Sverri's Reforms 287 



the family which rivalled his own ; but he won a 

 firmer place on his throne. He had already begun to 

 carry out changes of government which were to effect 

 a revolution in the constitution and the destruction 

 of the old aristocratic lenderman class. He had becrun 

 to establish a bureaucracy, dependent entirely on the 

 support of the crown. The new officers who were to 

 oust the lendermen from almost all their power were 

 called Syssel-men — District-men. The difference be- 

 tween them and the lendermen was that the latter had 

 been great landowners, and owed their consideration, 

 first of all, to their family and their estates, only in 

 a very secondary degree to tlie functions — of tax- 

 collecting, etc. — which they performed for the crown. 

 The Syssel-men, on the other hand, were officials and 

 nothing more. The difference may be illustrated for 

 us to-day by the difference between the unpaid and 

 the paid magistracy in England. For the unpaid 

 magistracy — the county justices of the peace — repre- 

 sent the last relics of aristocratic government in this 

 country. 



Sverri, through all his years of adventure, had shown 

 himself — or professed himself — a man of almost fana- 

 tical piety. We constantly see him stopping to pray, 

 all exposed to the darts of his enemies, at the beginning 

 of a battle, or in its course. In his great battle in the 

 Sogne Fjord, it was at his raising the Kyric Eleison that 

 his foes saw that the battle was going against them. For 

 all that, Sverri was the deadly foe to the pretensions 

 of the Churcli. We might call him a sort of Middle- 

 Age Puritan ; it is on this point that he comes nearest 

 in character to Cromwell. It was the object of tlie new 



