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 clergy when they urged him to confess his sins and seek absolution. He seems at one time almost to have contemplated the discontinuance of the episcopal office. In 1539 one George Norman, who had been recommended to him by Melanchthon, was appointed, by a commission not unlike that which had been given by Henry VIII to Cromwell a few years before, to superintend and visit the clergy and churches of Sweden; and a general visitation of the whole kingdom took place under his auspices in 1540. From 1544 the King refused to give the episcopal title to any but the Archbishop of Upsala; the rest he styled Ordinaries. As time went on, the dioceses were divided up into some twelve portions in all, each under its Ordinary. That this division was in itself desirable is likely enough, for the old dioceses were very large and unwieldy. Moreover some at any rate of Gustavus' new Ordinaries were in episcopal orders; e.g. when the old diocese of Abo (Finland) was subdivided into Abo and Viborg, the two new Ordinaries, Michael Agricola (who had previously been vicar-general of the whole diocese) and Paulus Juusten, were consecrated as Bishops together by Bishop Bothvid of Strengnäs in 1554. Nevertheless the effect of his action was undoubtedly to cast a slight upon the episcopal Order, and had there not been a reaction subsequently it must have been highly prejudicial if not fatal to the continued existence of episcopacy in Sweden.

The nine years of Gustavus' son and successor Erik XIV (1560-9), for some time the suitor of Elizabeth of England, were years of disaster for the Swedish State, and not less so for the Church. He inclined towards Calvinism, and already during his father's lifetime an overture had been made by Calvin towards the Swedish royal House by the joint dedication of a writing to father and son. It was ineffective so far as Gustavus was concerned, but Erik on his accession at once began to show favour towards Calvinists, announced his intention of making Sweden a refuge for distressed Protestants, and used his authority in the Church to bring about the suppression of a few fast days and other observances of the old order. His wasteful extravagance from the first pressed heavily on the State. But the real afflictions arose in the latter part of his reign, when he was engaged in war both at home and abroad, and everything was allowed to fall into neglect; churches fell into ruins, the church plate disappeared, benefices were not filled up, or only by incompetent persons, and the schools ceased to exist. At length in 1569 Erik was dethroned by his brothers, Johan and Karl, to whom their father had left hereditary dukedoms, and who seem to have agreed upon a joint conduct of the government after Erik's deposition; and some years later he was brutally murdered in prison, in pursuance of a vote of the members of the Riksrad, both lay and clerical.

The new King, Johan III, was a scholar and a theologian, whose reading of Cassander and other similar divines led him to lay all possible stress upon the ancient order of the. Swedish Church, whilst