Why was the Håndfæstning forced on Erik V of Denmark?
Upvote:0
I'm also basing my answers on the links provided in the question. The interpretations are mine.
Erik V's reign was "snakebit" from the beginning. His father died when he was two years old. Any number of nobles tried to take advantage of his mother, and one of them, Duke Valdemar, succeeded in capturing the mother and Erik himself. He spent part of his childhood as a prisoner of the Duke.
When Erik grew older, many of his mother's enemies became his enemies. To his credit, he managed to make peace with the Church (the Pope, actually), as a young man. But others were hard to placate. The nobles who had spent over twenty years "running wild" wasn't about to take orders from a young man. Nothing he did, or would do, with the possible exception of abdicating, could please them. Because he was basically the "first among equals," the nobles forced him to grant them a "handfaesting" that preserved noble powers while limiting his.
The nobles were not content to stop there. They bribed his "best friend," Rane Jonson, to spy on him. Then the "friend" set him up for a bloody murder.
The handfaestning of Erik V was not like the Magna Charta. The former was unique to King Erik V, and each subsequent Danish king or queen signed a different document with his or her nobles until absolute monarchy was established in 1660. The latter was a permanent document that bound all kings of England, including Queen Elizabeth II, for all time.
Upvote:3
From the Wikipedia article on Erik V:
As an adult ruler, Eric tried to enforce his power over the church and nobility. In the 1270s, Eric Glipping attacked Småland. His conflict with the church was brought to a satisfying result, with the help of the pope. By 1282 he had so offended the nobles throughout Denmark that he was forced to accept a charter (Danish: håndfæstning - a kind of a Danish Magna Carta) which limited his authority and guaranteed the ancient rights and customs which preserved the power of the nobles.
In other words, the story is very similar to the introduction of the Magna Carta in Britain. We are talking about times before absolute monarchy, the king had to rely on his vassals to enforce his will - all vassals had their own armies that weren't much smaller than that of the king. Support from the vassals was essential when going into war with other countries, and occasionally the king would even ally with some of the vassals against the others. However, in a situation where all vassals were united against the king (and this was apparently the case here) the king had no power to confront them - fighting was not an option, Erik V had to sign.
Why this didn't happen earlier: limiting the power of a king with a charter isn't an obvious thing to do, it is very likely that the Magna Carta served as an example. Of course there were other kings after Magna Carta and before Erik V but their interests most likely didn't bring up the majority of the vassals against them.
More post
- 📝 The role of the two world wars in the evolution of Fordism
- 📝 Were travelling judges paid in medieval England?
- 📝 What was Lenin's "New Economic Policy" and what complications did it have?
- 📝 Help me understand a sentence about one particular episode of History quoted from a Conan Doyle Essay
- 📝 Who or what is Glohithia
- 📝 Was African slave trade ever directed towards Europe? If not, why?
- 📝 What is / are the specific reason(s) for Vyacheslav Molotov's fall from grace with Joseph Stalin?
- 📝 Significance of division of Caledonia by Northumbrian Advance
- 📝 Why did Churchill order the destruction of the bombes?
- 📝 Unofficial title for third or fourth son of a king?
- 📝 What were some of the complications of Marshall Plan?
- 📝 Why is the Bishopric of Canterbury located in London?
- 📝 What is Poosball, an early 1900s women's team sport?
- 📝 Did Engels and Welles ever call for the extermination of Basques and Serbs?
- 📝 What are the social preconditions for division of labour, when compared in different emerging civilizations?
- 📝 Has scholarship shown that persecuted religious minorities have tended to be financially successful?
- 📝 How many illegal aliens were deported under "Operation Wetback"?
- 📝 Is there a name for the critical method of assessing historical narratives via the consultation of primary sources?
- 📝 How did the Swedes integrate Geats, Danes, Walloons, Finns & others?
- 📝 Why did the attempts to keep Africa colonized after World War II fail?
- 📝 Pinpointing the date of a globe
- 📝 What is the highest number of brothers who became ruler of the same country?
- 📝 Was the enclosure responsible for the supply of factory workers in 18th and 19th Century England?
- 📝 Why did the communist party lose in Telangana in India's first general elections?
- 📝 How did the HMAS Sydney know the real Straat Malakka's secret callsign, "IIKP", but not HSK Kormoran?
- 📝 Why were businesses operating as trusts at one point, and why did the practice fall out of favor?
- 📝 Why did Saladin show kindness to Richard I?
- 📝 Were there often intra-USSR wars? If not, why not?
- 📝 Was the Pantheon completely underwater when Rome flooded?
- 📝 When did Abu Bakr agree to lower taxes for the Arabs living under the rule of Byzantine and Sassanid Empire?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 Why was the Håndfæstning forced on Erik V of Denmark?
- 📝 Why was James II and VII (same person), the last Roman Catholic monarch of Britain, not forced to convert to Anglicanism?
- 📝 Why did Hitler attack the Soviet Union when he was still busy fighting the United Kingdom?
- 📝 Why did archery not make a comeback when armor was phased out in the 18th century?
- 📝 Why was Poland spared from the Black Death?
- 📝 Why was Africa colonized last of the continents in the Age of Discovery?
- 📝 Why was the Scout movement so successful?
- 📝 Why was the Council of Nicea held in Nicea rather than Rome or Constantinople?
- 📝 Why was World War I ended on Nov 11 11:00, rather than immediately upon signing the armistice?
- 📝 In the Soviet Union, why was the Cheka renamed so many times?
- 📝 Why was "leaping into the river" a valid trial outcome to prove one's innocence?
- 📝 Why was the Japanese Army's fatalities inflicted:suffered ratio so low in the Pacific theatre?
- 📝 Why was capturing the south of Okinawa necessary?
- 📝 Why were the drawings of Colossus burnt after WW2 and why was its very existence "of course" kept secret?
- 📝 Why was there a surge in the US incarceration rate during the 1990s?
- 📝 Why was the Treaty of Versailles so harsh?
- 📝 If the Ch’in dynasty was so short-lived, why was China named for it?
- 📝 Why was Switzerland not attacked during the two World Wars?
- 📝 Why was sugar cultivation more profitable in the Caribbean/Brazil than West Africa?
- 📝 Why was PTSD not written about as much before the 20th century?
- 📝 Why was Kaliningrad placed under the Russian SFSR rather than the Lithuanian SSR?
- 📝 Why was the Roman Empire considered an empire rather than a kingdom (again)?
- 📝 Why was the northern boundary of the Mongol empire set where it was?
- 📝 When and why was the samurai class abolished?
- 📝 Why was uranium mined in the 1500s, but only "discovered" in 1789?
- 📝 How and why was the boundary between West and East Berlin decided to be where it was?
- 📝 Why were troops with bayonets often effective against enemy cavalry even though the bayonet was a "secondary" weapon?
- 📝 Why was the bald eagle chosen as the national bird of the United States?
- 📝 Why was the US so pro-China and so anti-Japan before WW2?
- 📝 Why was the Red Army successful against the Japanese in 1939 but perform poorly against Finland 1939-40 and early part of WW2?