iculties in the way of
the election of that dignitary should be removed, with Eskill,
Archbishop of Lund, who received him in the most honorable and cordial
manner, notwithstanding that by his agency the authority of the Danish
Church was so seriously curtailed. The Cardinal Legate would seem to
have sought by this act of confidence to soothe the soreness, which
Eskill must naturally have felt at seeing his honors so shorn. The
primate of Lund was also informed that he should still continue to
preserve the title of Primate of Sweden, with the right of
consecrating and investing with the pallium the future archbishops of
that kingdom. Farther, he was promised, as some compensation for what
he had lost, the grant of a right from the Holy See of annexing to his
archiepiscopal dignity the style of "Legati nati Apostolicis Sedis" in
the three kingdoms. [5] During the stay of Nicholas Breakspere in
Denmark, it happened that John, a younger son of Swercus, King of
Sweden and Gothland, and a prince whose radically bad character had
been totally ruined by a neglected education, carried off by violence,
and dishonored the wife of his eldest brother Charles, together with
her widowed sister,--princesses of unsullied fame, and nearly related
to Sweno III., at that time, king of Denmark. This atrocity naturally
excited a deep resentment against its author, at home and abroad: and
roused Sweno to resolve on invading Sweden and Gothland with all his
forces, in revenge of so insulting an outrage; a resolution in which
he grew all the more fixed, by the recollection that Swercus himself
had formerly injured Nicholas, a predecessor of Sweno on the throne,
by perfidiously seducing, and marrying his intended bride--an injury
all the bitterer, as Nicholas never could retaliate it, by reason of
domestic broils with his own people.

The Cardinal Legate no sooner became aware of this gathering storm,
than he sought to avert its outbreak; and repaired to King Sweno, with
whom he remonstrated against the projected war, not only on religious,
but prudential grounds; depicting to him the many serious obstacles by
sea and land which must be surmounted before any advantage could be
won; and reminding him, "that if the spider, by disembowelling
herself, as least, caught the flies she gave chace to, yet the Danes
could only expect to run the certain peril of their lives in their
proposed campaign." [6] The cardinal's interference in this instance
in