it, and all claim to its government or revenues, for thirty-four thousand marks—a sum which Magnus readily paid him. The latter had now a double right to the province—that of voluntary submission, and that of purchase. [Sidenote: 1332, 1333.] In the last year of Christopher’s life, two of his nobles, in the view of obtaining the favour of the Holstein family, entered into a plot for his assassination. They set fire to his house, seized him as he was escaping, and bore him to a fortress in the isle of Laland, which belonged to count John. That nobleman, however, no longer feared a prince who had fallen into universal contempt, and whose cause was hopeless. He therefore ordered him to be released. The following year Christopher died a natural death, after the most disastrous reign in the annals of the kingdom.—By his wife Euphemia, daughter of Bogislas, duke of Pomerania, he had three sons and three daughters. Eric, the eldest, preceded him to the tomb; Otho ultimately became a knight of the Teutonic order; Valdemar, after a short interregnum, succeeded him. Of his daughters two died in youth; but the eldest, Margaret, was married to Ludovic of Brandenburg, son of the emperor Ludovic of Bavaria. INTERREGNUM. 1333–1340. [Sidenote: 1333, 1334.] The two counts of Holstein, who had thus partitioned the kingdom between them, consulted how they might perpetuate their usurpation. The best mode was to delay as long as possible the election of a new monarch; to exclude the two sons of the late king from the succession; and, when an election could no longer be avoided, to procure the union of the suffrages in favour of some prince whom they might control. In any case as their sway might and probably must be brief, their interest lay in deriving the utmost advantage in the shortest possible time from their position. Hence their rapacity, which their armies enabled them to exercise with impunity. [Sidenote: 1334 to 1340.]