Instrument of Government (1634)

[6] The Instrument largely ignored the role of the Crown in its description of the operation of the Swedish government, and indeed reassigned many functions which were usually discharged by the king to the Great Officers of the Realm instead.

Not by the king, who in a peculiar way stands outside the hierarchy, but by the officials…In the system instituted by this Instrument of Government, there is no place for the personal rule that characterises Gustav Adolf's time.

The Instrument of Government was endorsed by the Riksdag of the Estates in July 1634 and subsequently applied across Sweden, although technically it did not have legal force as it was never formally confirmed by either Queen Christina or her successor King Charles X Gustav.

He therefore proposed to the 1660 session of the Riksdag that the Instrument be rewritten to give him greater freedom of action, but his efforts came to naught due to his sudden death in February of that year.

His son and successor Charles XII was less sensitive, especially toward the end of his reign, when the strains imposed by the Great Northern War led him to rule in an increasingly high-handed and autocratic fashion.

His arbitrary interference in the business of government and his refusal to take advice from his officials led to mounting frustration with the absolutist system, and after the king's death in 1718 it was overthrown and replaced by a constitutional monarchy.