In the following year Sweden was forced into a war which lasted up to 1536, the so-called “Feud of the Counts,” the chief participants being the counts of Holstein, Oldenburg and Hoya. Sweden sided with Christian of Holstein, who fought for his rights to the throne of Denmark after his father Frederic, being opposed by the other counts and by Lubeck. Hard and repeated pressure was brought to bear on Svante Sture, a son of Lord Sten and Christine Gyllenstierna, to appear as a pretender against Gustavus; but the noble youth, who was sojourning in Germany, firmly withstood these temptations. His mother had married John Turesson, a son of the traitor Ture Jœnsson, who was as able a man as his father was a bad one, being the successful commander of a Swedish army which invaded the Danish provinces held by the count of Oldenburg. A Swedish fleet, created through sacrifices of nobles and peasants, distinguished itself repeatedly. The war ended in the defeat of Lubeck. Gustavus had, since the end of the work of liberation, crushed the power of the Church, punished the revolting peasants, kept the aristocracy within bounds, and put an end to the supremacy of Lubeck. But he went still further, trying to deprive the Church of its last vestige of authority, to introduce a minute administration of the provinces and to enforce the absolute power of the crown. To these plans he was led by two foreign advisers, Georg Norman and Konrad Pentinger. But it must be said to the credit of the king that their influence vanished when he saw that their “reforms” were not acceptable to the people. From this period of his reign, one noteworthy and wholesome measure remains, the reintroduction of the former hereditary order of succession to the throne. It was formulated and accepted at the Riksdag of Œrebro (Jan. 4, 1540), memorable also through death sentences pronounced upon two of the apostles of the Swedish Reformation. The king had long regarded his chancellor and the two brothers, Olaus and Laurentius Petri, the latter archbishop of Upsala, with suspicion. The climax was reached when a conspiracy by German burghers of Stockholm against the king’s life was discovered, and it was proved that Olaus Petri and Laurentius Andreæ were conscious of its purport, without making it known to the king. They were condemned to death, Archbishop Laurentius being forced to take a seat as one of the judges, but pardoned at the request of the burghers of Stockholm, on the grounds that the ministers had received their knowledge on the pledge of secrecy through confession. Laurentius Andreæ lost his position as the king’s chancellor. In the following year each church in the country was presented with a copy of the complete translation of the Bible, the work of the two reformers.