King Eric Menved had attained his majority, having completed his twenty-first year. The circumstances under which he had passed his childhood had conduced to the early formation of manly character, and to the development of his intellectual qualities. The outrage committed on the royal person, to which he had been witness in his childhood, had early awakened the consciousness of authority within his breast, and imparted something of passionate earnestness to his zeal in the administration of justice. He was deeply imbued with the chivalrous spirit of the age. The care with which he upheld the dignity of the crown was deemed by many a necessary policy in so perilous a time, but this anxiety for the maintenance of royal splendour, joined to his natural gaiety of disposition, had inspired the young monarch with a love of pomp and outward show, which was often censured as ostentatious vanity. The earnest solemnity with which he assumed the regal sceptre indicated a manly and resolute temper, early disciplined to firmness in the school of adversity; and the boldness with which he issued his first royal mandates bespoke a master spirit, conscious of kindred affinity with Waldemar the Victorious, the model as well as the ancestor of the young king,[3] Eric's first exercise of royal power was a bold attempt to assert the authority of his crown against the mightiest of earthly potentates, who from St. Peter's chair swayed kings as well as people in all Christian lands. This the young monarch dared to do, even at a time when his personal happiness was in a great measure dependent on the favour of the papal see. He had despatched his oldest and most experienced councillor of state, Ion Little, as well as Drost Hessel[4], to Rome, to justify as an act of lawful self-defence the proceedings against the archbishop, contrary to ecclesiastical law, and to demand his condemnation as a traitor to the crown. But besides this important mission, the aged councillor was entrusted with another, which at any other time would not have been attended with difficulty, although at the present juncture its favourable issue seemed doubtful, in proportion to its being of moment to the king. Little had been commissioned to obtain from the pope, and forward to Denmark with all possible dispatch, the long promised dispensation, empowering Eric to wed the beautiful princess Ingeborg of Sweden, to whom he had been betrothed in infancy, and had long loved as the companion of his childhood, and whom he now adored with all the devotedness and fervour of first and youthful love.