(Cambridge Concise Histories) Jerzy Lukowski, Hubert Zawadzki - A Concise History of Poland-Cambridge University Press (2006)

The szlachta of the wider ‘communitns nobilium’ voiced their hopes and fears at the local assemblies, sejmiki, which had their roots in the judicial and administrative activities of the Piast era. During the fifteenth century, the practice grew of the holding of larger, regional assemblies, a development which nurtured the emergence of representatives or 'envoys’ - nuntii terrarnm. The nobility were largely free to attend in person more important sessions of the royal council. Their attendance converted its sessions into a ‘conventio generalis’ or ‘Sejm Walny’. Those present tended to be drawn from the ranks of councillors’ clienteles. During the 1490s, these nuntii gained their own separate chamber at the Sejm, probably as a deliberate move by John Albert to keep a check on over-mighty councillors. The Sejm was never able to disencumber itself of its original character of an outgrowth of the faction-ridden royal council, mistrusted by the szlachta at large. Envoys rarely felt confident of being able to speak for their electors on matters not directly put to them. Tax grants were often accompanied with the rider that their payment depended on final approval by individual constituencies. Sejmiki felt able to advise, enjoin or even restrain their envoys’ activities. The growing number of envoys, from around forty in 1500 to almost eighty by mid-century, brought the Sejm, at best, only increased moral authority. Given the resort, especially by John Albert and Alexander, to a common front between monarch and nobles against over-mighty magnates, some kind of more lasting constitutional partnership might have evolved; but the clear preference of Sigismund I and II for working with their senatorial lords put an end to the prospects (insofar as they existed) of any such compact. The Chamber of Envoys regarded itself as a forum for local emissaries, rather than as part of a sovereign legislative body in its own right. No monarch felt confident enough seriously to attempt to impose discipline and order on its frequently chaotic proceedings, nor did the Chamber feel sufficiently assured of its own role to do so for itself. There was not even a formal voting procedure - laws were passed by acclamation and if sufficient agreement could not be mustered, the whole parliament might disperse without any conclusive measures.

Poland’s cash-strapped monarchs had no alternative but to look to the szlachta for support. In \ązz and 1454, the pospolite niszenie refused to move against the Ordensstaat until its grievances were addressed. In 1496, John Albert, in return for backing for his expedition to Moldavia, not only confirmed all existing privileges but went on to grant the nobility exemption from customs duties on all commodities of domestic production and consumption. He even agreed that townsmen should be barred from owning land and to making it almost impossible for peasants to leave their seigneurial estates. Yet this was not just constitutional extortion - the monarcbs, too, were bidding for wider support against their over-mighty subjects - usually members of rhe royal council who sought, unavailingly, to distance themselves from their lesser fellow-nobles. The Chojnice-Nieszawa Privileges of 1454, binding the king not to levy taxes, enact new laws or even call the pospohte ruszenie without the prior consent of the sejmiki, were designed to enable Casimir IV to appeal over more powerful magnates to the nobility at large. Ironically, these concessions were made to a pospolite ruszenie which otherwise threatened not to fight against the Teutonic Knights. It was promptly defeated, but the concessions remained.

To begin with, the nobility did not seek to share power with the monarchy, but protection against oppression. The post of justiciar, with its virtually unlimited powers of arrest, which Jagiello had promised to abolish in 1386, was wound up by John Albert only in 1496. The Privileges of T422 (Czerwinsk) and 1430 (Jedlnia) had supposedly safeguarded the nobility from confiscation of property and arrest, save after due process - Neminem captivalnmus nisi iure victum. Yet complaints against the abuse of power by royal officialdom continued to increase. The bulk of the 1454 Privilege addressed szlachta concerns at judicial abuses and arbitrariness by councillors and royal officials, or rhe monarchy itself. Among its provisions was confirmation of the nobles’ right to run their own civil judicial affairs, a point regarded as crucial to their platform of ‘liberties’: they could elect the key offices of judge and deputy-judge to the county courts, the forum of civil disputes within the szlachta estate. Such concessions generated their own momentum. Increasingly, even justice was noble, as opposed to royal.