Erik Klipping’s royal charter of 1282: background, provisions, significance

Abstract

In the morning of 22 November 1286, a group of armed men dressed as monks murdered the Danish king Erik V known from his square-cut coins as “Erik Klipping”. The direct cause of the assassination was king Erik’s unpopular financial policy: he ordered all silver pennings circulating in his realm to be sent back to the royal treasury where they would be cut in order to mint new coins from the clipped parts, and imposed new taxes, too. However, another event made Erik even more famous in Danish history. He was the first king in Denmark who had to sign a royal charter (called “håndfæstning”), in many aspects reminiscent of the Magna Carta Libertatum or king Andrew II’s Golden Bull of Hungary.