Lord Rochford and the Hat Diet, 1769–1770

Abstract

It was in no festive spirit that Goodricke greeted the end of the old year and the opening of the new. In four months the Extra-ordinary Diet was due to meet in Norrköping; and four months was far too little to give time for the upturn in the economy, already perceptible, to have its effect upon the elections. Without some such recovery, the outlook was undeniably bleak. It was indeed possible to hope that the alliance of Court and Hats which had made possible the success of the Inactivity would break down, once its immediate object had been attained; but the decisive part played by Fersen during the crisis of December had shaken Goodricke’s belief that when it came to the fundamental issue of the preservation of “liberty” Fersen could be relied upon to be staunch to the constitution.¹ Though he did not know it, events in January seemed to show that he was right: by the middle of that month, Court and Hats had reached agreement on a plan for constitutional reform which, though it fell short of what Choiseul would have desired, was not too far from the model which Prince Gustav had propounded a few weeks earlier.² How far that agreement would hold, how practicable such a reform would prove, once the riksdag was assembled — that was, indeed, another question: as with the ill-fated Composition of 1763, it was an agreement reached by party leaders; it could not count on the support of the Hat rank and file; and even between the leaders it was (at least for some of them) no more than a tactical move: experience would very soon prove that for Pechlin, for instance, and also for Fersen himself, it did not represent their real convictions. On the royalist side, Sinclair privately expressed a cynical skepticism.³