The canons of Upsala, far from being pacified, were still more inflamed with anger and hatred. They saw that the power of the pope in Sweden was at an end; and fancying that if they ruined the archbishop they should ruin the Reformation, they assailed him with their blows. They accused him of horrible crimes; they stirred up the people against him; and they formed the most frightful conspiracies. Fears were entertained for his life; a fanatic’s dagger might any day make an end of him. The king therefore assigned him a guard of fifty men to protect him from assassins. He did more than this; he removed the canons who had never been any thing but idle clerks, and had displayed a temper so intractable; and he put in their place learned and laborious men who were devoted to the Gospel.[475] The evangelical archbishop was not the only man in Sweden whose life was threatened; the king was threatened also. The Hanse towns, with Lübeck at their head, desirous of regaining the influence which they had so long held in the North, allied themselves for this purpose with Denmark, and opened a correspondence with the Germans who were very numerous at Stockholm. The powerful Hanseatic fleet was thus to find in the very capital of its enemies trusty agents who pledged themselves to deliver up to it the town. But the scheme was detected; and Gustavus, who never hesitated when the business was to strike those who intended to strike himself, ordered the Germans and the Swedes who had taken part in the treacherous designs of the Hanseatics to be put to death. These events created great excitement throughout Sweden, especially at Stockholm. It was given out that the Germans had intended to bring gunpowder into the church and place it under the king’s seat, and then explode it during divine service. It was a _Gunpowder Plot_; but in this case the king was to be attacked, not while discharging his political functions, but at the moment when he was offering to God the worship in spirit and in truth which the Gospel requires. This story, however, might be nothing more than one of those reports which circulate among the public, without any other foundation than the general blind excitement which gives birth to the wildest rumors. These events occurred in the year 1536.[476] [Sidenote: Infringement Of Religious Freedom.]