eon was
essentially that which had been in operation in the kingdom since the
second half of the seventeenth century. Prior to a remarkable
revolution which, in 1660, followed the conclusion of a costly war
with Sweden, monarchy in Denmark was limited and almost uniformly
weak. Through three hundred years the kings were elected by the
Rigsrad, or senate, and the conditions of their tenure were such as to
preclude both the independence of action and the accumulation of
resources which is essential to absolutism. As early as 1282 the
nobles were able to extort from the crown a _haandfaestning_, or
charter, and almost every sovereign after that date was compelled,
once at least during his reign, to make a grant of chartered
privileges. To the Danehof, or national assembly, fell at times a (p. 555)
goodly measure of authority, although eventually it was the Rigsrad
that procured the supreme control of the state. The national assembly
comprised the three estates of the nobles, the clergy, and the
burgesses;[778] the senate was a purely aristocratic body.

[Footnote 778: In the Swedish diet the peasantry
constituted a fourth estate, but in Denmark no
political power was possessed by this class.]

In 1660 there occurred a revolution in consequence of which the
monarchy was rehabilitated and a governmental system which long had
been notoriously disjointed and inefficient was replaced by a system
which, if despotic, was at least much superior to that which
theretofore had been in operation. The nobles, discredited by the
calamities which their misrule had brought upon the nation, were
compelled to give way, and the estates represented in the Danehof
surrendered, in a measure voluntarily, a considerable portion of the
privileges to which they had been accustomed to lay claim. The
monarchy was put once more upon an hereditary basis and its powers
were materially enlarged. The intent of the aggressive sovereign of
the day, Frederick III., was to proceed with caution, but not to stop
halfway. By the promulgation of two monumental documents the road was
thrown open to thoroughgoing absolutism. One of these was the
"Instrument, or Pragmatic Sanction, of the King's Hereditary Right to
the Kingdoms of Denmark and Norway," dated January 10, 1661. The other
was the _Kongelov_, or "King's Law," of November 14, 1665, a state
paper which has been declared to have "the highly dubious