en by the
sea, of which Severin Norby, with the Danish squadron, was master. The
scantiness of the means of attack may be discovered from the
circumstance that sixty German spearmen, whom Clement Rensel, a burgher
of Stockholm, himself a narrator of these events, brought from Dantzic
in July for the service of Gustavus, were regarded as a reenforcement of
the highest importance. "At this time," says the chronicle, "Lord
Gustave enjoyed not much repose or many pleasant days, when he kept his
people in so many campaigns and investments, since he bore for them all
great anxiety, fear, and peril, how he might lend them help in their
need, so that they might not be surprised through heedlessness and
laches. So likewise his pain was not small when he had but little in his
money chest, and it was grievous to give this answer when the folk cried
for stipend. Therefore he stayed not many days in the same place, but
travelled day and night between the camps."

In the month of August he arrived at Stegeborg, which was now besieged
by his general, Arwid the West-Goth, who had recently repulsed with
great bravery Severin Norby's attempt to relieve the castle, and had
even begun to take homage for Gustavus from the people of his province,
although in this he experienced difficulties. The East-Goths declared
that they had been so chastised for their attack on the Bishop's castle
at Linkoping the preceding year that they no longer dared to provoke
either King Christian or Bishop Hans Brask. The personal presence of
Gustavus decided the waverers, and even the Bishop received him as a
friend, because he would otherwise have stood in danger of a hostile
visitation. Gustavus now convoked a diet of barons at Vadstena, which
was attended by seventy Swedish gentlemen of noble family and by many
other persons of all classes in Gothland. These made him a tender of the
crown, which he refused to accept. On August 24th, therefore, they swore
fealty and obedience to him as administrator of the kingdom--"in like
manner," add the chronicles, "as had formerly been done in Upland";
whence they seem to have assumed that he had already been acknowledged
as such in Upper Sweden, here called Upland, as we often find it in the
chronicles of the Middle Age. This was the first public declaration of
the nobility in favor of Gustavus and his cause; although the greatest
barons in this division of the kingdom, such as Nils Boson (Grip),
Holger Carlson (Gere), a