did not remember that the Chancellor was interested in it for the sake of the honour thus conferred on his country, and would therefore continue to protect it. Another but shorter poem was soon afterwards printed at Uraniborg, addressed to the learned Heinrich Rantzov, governor of the Duchy of Holstein. In this poem, which is dated the 1st March 1585, Tycho complains that Rantzov, in a book on astrology which he had just published, had used the word specula when speaking of Uraniborg, which magnificent building did not merit so mean an appellation.[1]
The considerable building operations in which Tycho engaged at Hveen obliged him to require a great deal of work from his tenants there, and when we remember his naturally hot temper, and his habit of exacting without scruple what was due to him (and even more, as in the case of Holk's widow), it is not to be wondered at that complaints were more than once made by the tenants at Hveen of his arbitrary treatment of them. Already on the 10th April 1578 an order was issued by the king to the peasants at Hveen, that they were not to leave the island because Tycho Brahe required more labour than had formerly been demanded from them.[2] But Tycho, who was perhaps not worse (and certainly not better) than his fellow-nobles were generally in the treatment of their inferiors, continued in the following years to make such great demands on the peasantry at Hveen to get his buildings, plantations, fishponds, &c., finished, that fresh complaints were made. The king therefore sent two noblemen, the governor of Helsingborg Castle and the governor of Landskrona Castle, to Hveen to investigate matters. When these two officials had presented their report, the king, on the 8th January 1581 (the same day on which he ordered his lieutenant at
