This page has been validated.
THE LAST YEARS AT HVEEN.
199

that he not only had spent his various pensions and the income from his hereditary estate on his buildings and works at Hveen, but had incurred a debt of 6000 Daler (£1360), and he begged that the King would indemnify him for this loss, as he had spent the money according to the desire of the late King and for the honour of the country. On the 8th July, Kaas and Rosenkrands paid Tycho a visit at Hveen, and probably by their advice the young King, on the 12th July, with the sanction of the Privy Council, granted the said sum of 6000 Daler to Tycho, 2000 to be paid by the Treasury and 4000 from the Crown revenue of the former Dueholm monastery in Jutland. The money was paid on the 14th December following, 2000 from the Sound dues and 4000 from Dueholm.[1] In addition to this proof of the continued favour of the Government, the Protectors on the 23rd August issued a declaration promising to keep the buildings at Hveen in repair at the public expense, and on the expiration of the King's minority to advise him to fix a certain annual endowment for the continuance of the astronomical work there by some fit person of Tycho's own family, or, failing such, by some suitable person of Danish nobility or by some other native.[2] In the following year, on the 17th July 1589, a new declaration to the same effect and very much in the same words was drawn up and signed and sealed, not only by the four Protectors, but by all the members of the Council, fourteen in number.[3]

Though these declarations were very reassuring to Tycho, he seems to have thought that the young King might possibly in future years not consider himself bound by them, for in March 1590 he procured a letter from the

  1. Danske Magazin, ii. p. 249, 253 (Weistritz, ii. 175 and 182).
  2. Ibid., p. 250 (W., p. 177).
  3. Ibid., p. 260 (W., p. 192).