer woman Marina Tommasdotter lamented. She requested that the rest of her wages be paid to take care of her predicament. She wrote to De la Gardie three times with the same request, but we do not know whether it was granted.⁶⁶ The cook Andreas Ericksson extended a similar demand, explaining how he had not received any wages for several years and that his family now lacked money. Since their child had died, he asked for as much money as was needed for the funeral.⁶⁷ Other examples include a kitchen maid whose father had died, a chef who wished to baptize his new-born son, and a drabant guard who was getting married.⁶⁸ All requested to turn the deferred payments into a different kind of reimbursement – one that could help them in the situation in which they found themselves.

Not all petitioners, however, had any deferred payments upon which to build their case. As far as we can see, arguments could also rely on other dependencies and values by which the petitioners sought to manifest their relationship to De la Gardie. Petitioners, when negotiating their cases, deemed geographical origin as well as personal relations and a history of loyalty to be important. This is highlighted in the case of Oloff Månsson. Being a resident of a cadastral unit in Bolum in Västergötland, he requested employment but also to be relieved of taxes due to difficult circumstances at home. To achieve this, he recounts that he has been a tax collector in the service of De la Gardie’s mother and, secondly, that he had been born on the De la Gardie estate Höjentorp in Västergötland.⁶⁹ His supplication thus points to a double generational relationship: he had served two generations of the same family, and he was the second generation in his own family to have ties to his master’s family.

The province of Västergötland seems to have played a significant role for servants within the De la Gardie sphere. De la Gardie himself was a frequent visitor to Läckö and other locations in Västergötland, which is sometimes referred to in supplications but also evident in his registry of letters.⁷⁰ Through his title as count, De la Gardie also had jurisdiction over his subjects in Läckö county, as well as in other estates in Västergötland and elsewhere.⁷¹ Supplicants used the fact that they were born or had family in the province to substantiate requests for support and to show that their relation to De la Gardie involved more than just working for him. Oloff Månsson was not alone in stressing his origin in Västergötland, or Läckö county, as an argument for being hired into De la Gardie’s service. Bengt Oloffsson, who wished to become a lackey, pointed out that De la Gardie was known for his generosity towards the fatherless, especially those who were born in Läckö county.⁷² Another telling example is the case of Bengt Assarsson, a former lackey to Count Bengt Oxenstierna who announced that he wished to come into De la Gardie’s service. To legitimize his request for a position, he not only refers to prior services but to the fact that he was born on one of De la Gardie’s estates. ‘Being born upon your excellence’s mansion [.] I will remain a loyal servant for as long as I live’.⁷³

Västergötland also seems to have played the role of supplying other estates in the country with servants. The stable boy Lars, for instance, originated from Västergötland but had been recruited to work for De la Gardie elsewhere. In his supplication he asked for permission to leave his work in order to move back home to collect his parental inheritance.⁷⁴ A gardener at Venngarn north of Stockholm complained that he had little help now that the garden boys had gone back to Västergötland, suggesting that servants temporarily moved from Venngarn to do work on De la Gardie’s estates in other regions.⁷⁵ The garden boy Pär Olofson wrote in 1671 to ask for new clothes, saying he was one of four garden boys having been sent from Västergötland to Stockholm four years prior.⁷⁶ Connections in Västergötland may also have been essential for the recruitment of new workers, as demonstrated by the gardener Swen Nilsson Rölin. Rölin – originally from Västergötland but in April 1680 working at the De la Gardie estate Kägleholm in Närke – wrote that he had only one young boy to help him in his work and that this was not sufficient. After his request for more workers was dismissed by the bailiff, Rölin contacted his parents in Västergötland asking them to find assistants in the region who could be sent to Kägleholm. Unfortunately, they too were unable to help their son in the task he had been given.⁷⁷ Rölin thus went to the highest office and asked for support, making sure, however, to mention his contacts and interactions with the province. This too could form the basis of an argument.

Arguing one’s case with reference to long service, devotion, and loyalty was common. Pointing to the different services one had performed when seeking a new position is one aspect of this, which illustrates the perceived value of such work-related loyalties. However, the perceived value of loyalty and devotion may also imply a different form of expectation, namely that those already employed would be able to stay on and continue to receive work within the household or sphere. This is illustrated by the case of Jonas Esbiörnsson. When writing, Jonas had served as a lifeguard for 16 years, ‘receiving the mercy’ of his excellency and thus being able to serve De la Gardie.⁷⁸ For this, he stated, he had a respectful and humble heart. But he also dared to be inconvenient and asked to be put into service, having noticed that he had not been admitted to his excellence’s household for the current year.⁷⁹ The expectation of being able to continue one’s service, in one way or another (and not necessarily in the same position), was present among supplicants.⁸⁰ By arguing one’s loyalty and eternal devotion to secure this ‘right’ to work, supplicants express another dimension of the economy of which they had become a part by offering their lifelong services.

The services performed did not necessarily have to be one’s own in order to serve as an argument in the supplications. Referring to the loyalty of one’s father or husband was one option, but supplicants could also go in a different direction. Rangella Larsdotter, whose husband was at war, referred to her son, who had worked for De la Gardie’s mother, Ebba Brahe, when arguing her case for alleviations of the leasehold on the tax farm⁸¹ she inhabited.⁸² A similar argument was used by Axel Andersson, the holder of a cadastral unit who had fallen into poverty because of bad harvests. His request to be freed from taxes and for help in running his farm was argued by referring to his son Lars Axelsson’s service as a valet to De la Gardie.⁸³ This indicates that the system these servants saw themselves as being part of not only included themselves and the values they produced, but also their families and parents, even grandparents. Supplicants expected some sort of help not only for themselves, but also for a wider circle of people. Dependencies and expectations could thus stretch far beyond the person holding a position.

Research on poverty has demonstrated that belonging to a household, village, or parish was crucial in early modern Sweden and enabled people to take part in the community’s safety net: be it poor relief, housing, work, or other.⁸⁴ Being part of the household or sphere of De la Gardie served a similar purpose. Standing with one foot in Västergötland and the other in Stockholm, De la Gardie linked the province to the capital. Showing loyalties with the province – by birth, family, or work – servants may have been at an advantage when negotiating for positions and support in Västergötland but also in other parts of Sweden. Through employment and the deferred payments, this may have resulted in, through geographical or social allegiances, or through the loyalty and devotion of ‘making oneself useful’ to the count, servants hoped to ensure a place within a community where help and support could be given in times of need.

Arrangements

Seeing how supplications served as attempts at negotiating positions and support for both petitioners and their families, it is striking that many of them include specific demands and requests, thus indicating that they were not only desperate calls for help but also a way of taking charge over one’s situation. This is particularly evident in the negotiations over deferred payment of wages and the indebtedness of the count to the servant, a debt that petitioners highlighted and used when requesting specific arrangements. One such recurring request was to turn the deferred payments into a cadastral unit.⁸⁵

At the height of his power, Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie owned more than 1,000 cadastral units spread across the Swedish realm.⁸⁶ These properties constituted much of his wealth, the revenue funding his political career, as well as his luxury consumption and charities. Supplications often refer to farms or villages near his estates in different parts of the realm, but the province of Västergötland, and in particular Läckö castle and its adjacent county, stands out. Läckö county was situated 350 kilometres from Stockholm and covered an area of some 1,000 square kilometres. In this area alone, De la Gardie owned 592 cadastral units, but additional units were found around other estates in Västergötland, such as Höjentorp and Mariedal.⁸⁷ According to his own account books for the years 1664 and 1665, he controlled 777 cadastral units in the province.⁸⁸ Between 1664 and 1665, account books for the Swedish estates (estates in Finland and the Baltics excluded) show that 53 people were holding cadastral units as replacement for wages, a total of 21 in Läckö county alone. 47 people had been given cadastral units for life. Furthermore, De la Gardie had decided to exempt 17 ¼ cadastral units within the county from taxes on account of the holder’s poverty.⁸⁹

When servants were not paid their wages, one way of solving this issue and becoming less reliant on the goodwill of the count or his bookkeeper or bailiff was to ask for a cadastral unit to live off. Taking the numbers provided by the account books into consideration, the chances for petitioners to have their requests for cadastral units granted were seemingly good. The case of the lumberman⁹⁰ Lars Erson provides an example. In late October 1669, he petitioned De la Gardie to get a cadastral unit ‘just like the other lumbermen’ from which he could get his pay.⁹¹ A similar request came from Erich Erichsson, who was looking after gardens near the Höjentorp estate. In 1666 he made a request for a cadastral unit where his family could keep some cattle. If his wish were to be granted, Erich promised to be a faithful servant until his death.⁹²

Receiving a cadastral unit for life meant securing one’s living at old age but may also have entailed the opportunity to pass this source of subsistence on from one generation to another. In her supplication to De la Gardie, the widow Kirstin Andersdotter underscored a promise once made to her late husband, a servant at Läckö castle, namely that they would be allowed to live on the Sånnebo cadastral unit as long as they paid what they were obliged to. She seemingly perceived this promise to apply to her as a widow and to her son.⁹³ Sometimes, these promises were put down in writing, thus enabling petitioners to refer to written agreements. Supplicants may also have asked explicitly for written confirmations.⁹⁴ One such case concerns Lars Andersson Barck, who had served as gevaldiger (constable) at Läckö for 28 years. Already being a holder of half a cadastral unit as part of his income, he asked for verifications that should he live longer than he was able to serve, he would be able to keep half a cadastral unit for the rest of his life.⁹⁵

Granting cadastral units to servants, either for life or temporarily instead of paying wages, was one possibility for De la Gardie. Another was to grant holders release of taxes, or corvée. Although there seems to have been a difference between receiving a cadastral unit as replacement for wages and receiving one for life, the distinction is not always entirely clear. Bengt Larsson worked in De la Gardie’s stables and had met the count in person when the latter visited Västergötland. According to Larsson, he had been promised that he would be allowed to take over a cadastral unit, once granted to his grandmother for life. The cadastral unit was situated near the town of Lidköping in Läckö county. However, before Bengt Larsson had received a written confirmation, he was sent to Stockholm and the matter was forgotten. In his supplication, Bengt reminds the count of the promise made and suggests that the cadastral unit is given to him as part of his wages.⁹⁶ Holding a cadastral unit could secure an income for a long time to come and would potentially be a way to avoid ending up in the long line of creditors awaiting payment. For the servant this also meant that he or she remained within the De la Gardie sphere. While a cadastral unit did involve some risk – bad harvests, death of a spouse, or a husband being enlisted, which could put the holder in a vulnerable position – the link to De la Gardie still opened up for the possibility to petition for relief of taxes or other kinds of assistance. Malin Madsdotter, who lived with her husband on one of De la Gardie’s cadastral units, illustrates this. In her supplication, she expresses her concerns that if her husband were to be enlisted as a soldier, that would be detrimental to and eventually devastate the count’s property. Her expressed hope was that De la Gardie, who had the right to exempt his subjects from military service, would make a decision that would help save his own property.⁹⁷

The people in service of Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie clearly also competed over resources and benefits with other servants. When Christian Taffeltäckare contacted De la Gardie, he referred to his long service and asked for the mercy to manage the tavern in Lidköping. However, there was a conflict of interest. The apothecary Starckhoff had been recommended for this position by the town’s headmen, but since Starckhoff already owned a property in Lidköping, Christian argued that the position should instead go to him. To support his argument, he added that his parents lived there. Christian was thus involved in a battle for benefits and resources being given to servants on behalf of their long service, loyalty, or, perhaps, needs. Not mentioning any monetary debts entitling him to this particular benefit, he built his case around loyalty, his connection to Västergötland, and concern for his parents. He thus used a different set of values of this moral economy, arguing his ‘right’ to the position over that of the person already being recommended for it. He also evaluated his opponent’s advantage, concluding that he already had what he needed, namely a house in the town.⁹⁸

Another arrangement being negotiated in the supplications is that of education. Margaretha Larsdotter, widow of the ‘tax-payer’⁹⁹ and local sheriff¹⁰⁰ at Läckö, wondered if De la Gardie would like to support her son Wässman Andersson, who had decided to become a barber, through some kind of merciful condition that would improve his situation.¹⁰¹ The petition letters also include other proponents seeking educational opportunities, arguing not based on past services but with the future in mind. Christian, a silver chamber boy, asked to have his training to be a pastry cook funded by De la Gardie, claiming he had a great desire to learn something through which he would then be able to serve his excellence in the future and support himself. The training was cheap, Christian concluded, but the future yields were nonetheless substantial.¹⁰² Bengt, another boy working in De la Gardie’s silver chamber, had heard that Hans, who worked in the office, was about to leave his position and thus wondered if he might replace him. Bengt claimed that he wished to develop and improve his writing skills.¹⁰³ Esbjörn Johansson, previously a soldier, had been given the opportunity to inform himself in the art of gardening, according to his supplication. He requested a continuance of this benefit and training until the day when he was knowledgeable enough to serve his excellence in this kind of work. This he ‘pre-obliges’ [preobligerar] himself to do, with diligence, while also mentioning in passing that he would like to receive the food that he has been promised for his current services.¹⁰⁴

Promises of educational support were apparently given but not always followed through. Maria Josephzdåtter, married to the organ builder Hindrich Syrach who worked at the estate of Ekholmen, wrote to De la Gardie after her husband had left for Livonia, leaving her alone with six small children in despair and poverty. Begging De la Gardie for help so that they would not succumb to starvation, she also reminded the master that he had promised a stipend for her boys for them to learn how to read. Of this stipend, three barrels of grain over four years, she had seen nothing and had thus not been able to clothe or school them.¹⁰⁵ The complicated economy of promises, favours, and credits surrounding educational opportunities is apparent in several supplications. Catharina Linnarsdotter, wife of Johan Larsson Sidenius, claimed that her husband was promised a position with De la Gardie but that he had yet to receive it. In order to educate her five sons, she thus asked for the right to brew beer and urged De la Gardie to recommend her to the Royal Majesty [Kongl. Maj:t] for this enterprise.¹⁰⁶ A similar case is that of Cherstin Gudmundsdotter, who complained that she had not been given the opportunity to take over the postal services¹⁰⁷ after her late husband. Hence, she must ask for De la Gardie’s assistance with the education of three of her sons who were in Stockholm and wanted to become bookkeepers.¹⁰⁸

Supplications show that having been in the service of De la Gardie may be linked to expectations of some sort of aid or benefits at old age. A cadastral unit or place to live when the ability to work diminished was, as discussed above, part of the request from many of the people who claimed that they were getting older and weaker and thus needed De la Gardie’s assistance. Casper Johansson, whose supplication is dated January 1668, had been employed as a chef since 1648 and had as such been able to enjoy both the help of a farmhand and freedom from taxes. He was now old and weak, and while De la Gardie had taken on a new chef, Casper hoped he could keep the cadastral unit and the privileges.¹⁰⁹ There were also smaller requests. The former court equestrian¹¹⁰ Anders Biörsson wrote in deepest misery, stating that he had been ill and weak since he left his position with De la Gardie. He could no longer earn his living and must thus seek the help of others and ‘live in great despair’. In his supplication, he asked for some grain that he and his wife could survive on for the remainder of his life.¹¹¹ Attempting to negotiate the financial terms and conditions under which one lived was apparently also a way of handling old age. Christiern Falkendaal who took care of the garden at the monastery (likely Varnhem under Höjentorp) claimed he was no longer able to perform his duties. He asked for lodgers¹¹² who could help him in his work.¹¹³ Others made requests that were more general in nature. Anders Olofsson had served at various De la Gardie locations, including Höjentorp, Katrineberg, and Mariedal, for almost thirty years, sacrificing, according to himself, his own health. Having reached the age of 70, he wished to retire, asking for something for him and his wife to live off for the years they had left.¹¹⁴

Some servants may have worked for De la Gardie for a limited amount of time, while others stayed on for a lifetime. However, the negotiations and arrangements pursued by petitioners suggest that the relationship was based on more than just temporary wage labour as part of the life cycle. The notion that service was part of the life cycle in rural areas of Western Europe, as proposed by John Hajnal in the 1960s,¹¹⁵ has been both acknowledged and further developed in several studies concerning different rural regions, including Sweden.¹¹⁶ Our results show, however, that the servants of De la Gardie acted as though their links to the sphere and household transcended the temporary work relationship and formed part of a lifelong commitment of reciprocity between master and servant. They did not adhere to the notion of life cycle work, and the deferred payments of wages most likely forced them to pursue a longer relationship.

Appealing to aristocratic paternalism

Along with requests for retirement arrangements, educational opportunities, and aid with Christian rites of passage, servants also wrote to De la Gardie for help when suffering from poverty, loss of income, and starvation. It is quite common that a number of these reasons were combined, as, for instance, among workers who were extremely poor and thus unable to bury their spouses, parents, or children. What is also clear from the cases we have reviewed is that the request for help in any of the situations listed above was often combined with a reminder to De la Gardie that he had failed to pay the petitioners for the services they had performed. Negotiating the arrangements of how this de facto credit was to be paid back seems to have been considered within the confines of what servants could request from their master. Requesting to simply get paid for one’s services, without adding any additional arguments and without appealing to the benevolence of the count, was a notably less popular strategy among petitioners. The few we know of employing this strategy were dismissed.

The values to which petitioners appealed in order to release the deferred wages owed to them merits further discussion. The prevalence of poverty-related arguments and the patience shown amongst servants sometimes waiting several years to receive what they had been promised suggest that it was seen as necessary to relate dire circumstances in order to be successful. Poverty was an issue that indeed did attract attention among elite groups in Sweden at the time. The pressure put on the population due to recurring wars and an unusually cold climate with subsequent bad harvests drew attention to the failure of regulations presented in 1642 aimed at addressing what was considered the most conspicuous manifestation of poverty, namely beggars. During the regency of 1660–1672, with Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie as the leading politician, new attempts to manage this issue were made. For petitioning servants on the brink of poverty, showing one’s vulnerability, on the one hand, and yet devotion, loyalty, and diligence, on the other, was in line with the distinctions made in contemporary legal discourse between the rightfully and unrightfully poor,¹¹⁷ where the former was poor due to uncontrollable circumstances and the latter due to laziness or ill-advised actions.¹¹⁸ In general, the rightfully poor were to be supported and aided, while the unrightfully poor must be exposed and judicially processed. It was furthermore seen as crucial to prevent children from falling into poverty and consequently into begging.¹¹⁹

As shown, being remunerated for performed services was, at least for the petitioners studied here, not a straightforward process. Negotiating one’s position and different payment arrangements in order to get the promised wages, food, clothing, or shoes must have taken a considerable amount of time and effort for the workers involved. Nonetheless, these negotiations took place, and through them, we can grasp the paternalistic world that petitioners saw themselves as forced to navigate. Sara Maza, who has highlighted the notion of aristocratic paternalism in early modern France, concludes that reciprocity and mutual expectations of loyalty were at the centre of this set of values.¹²⁰ Acknowledgements of the benevolence and social concerns of the count were extensive in the supplications and were part of the expected epistolary genre,¹²¹ but they nevertheless highlighted his duty to help the less fortunate.¹²² Arguments regarding geographical and family ties were employed, as was the loyalty and devotion that working would suggest. Aiding the poor and destitute by providing work or education was likely to be considered a just cause, and several petitioners appealed to this perceived moral obligation.¹²³

Christopher Pihl has stressed that women who were employed as servants or workers at crown estates in sixteenth-century Sweden were given access to various kinds of resources. Working outside the family and earning money of their own gave them a better bargaining position and opened up for new opportunities.¹²⁴ Cathryn Spence has made similar observations regarding Scotland, where large numbers of servants were involved in economic activities. Spence points out that these unmarried servants could save money from their wages and use them to invest for the future.¹²⁵ The servants petitioning Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie, however, convey a different reality. Being forced to bargain for their reimbursement, their ties to the De la Gardie sphere grew, thereby entangling these creditors in a complicated network of debt, credit, loyalties, and favours. Being shuffled between bookkeeper, inspector, and head of the household, they might end up with nothing but new promises of a different kind of payment, which may or may not be given to them. In the meantime, their only resort and best option was to continue working for the master who was not paying them, hoping that the notion of reciprocity would come to their help.

The notion of future loyalties was crucial for servants who wished to gain favours. A common feature of the supplications is statements indicating that people are willing to do whatever they can to be ‘useful’ to De la Gardie. The lackey Joen Person, for instance, described himself as innocent and poor, wishing to terminate his service with De la Gardie in order to learn more elsewhere. What might instantly seem a rather bold and insulting statement becomes logical in the desire he then confers: that he wishes to learn more in the service of Count Tott in order to later return and be more useful to De la Gardie.¹²⁶ Whether or not this was sincere, or just a necessary courtesy, is unclear. Yet other examples also point in this direction, that being in service not only implied being paid to do a certain kind of work, but also general compliance, loyalty, and an interest in ‘serving’.¹²⁷ The promise of being a faithful servant for all eternity may be attributed to the genre, but it must also be seen as a way for petitioners to construct a position for themselves, aiming to instil trust.

As much as loyalty and devotion were valued, it is clear that the bond of trust between servant and master could also be broken. Matz Matsson, the keeper of his excellence’s swans at Jakobsdal’s palace, had been in the service of De la Gardie and his mother for eight years. When asked to take over a cadastral unit, he turned down the offer, claiming that he was afraid that he would not be up to the task. This had not gone down well with the count. Even though Matz Matsson had changed his mind when he realized that his rejection had been taken badly, he not only missed the opportunity to get a cadastral unit but was also discharged from his post as keeper of swans.¹²⁸

As we have argued, the financial relations between De la Gardie and the people working for him were part of an intricate system of expectations and negotiations. Because of his indebtedness to the workers through deferred payment of wages, De la Gardie became involved in people’s livelihoods to a degree that exceed mere financial transactions. Supplications show that servants most likely expected to be part of a system of favours and non-monetary compensation. Some of the supplicants used this system to negotiate more specific advantages, while others depended on it for survival. To be sure, some cases well illustrate the callousness and asymmetrical nature of this system. The pleas of the chef Nils Månsson are illuminating. Living with his wife and four young children, he claimed to have no money at all. Unable to pay the rent, they had been thrown out by their landlady. Now living in a shed with no heating and with winter fast approaching, he feared for the survival of his starving family. His request concerned unpaid salaries that he needed to at the very least pay the landlady. A supplication dated 1 January 1665 from the same Nils Månsson repeated the request with reference to an earlier supplication. Although we do not know for certain when the first one was written, it seems likely that De la Gardie did not instantly grant his chef’s request.¹²⁹ The case shows the extreme vulnerability of the servants and workers in an economy where monetary resources were scarce and work was seen as a credit to the master. It also exposes a system that at times may have been, in the words of Laurence Fontaine, ‘a protective element in a network of solidarities’, but also a destructive force of impoverishment. Debt may thus have ‘created ties within society every bit as much as it destroyed them’.¹³⁰

Conclusions

The supplications written to Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie offer a unique vantage point to the everyday world of people on the margins of society and the challenges they faced. One could easily portray De la Gardie as an abusive master, but his archives also reveal that he, like many of his fellow aristocrats, gave to charity, supported clients, and provided servants with gifts.¹³¹ As an employer he was not necessarily more negligent towards his servants than other aristocrats, and he has even been described as generous towards the less fortunate.¹³² The servants we have discussed in this article belonged to the lower strata of society, including stable boys, milkmaids, wet nurses, soldiers, garden workers, bird-catchers, and kitchen staff. Almost all of them lacked reliable means of income and were thus particularly exposed to the risks of early modern society. Their supplications bear witness to these realities, showing how the circumstances of their lives became part of their relationship to the count. The stories they told for the purpose of improving their situation concerned everyday matters: economic and social relations, work, family, birth, sickness, hunger, vulnerability, and death, revealing to us how people tried to navigate in a sometimes brutal system revolving around social and economic dependencies. Being a part of this system meant adhering to its values, particularly to the idea of aristocratic paternalism suggesting reciprocal obligations between servants and masters. Petitioners thus mirror and reproduce hierarchies and asymmetrical power relations, confirming and using them to gain small advantages. Social allegiances were created as they vouched for and were the essence of this moral economy itself.

The negotiations petitioners entered into and the arrangements they suggested exhibit a surprising amount of detailed consideration. Far from being mere calls for whatever help they could get, petitioners took charge over their situations, suggesting solutions to their problems. Moreover, our study indicates that such suggestions were deemed necessary and that few tried to simply claim exactly what was owed to them. Appealing to aristocratic paternalism, offering additional arguments as to why payments were indispensable, was a common feature in these negotiations. Arrangements in relation to Christian rites of passage were portrayed as acts of Christian mercy and compassion. Paternalistic concerns for a servant’s social reputation and respectability were evoked in situations regarding access to clothes and work; a sense of righteousness and reciprocity was appealed to when devoted petitioners requested insurances for the future in the form of cadastral units, tax alleviations, or education. Arguments that did not appeal to the paternalistic self-image, such as accusations of injustice or unfairness, were in all likelihood a dead end, and refusing to gratefully accept the compensation offered could prove fatal.

In this article we have argued that the deferred payment of wages, making servants into de facto creditors to their master, was a key element of this economic system. Although servants testified to having seen others get paid, and did indeed seem to expect, at least in some cases, cash payments, their supplications provide us with the outlines of a system where payments were either transformed into other forms of compensation or were, in fact, refused or simply ignored. The patience shown among servants, sometimes waiting for several years before they demanded what was owed to them, indicates that although this deferment may have been expected, they recognized it as an opportunity to remain within the De la Gardie sphere, thus being able to potentially benefit in other ways from the paternalistic benevolence of the count. What is abundantly clear is that petitioners kept detailed track of what the count owed them and used this debt to argue for specific arrangements, which they deemed profitable. In sum, they behaved much like creditors, although their prospects of collecting the debts were limited and relied on the discretion of the count.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Asger Wienberg for his contributions to this project in transcribing supplications, and Elise M. Dermineur for her valuable comments and perspectives. We are also grateful for the discussions with colleagues in both Lund, Uppsala, and Stockholm, and for the helpful comments of our two anonymous reviewers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/03468755.2022.2074096

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Vetenskapsrådet [VR2019-02813].

Notes

1. In Swedish, ‘hemman’. A cadastral unit in the 17th century represented the amount of land sufficient for supporting a household. A cadastral unit could thus differ in size depending on fertility or climate conditions. It roughly corresponds to a ‘hide’ in Britain.

2. Riksarkivet, Stockholm (hereafter RA), E1622, Karin Swenssdotter to Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie.

3. RA, E1622, Karin Swenssdotter to Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie. Hansson, Svensk brevskrivning, 36; see also Jonae Gothus, Thesaurus Epistolicus, 2–3, 9, 12–13.

4. Others include Johan Gabriel and Gustav Otto Stenbock, Per and Nils Brahe, Carl Gustaf Wrangel, Herman Fleming, Nils Bielke, and Bengt (Gabrielsson) Oxenstierna.

5. Uppenberg, I husbondens bröd och arbete, 89–91; and Harnesk, Legofolk, 32–40.

6. Ulväng, “Äga en herrgård,” 287–316.

7. Fåhraeus, Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie, 233–35, 238–49. It is difficult to tell the exact number of employees at the De la Gardie estates at a given time since records vary in detail at different estates and for different years. Records from 1679 show that 252 individuals were employed at his Stockholm household and two of his main estates (Kägleholm and Venngarn). An estimate of the number of employees at the rest of his Swedish estates such as Karlberg, Läckö, and Ekholmen based on figures from the 1670s suggests that the total number of employees in Sweden was at least 500. However, these figures do not include employees at the Baltic estates. Records also often misrepresent the number of female employees. We are currently studying the organization of these households, including their size. The results will be published in the years to come.

8. Kühn, “Masters as Debtors.”

9. Fontaine, The Moral Economy, 2.

10. Ibid., 1–7. Quote on 6.

11. Ibid., 6.

12. Muldrew, “Debt, Credit, and Poverty,” 14–15; see also Gerber, “Role of Rural Indebtedness,” 41:5, 729–47; Fontaine, The Moral Economy, 4; Ogilvie et al., “Household Debt,” 134–67; Spang, Stuff and Money, 45; Dermineur, “Peer-to-Peer Lending,” 359–88; Dermineur, “Trust, Norms, Credit Market,” 485, 488; Hoffman et al., Priceless Markets; Hoffman et al., Dark Matter Credit; Perlinge, “Private wealth accumulation,” 35–54. John Habakukk provides examples of British landowners who were heavily indebted to, among others, servants, Habakukk, Marriage, Debt, Estates System, 53, 73, 79. Tim Meldrum has demonstrated how male servants in early modern London made more profit from gifts, clothing, and tips than from their monetary wages, whereas female servants were less fortunate in getting this kind of extras. Meldrum, Domestic Service and Gender, 205.

13. On the indebtedness of German aristocracy, see Ogilvie et al., “Household Debt,” 150–51. For the Swedish case, see Fåhreaus, Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie, 255, 299.

14. Kühn, “Masters as Debtors”. We only found out about this very recent chapter by Sebastian Kühn while working with the revisions for this article. The (inverted) similarities in our titles are thus coincidental.

15. Muldrew, “Debt, Credit and Poverty,” 12; and Gerber, “Role of rural indebtedness,” 730.

16. Muldrew, “Debt, Credit and Poverty,” 13; and Spang, Stuff and Money, 13.

17. Muldrew, “Debt, Credit and Poverty,” 14. For a similar perspective and comparison with Scotland, see Spence, Women, Credit and Debt, 5.

18. Lindström and Mispelaere, “Vad fick 1600-talets arbetare i lön?,” 435–37, 442–47, 458–60.

19. Lindström and Mispelaere, “Interdependent living,” 136–55.

20. Fontaine, The Moral Economy, 26.

21. Fontaine, The Moral Economy, 26–27; and Blom, Tiggare, tidstjuvar, lättingar och landstrykare, 257–58.

22. Fontaine, The Moral Economy, 40. See also Dermineur, “Trust, Norms, Credit Market,” 485, 488.

23. See discussion on research in Fontaine, The Moral Economy, 17–18.

24. Fontaine and Schlumbohm, “Household Strategies for Survival,” 1–18; Sokoll, “Negotiating a Living,” 19; Carbonell-Esteller, “Using Microcredit and Restructuring Households,” 91–92; and Boulton, “Extreme Necessity,” 56–57.

25. Maza, Servants and Masters, 12–14.

26. Fontaine, The Moral Economy, 34–35.

27. Systematic efforts are lacking, but smaller studies where supplications were used together with other sources do exist. See, for instance, Sundberg, “Work and Social Relationships”; Norrhem, Uppkomlingarna, and Kvinnor vid maktens sida.

28. Jones and King, “Voices from the Far North,” 79–80; Sokoll, “Negotiating a Living”; and Gestrich and King, “Pauper Letters and Petitions,” 12–25. See also the research blog, “The Power of Petitioning in Seventeenth-Century England,” https://petitioning.history.ac.uk.

29. Almbjär, Voice of the People, 237.

30. Sundberg, “Work and Social Relationships,” 83–85; and Norrhem, Kvinnor vid maktens sida, 62–68.

31. Sundberg, “Work and Social Relationships,” 89.

32. For other archives, see, for example, RA, Oxenstiernska samlingen: E 637, E 905, E 930, E 938; Carl Carlsson Gyllenhielms samling: E 3707; and Stegeborgssamlingen: Suppliker samt skrivelser från underhavande och tjänare.

33. Richardson, Household Servants, 225. For a further discussion on the definition of servants, see Fairchilds, Domestic Enemies, 3; Rosemary Horrox says the same of late medieval England: the tasks did not define a servant but the relationship with a master: Horrox, ‘Service’, in Fifteenth-Century Attitudes, 63.

34. The supplications are kept in the De la Gardie archive in the National Archives in Stockholm and the account books in the Lund University archives.

35. Hansson, Svensk brevskrivning; see also Jonae Gothus, Thesaurus epistolicus, 2–3, 9, 12–13.

36. RA, E1641, Nils Månsson to Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie. See also supplications from Jon Swensson, RA, E1641 and Bertil Bengtsson, RA, E1642.

37. Before 1660 he was referred to as ‘riksskattmästare’ and after 1680 ‘riksdrots’. In the period in-between, he was titled ‘rikskansler’.

38. The Aristocratic Household Database (AHD) gathers data on servants in large aristocratic households of early modern Sweden. We record biographical data, as well as data on the circumstances of the work performed, materials used, and the workplace. We have also charted the arguments of the supplicants and categorized different types of supplications, linking them to digitized and transcribed source materials. The AHD is currently not open to the public, but we aim to publish it once the current project has been finalized.

39. For comparison, see discussion in Lindström and Mispeleare, “Interdependent Living,” 140–41.

40. Calculations are based on records of employees found in RA, E1660–1661.

41. Fontaine, The Moral Economy, 37.

42. RA, E1642, supplications from Erik Bengtsson and Per Mickelsson; RA, E1622, supplication from Karin Andersdotter.

43. RA, E1641, Reinholt Ersson to Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie.

44. RA, E1641, Johan Andersson to Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie.

45. RA, E1622, Karin Jönsdotter to Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie; RA, E1641, Nils Månsson to Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie; RA, E1641, Petter Bark to Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie; RA, E1641, Johan Giöss to Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie.

46. RA, E1642, Carpenters to Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie.

47. RA, E1641, 21 servants to Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie (11 February 1679). See also supplications from a group of lackeys, RA, E1641, a group of stable grooms and four groups of carpenters, RA, E1642.

48. RA, E1641, Jonas Mörk to Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie.

49. RA, E1642, Oluff to Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie.

50. RA, E1622, Karin Andersdotter to Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie.

51. Another example of this is Simon Andersson who had received neither salary nor “kommiss,” a permission to collect either clothing or goods, during his last two years in service. His family, he recounts, now had to walk around virtually naked and shame themselves, RA, E1641, Simon Andersson to Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie.

52. In Swedish, ‘drängar’.

53. RA, E1641, Ahlbreht Falknär to Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie. Similar example: RA, E1642, Bengt Olofsson to Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie.

54. RA, E1622, Carin Perssdotter to Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie; RA, E1621, Elisabeth Hoohman to Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie.

55. RA, E1622, Christina Ca(..)lsdotter to Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie.

56. Fontaine, The Moral Economy, 71–91. For De la Gardie, see Fåhraeus, Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie, 222–23, 227–28, 245, 283.

57. In Swedish, ‘båtsman’.

58. In Swedish, ‘befallningsman’.

59. RA, E1622, Chierstin Persdotter to Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie (and accompanying letters).

60. RA, 1641, Albreht Falknärs requests for his drängar point in this direction, as does the hökare Bengt Olofsson, the gardeners Oluff Swänsson and Antonie Hampe, RA, E1642, and the fatburspiga Christin Bengtzsson, RA, E1622.

61. RA, E1642, Soldiers to Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie. In Swedish: ‘den som fordrar oss till arbette, måtte ock fordra wår Löön för oss’; “När dee intedt arbeta så få dee intet.”

62. RA, E1642, Johan Nilsson, Olof Månsson, Olof Carlsson (coachmen), Lars Erichsson, Lars and Pelle (stable boys) to Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie.

63. Harnesk, Legofolk, 32–34.

64. RA, E1641, Gustaf Larsson to Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie.

65. RA, E1641, Simon Andersson to Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie.

66. RA, E1622, Marina Tommasdotter to Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie.

67. RA, E1641, Andreas Ericksson to Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie.

68. RA, E1641, Oluff Ericksson to Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie; RA, E1641, Nils Andersson Dallman to Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie; RA, E1622, Carin Andhersdotter to Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie. See also supplications from Erik Larsson, Peder Bengtsson, RA, E1642, and Margetta Simonsdotter, Maria Persdotter, RA, E1622.

69. RA, E1641, Oloff Månsson to Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie.

70. RA, E1622, Christin Matzdotter to Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie; Lund University Library (hereafter: LUB), De la Gardieska arkivet, vol. 97:1.

71. Johansson, “Herrar och bönder,” 162–63. See also, RA, Riddarhusets originalurkunder, Drottning Kristinas förklaring och förbättring på grevarnas privilegier, Stockholm 26 January 1651, https://sok.riksarkivet.se/bildvisning/R0001952_00002.

72. RA, E1641, Bengt Oloffsson to Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie.

73. RA, E1641, Bengt Assarsson to Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie: ‘som jag uppå eders excellens gods är födder lender för den skull till eders grevl excellens min underdåniga begäran der Eders grevl excellens min underdåniga tjänst behöva kan, skall jag finnas alltid underdånig, till vad mig anbetrott warda antingen till lakej eller till vad eders excellens nådigst behagar.’

74. RA, E1642, Lars Ryttare to Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie.

75. RA, E1642, Johan Bahrlin to Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie.

76. RA, E1642, Pär Olofsson to Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie.

77. RA, E1642, Swen Nilsson Rölin to Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie.

78. In Swedish, ‘livknekt’.

79. RA, E1642, Jonas Esbiörnsson to Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie.

80. See supplications from Johan Andersson, Petter Stoor, RA, E1641; Giöran Matsson and Lars, RA, E1642.

81. In Swedish, ‘skattegård’.

82. RA, E1622, Rangela Larsdotter to Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie.

83. RA, E1642, Axel Andersson to Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie.

84. Sandén, “I livets skuggdalar,” 50; and Holmlund and Sandén, “Epilog,” 366–67.

85. Peter Ullgren has shown that De la Gardie offered cadastral units to ensure that people in need were provided for, see Ullgren, En makalös historia, 278.

86. LUB, De la Gardieska arkivet, vol. 112.

87. Fåhraeus, Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie, 236. These estates were Höjentorp with Varnhem monastery, Mariedal (Ova sn), Traneberg (Kållandsö), Katrineberg (Fredsbergs sn), Synnerby hospital (Synnerby sn), Slädene farm (Slädene sn), Magnusberg (Särestads sn), Råda ladugård (Råda sn), and Jönslunda.

88. LUB, De la Gardieska arkivet, vol. 112.

89. LUB, De la Gardieska arkivet, vol. 112. The accounts for the years 1665–1667 are not as detailed but a comparison of how much revenue De la Gardie gave up by using cadastral unit as replacement for money suggests that the number of cadastral units did not vary during these specific years.

90. In Swedish, ‘huggekarl’.

91. RA, E1641, Lars Erson to Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie.

92. RA, E1642, Erich Erichsson to Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie.

93. RA, E1622, Kirstin Andersdotter to Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie.

94. Ibid.

95. RA, E1641, Lars Andersson Barck to Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie.

96. RA, E1642, Bengt Larsson to Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie.

97. RA, E1622, Malin Madsdotter to Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie. See also supplications from a group of carpenters, RA, E1642.

98. RA, E1641, Christian (Taffeltäckare) to Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie.

99. In Swedish, ‘skattdragare’.

100. In Swedish, ‘länsman’.

101. RA, E1622, Margaretha Larsdotter to Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie. See also supplications from Anna Andersdotter, Barbro Mårtensdotter, Getska Clasdotter, and Marina Schmeltzers, RA, E1621.

102. RA, E1641, Christian (Silverkammarpojke) to Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie.

103. RA, E1641, Bengt (Silverkammarpojke) to Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie. See also supplications from Anders Larsson and Joen Person, RA, E1641.

104. RA, E1642, Esbjörn Johansson to Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie.

105. RA, E1622, Maria Josephzdåtter to Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie.

106. RA, E1622, Catharina Linnarssdotter to Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie.

107. In Swedish, ‘postmästarämbetet’.

108. RA, E1622, Cherstin Gudmussdoter to Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie.

109. RA, E1641, Casper Johansson to Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie.

110. In Swedish, ‘hovryttare’.

111. RA, E1641, Anders Biörsson to Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie.

112. In Swedish, ‘inhysingar’.

113. RA, E1642, Christiern Falkendaal to Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie.

114. RA, E1642, Anders Olofsson to Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie.

115. Hajnal, “European marriage pattern”; Whittle, “Introduction,” 1, 7; and Kussmaul, Servants in Husbandry, 31.

116. For Britain and the Netherlands, see Whittle, “Introduction,” 6; for France, see Hayhoe, “Rural Servants in Eastern France,” 156–57; for Germany, see Fertig, “Rural Servants in Eighteenth-Century Münsterland,” 141–47; for Norway, see Sogner, “The legal status of servants,” 180–81; for Sweden, see Harnesk, Legofolk: drängar, pigor och bönder, 161–68; Prytz, “Life-Cycle Servant and Servant for Life,” 103.

117. In Swedish, “rätta och orätta fattiga.”

118. Unger, Makten och fattigdomen, 19.

119. Blom, Tiggare, tidstjuvar, 143, 198–204.

120. See note 25 above.

121. Hansson, Svensk brevskrivning, 36.

122. Blom, Tiggare, tidstjuvar, 192–94.

123. Ibid., 237–38.

124. Pihl, “Gender, labour, and state formation,” 685–710.

125. Spence, Women, Credit and Debt, 180–81.

126. RA, E1641, Joen Person to Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie. See also supplication from Erich Erichsson, RA, E1641.

127. See note 69 above.

128. RA, E1642, Matz Mattsson to Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie.

129. RA, E1641, Nils Månsson to Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie.

130. Fontaine, The Moral Economy, 16.

131. For example, LUB, De la Gardieska arkivet, vol. 113, 116, 117. However, the research of Sebastian Kühn shows that there are reasons to further study the practice of giving gifts to see whether they, in fact, constituted transformed payments of debts.

132. Ullgren, En makalös historia, 278–80.