36
In the autumn of 1562 the politics of union changed forever. It was the Lithuanians, not the Poles, who changed them, although it was through the very Polish mechanism of a confederation formed by members of the ordinary nobility gathered in a military camp near Vitsebsk. Sigismund August had summoned the levy to repel an expected Muscovite invasion. War with Muscovy had resumed in 1558 after Sigismund August’s intervention in the complex politics of Livonia. From 1552, encouraged by Albrecht von Hohenzollern, he took the initiative as the decayed Livonian Order, left stranded by the establishment of Ducal Prussia in 1525, entered its death throes. Wracked by internal problems and the conversion of increasing numbers of brothers to Lutheranism, it became involved in bitter disputes with Albrecht’s brother Wilhelm, archbishop of Riga from 1539, and the Livonian estates.1 In 1554 Albrecht suggested that the Order’s lands be secularized as a fief under Wilhelm on the Prussian model, and that Livonia should join the union. Sigismund August, aware of growing Muscovite interest in Livonia, and that Charles V regarded it as subject to the Empire, was initially cautious. With encouragement from the Lithuanian council, however, he acted. In 1557 he mobilized a large Polish-Lithuanian army that sat on the border in Pozwol, threatening invasion and forcing grand master Wilhelm von Fürstenberg to end his disputes with Wilhelm von Hohenzollern and Riga.
Czarny urged Sigismund August to incorporate Livonia into Lithuania. The opportunity came in early 1558 when Ivan IV, angered at Dorpat’s failure to pay him tribute under a 1502 treaty, invaded, seizing Dorpat and Narva. The Livonian estates appealed to Sigismund August for aid. Over the next three years, as Ivan’s forces raided Livonia, annihilating the Order’s army at Ermes in 1560 and imprisoning Fürstenberg, Sigismund August sought to mediate. In 1561 the seizure of Reval by Erik XIV of Sweden ended hopes of a peaceful settlement. On 28 November 1561 Sigismund August signed a treaty with the Order and the archbishopric of Riga, by which the Livonian estates recognized him as their overlord. All Livonia, apart from Ösel, which was controlled by Denmark, swore loyalty to Sigismund August as king of Poland and grand duke of Lithuania; he promised to secure sejm agreement for its incorporation into Poland. Czarny proposed that it be incorporated into both Poland and Lithuania, but the Livonians felt they would enjoy greater security as part of Poland alone. The archbishopric of Riga was confirmed in all its privileges; the Order was secularized; the rights of Lutherans were guaranteed; and it was promised that Livonia would continue to be administered by Germans, with German as the language of government. Gotthard Kettler, Fürstenberg’s successor, was appointed governor in Riga. He was granted a wedge of territory along the left bank of the Düna river as duke of Courland and Semgallen, which became a Polish fief. Sigismund August pledged to secure recognition from Ferdinand I, who had succeeded Charles V as Emperor, of the severing of the link to the Empire, but must have realized that this promise might be difficult to honour. The city of Riga initially refused to accept the incorporation treaty, but when Ferdinand failed to send aid it accepted the union.2
It was not Ferdinand whom Sigismund August had to fear, but Ivan and Erik. Erik occupied much of northern Livonia, taking Pernau in June 1562, but Ivan was the main threat. Fresh from the conquest of Kazan and Astrakhan, he was disinclined to accept Sigismund August’s unilateral action, or surrender the bishopric of Dorpat. His strategy was inspired. While sending forces into Livonia to harry and burn, he launched his main assault on Lithuania, reviving the struggle for control of all Rus'. His military reforms meant that the large armies he deployed, accompanied by a considerable train of siege guns and toughened by the campaigns in the south, were far more formidable forces than those of his father or grandfather. In February 1563 the Muscovites seized Polatsk after a brief siege, opening up central Lithuania and threatening Vilnius itself.3
Sigismund August and Czarny lacked the military muscle to back their ambitious Livonian policy. Polatsk had not yet fallen in September 1562 when the Lithuanian levy reluctantly gathered at Vitsebsk, but it was apparent that the size, energy, and ruthlessness of the Muscovite forces meant that Lithuania could not hope to defend itself alone. Sigismund August, who had not called a Polish sejm since 1559, had no money and precious few Polish troops to stiffen the Lithuanian army. Since there was no time to summon a full Lithuanian sejm to Vilnius he decided to treat the levy summoned to Vitsebsk as a camp sejm. He proposed that it vote new taxes, including the serebshchyzna, and ordered that it should not disperse until they were agreed. Rudy, as hetman, was supposed to deliver both the taxes and an effective force to counter the Muscovites, but the nobles would only agree taxes at a level far below what was required.
They did not, however, restrict their discussions to taxation. Discontent ran high, and the assembly sent an embassy led by Prince Łukasz Bolko Świrski to the king complaining about the shortage of provisions and asking for the army’s dispersal. When Sigismund August refused, a second embassy was sent, under the young steward of Lithuania, Jan Chodkiewicz, son of Hieronim, castellan of Vilnius, to demand a full sejm to discuss the defence of the realm. When this request was again dismissed the Vitsebsk camp was ready. The levy had not been idle, undertaking a raid on Velizh, which had to be abandoned owing to a lack of supplies. When Rudy left the camp discussions took a new turn.4
The envoys were sent back with a petition, drawn up on Sunday 13 September 1562, that radically altered the political landscape. It began with an explosive demand:
That His Majesty call a common sejm with the Polish lords and that a union be formed in the closest of unity for two reasons: to choose a common ruler, and for common defence; and that there be one common sejm and one common law.5
The nobles were in no mood for compromise. If this request was refused, they would empower envoys to negotiate directly with the Poles for closer union. Despite their previous request, they stressed that they would not allow any separate Lithuanian sejm to meet, even if it were summoned to discuss long-standing noble demands, including corrections to the 1529 statute. Nothing was to distract them from their demand for a common sejm with the Poles. Should these requests not be granted within three weeks, the petitioners would advance on Vilnius en masse, would refuse to pay taxes, would not answer summonses of the levy, and would refuse to discuss defence or any other matter. They stated that they were sending envoys to their brothers in Samogitia, and in other districts not represented in the camp to secure their support.6
The original petition has not survived. A brief account was published by Działyński in his edition of the diary of the 1562–3 Polish sejm, and two Polish translations were unearthed by Halecki in the Czartoryski library.7 The uncertain provenance of these documents led Kiaupienė to question the standard interpretation of the Vitsebsk events, most fully developed by Halecki, that the petition demonstrated strong support from the Lithuanian noble masses for closer union, motivated by a desire to throw off the oligarchic rule of the council lords in general, and of the Radziwiłłs in particular.8 Kiaupienė challenges Halecki’s assertion that the petition represented the emergence of the Lithuanian nobility as an independent political force, and Hrushevsky’s contention that the nobles at Vitsebsk acted against the will of the magnates. She argues that Lithuanian politics was determined entirely by clientage relations, and that the events at Vitsebsk were the result of magnate intrigues against the Radziwiłłs led by Chodkiewicz, himself a magnate whose support for closer union was purely instrumental. Far from opposing the magnates, the Lithuanian nobility formed with them a united political nation with a common vision of Lithuanian statehood and nationhood. Clientage links ensured that ordinary nobles failed to develop any independent programme, and the magnates retained political leadership.9
Ianushkevich also criticizes the view that the Vitsebsk petition represented an attack by the ordinary nobility on the magnates. He is more willing than Kiaupienė to recognize the nobles as an independent political force, but suggests that the introduction to the petition in the Polish copy, in which the magnates are attacked for attempting to blacken the Poles in the eyes of the ordinary nobles, and for sitting at home enriching themselves while the nobles were called out to fight, was a tendentious interpolation by the unknown Małopolskan translator. Chodkiewicz’s involvement and the fact that nobody on the council saw the Vitsebsk events as an anti-magnate attack means it would be wrong to see them in such a light. Ianushkevich argues that support for union was not deep-rooted: the issue was used instrumentally to put pressure on Sigsimund August and the council to accept their demands on other matters, such as taxation.10
These arguments have proven influential.11 Yet if Halecki was undoubtedly too keen to see in the Vitsebsk events mass support from the Lithuanian nobility for his Jagiellonian idea, Kiaupienė’s attempt to deny ordinary nobles any political initiative and to reduce them to obedient pawns in the hands of magnate faction-leaders is unconvincing. The division of the Lithuanian elites into ‘magnates’ and ‘szlachta’ is a construct of historians which, as Ianushkevich stresses, is not echoed in the sources. Yet if it is possible that the Polish translator put an executionist gloss on the petition’s preamble, it is unlikely that he made up the attacks on the Lithuanian council, and on the Radziwiłłs. Ianushkevich does not explain why the copyist should invent the passage. He hints that the executionists wished to stir up Lithuanian nobles against the council, but does not explain how this document might achieve that end, written as it was in Polish, and clearly intended to inform Poles of events in Lithuania. He does not explain his observation that the introductory passage ‘did not reflect objective reality’.12 His suggestion that Chodkiewicz seized the opportunity at Vitsebsk to secure noble support is plausible; Kiaupienė’s assumption that the idea of pushing for closer union was foisted upon ordinary nobles as part of a magnate faction struggle is not.
The role of Chodkiewicz and other magnates in the 1562 events is not to be doubted. Although it will never be clear who drafted the petition, it is entirely possible that Chodkiewicz played a key role. Jučas infers that since Chodkiewicz later joined the Radziwiłł in opposing closer union, he may not have been involved. Yet his later opposition to the terms on offer does not mean that he opposed the principle, while the Radziwiłł attitude to union was far more complex than is often allowed.13 The widespread resentment at the Radziwiłł stranglehold on power means there is every reason to suppose that the gist of the preamble was indeed composed by ordinary Lithuanian nobles, and that Chodkiewicz, who had every reason to resent Radziwiłł power, jumped on a bandwagon that was already trundling. There were many reasons for resentment of the Radziwiłł grip on power, and of the privileged position of the lords and princes by ordinary nobles, not least the fact that most provided military service separately from the rest of the nobility, did not have to serve under the ensigns who led the local military units, and were not subject to the local courts. The remark about lords sitting at home enriching themselves while others served reflected Lithuanian, not Polish, concerns, and was unlikely to be inserted by a magnate like Chodkiewicz.14
The ordinary nobility did not burst unexpectedly on the political scene in the Vitsebsk camp. There had been no shortage of complaints and demands for reform before 1562. Political activism grew steadily during Sigismund’s reign, expressing itself at the increasingly frequent Lithuanian sejms. Their form and procedure, however, meant that ordinary nobles could do little more than submit petitions to the grand duke, who consulted with the council and replied to them, often simply dismissing them without explanation. Even if the nobles attending the sejm were not elected by local sejmiks—which did not yet exist—in the Polish way, but were nominated by powerful local figures—usually the palatine or governor—the content of those petitions reveals much about noble concerns.
Thus at the 1544 Brest sejm, when Sigismund August and the council formulated a decree on military service without consultation, the nobility protested. The regular military gatherings and local assemblies at which envoys to the sejm were nominated gave nobles the opportunity to formulate their demands. Such assemblies by no means always accepted grand ducal decisions on matters such as the appointment of local officials, and protests became common.15 In 1547 various issues were raised, including demands that copies of local privileges be made more readily available so that local nobles might better know their rights; that ‘corrections’ be made to the 1529 statute; that the serebshchyzna revenues should be examined by auditors; and that reports on its collection should be submitted to the sejm instead of simply being deposited in the treasury.16
This assertiveness was encouraged by increasing awareness of the nature of Polish institutions and of Polish law. Kiaupienė downplays this factor, arguing that the ordinary nobility did not know Polish, and could not communicate with Poles.17 Yet there were many who did understand Polish, while the large number of Polish political and legal terms entering Ruthenian in this period suggests that communication was not unduly hampered by linguistic problems. While the Polish written by Lithuanians was not always entirely clear—as Sigismund August complained to Rudy in 1548—Ruthenian and Polish were mutually intelligible to a considerable degree. There were many Polish Ruthenians among the soldiers, courtiers, and administrators who spent time in the grand duchy, while most of the Calvinist preachers employed by Czarny after his conversion were Poles.18 Although the practice of sending regular Lithuanian delegations to the Polish sejm ended in 1518—to the pained surprise of the Poles—it revived after 1529 as the pressing need for common defence returned.19 These delegations may have been irregular, but they enabled Lithuanians to observe the operation of the Polish sejm, and of Polish politics. While this may only have encouraged the council lords to resist egalitarian Polish ways and the restructuring of the Lithuanian sejm along Polish lines, different conclusions could be drawn by those excluded from power.
The opportunities for Lithuanians to assimilate Polish ideas were manifold. There were large numbers of Poles in Lithuania during Sigismund August’s reign. Apart from the almost continuous presence of Polish troops from the 1550s, there was always a considerable number of Poles in the royal entourage, which became significant thanks to Sigismund August’s long periods of residence in Vilnius. Despite a request at the 1551 Lithuanian sejm that he establish a separate Lithuanian court, Sigismund August did not do so, even when he governed Lithuania as grand duke between 1544 and 1548, although he appointed Lithuanian court dignitaries who served him when resident in the grand duchy.20 His court was substantial, numbering some 750 individuals, not counting Barbara’s separate court.21 Although the majority of the king’s courtiers were Poles, many Lithuanians served him, in Poland as well as Lithuania; several were later appointed to high office, including Havrylo Hornostai (palatine of Minsk then Brest); Mikołaj Dorohostajski (palatine of Polatsk); Jerzy Ościk (palatine of Mstislav then Smolensk); Stanisław Pac (palatine of Vitsebsk); Andrzej Sapieha (castellan of Minsk then palatine of Polatsk and Smolensk); Mikołaj Talwosz (successively castellan of Minsk, Samogitia, and Trakai); Hryhory Volovych (palatine of Smolensk), and Paweł Sapieha, who was already palatine of Podlasie before he became a courtier. Although there were many Germans at the courts of Elizabeth and Catherine Habsburg, Poles dominated the courts of all Sigismund August’s queens, though Lithuanians and Ruthenians also served.22 Lithuanians frequently came to Cracow during the grand duke’s long absences in Poland: Czarny was by no means an exception. Lithuanian chancery officials resided at court for long periods, and individuals attended court events, or came to pursue private matters.23
Thus many more Lithuanians from all levels of the nobility had the opportunity to interact with Poles than a century earlier. There was every opportunity for Lithuanians to learn of the advantages of Polish ways, especially since Poles showed no aversion to boasting about them. The Lithuanian sejm began to sound ever more like its Polish counterpart. At the 1554 Vilnius sejm the nobility petitioned Sigismund August to confirm the privileges, liberties, and freedoms granted by his predecessors, and requested that the 1529 statute be written into them ‘word for word’. They asked that land courts be established in every district with elected judges ‘according to the custom in the Podlasian land’. Sigismund August was reminded that the 1529 statute had decreed that all were to be judged by the same law, and that every estate should be equal before the law: it was therefore requested that council members and other wealthy and powerful magnates should be placed under the jurisdiction of elected local land courts.24 Ordinary nobles were perfectly capable of grasping the Polish concept of noble equality before the law, and vigorously demanded it long before 1562.25
The Vitsebsk petition represented the culmination of a long process in which ordinary nobles conceived and formulated a range of political demands that were by no means mere instruments in magnate faction-struggles. The demand for one common law was nothing new; neither was the request for closer union. Ever since Mielnik there had been supporters of closer union among the Lithuanian elite. One such was Kostiantyn Ostrozky; another was Jan Zaberezhynsky the younger; yet another was Czarny’s own brother, Jan Radziwiłł, who supported Sigismund August’s establishment as grand duke in Vilnius in 1544, but who fell out with Czarny in a property dispute. An early Lutheran convert, while in Cracow in 1549–50 he associated with leading Polish executionists including Hieronim Ossoliński, Stanisław Łaski, and Krzysztof Gnojeński. At a banquet he blurted out his support for closer union in the king’s presence, stating that he wanted both realms to be subject to the same law, claiming the backing of ‘all Lithuania’.26 He died in 1551, but if his claim that ‘all Lithuania’ supported closer union was fanciful, and if there must be more than a suspicion that his support for closer union owed much to his dispute with Czarny, there was undoubtedly growing support for a reappraisal of the union, and an appreciation among a significant number of Lithuanians, excluded from power by the Czarny–Rudy axis, of the benefits of Polish law and the advantages of Polish institutions. Such figures undoubtedly encouraged support for closer union among their clients and associates, but ordinary nobles were perfectly capable of seeing the advantages for themselves.
If the Vitsebsk petition was not particularly novel in its demands, Sigismund August’s reaction to it transformed the politics of union. Twelve years earlier, at the banquet where he had questioned Jan Radziwiłł’s judgement, Barbara was still alive, and Czarny and Rudy were his trusted agents. By 1562, the circumstances were very different. He was only forty-two, over thirty years younger than Jagiełło had been when he unexpectedly produced an heir, but he was locked into a marriage that was likely to remain childless. As the years passed, his relations with Czarny soured. For a decade and more they had been close, personally and politically, and Czarny played a central role in Sigismund August’s Livonian adventure. By 1560, however, the consequences of placing so much power in Radziwiłł hands were becoming clear, and discontent was growing among those excluded from influence at both central and local levels by the inexorable amassing of office by Radziwiłł clients and associates. Sigismund August began to realize that the man in whom he had placed so much trust was pursuing policies that were more to the benefit of the Radziwiłłs than to him.27 There was an unpleasant clash over Sigismund August’s support for the marriage of Halshka, heiress to vast Ostrozky estates, to the Polish magnate Łukasz Górka, when Czarny did all he could to thwart the king’s wishes and prevent Ostrozky estates falling into Polish hands. The main issues, however, were political. With no prospect of an heir, the question of the future of the union after his death pressed upon the kings’s conscience. By 1560 he was reconsidering his position. In May 1562 he replied favourably to a petition from the Małopolskan nobility asking him to summon a joint sejm of all his realms to consider the matter.28 Although he remained silent on the question in the only surviving response to the Vitsebsk petition, dated 24 September 1562, his later actions suggest that the strong support for union expressed by the Vitsebsk confederation provided him with a welcome opportunity.29
He pursued it with remarkable vigour. Although he was known as ‘king tomorrow’ (król dojutrek), thanks to his penchant for procrastination and his guarded style of speaking on controversial matters, Sigismund August announced his Damascene conversion at the Polish sejm summoned in late 1562—after a gap of over three and a half years—in the most dramatic fashion. He had been a senatorial king, placing his trust in both Poland and Lithuania in a small group of royal councillors. He had done little to hide his contempt for the ordinary szlachta, which was only increased by his rough handling at the 1548 sejm over his marriage to Barbara. Despite the rift with Bona from the late 1540s, he was much influenced by her concept of a powerful, personal monarchy and her reform ideas. A highly intelligent, educated, and sophisticated man, he had all his life dressed in the Italian style of his mother’s court, and drenched himself in the Italian Renaissance culture she had encouraged in Cracow. His concept of a powerful monarchy based on close cooperation with a small group of loyal councillors had failed, however. In Poland he faced fractious sejms that demanded political reform before they would agree to the taxation he so desperately needed; in Lithuania, where his powers were so much greater, he had failed to create a system capable of effective defence.30
Travelling to Piotrków he cast off his Italian finery, pointedly donning the kontusz, the simple tunic that was becoming the symbol of the ordinary Polish nobleman, who eschewed the foreign fashions almost uniformly sported by the senatorial elite. He ordered his entourage to follow suit; henceforth he always appeared in Polish dress. Instead of staying in Piotrków castle he based himself in the small wooden manor at Bugaj that was much more like the residences of the ordinary nobility.31 It was a flamboyant way to signal a radical change in policy. When the sejm assembled on 30 November Rafał Leszczyński, the executionist speaker, welcomed the king by reminding him that he did not rule over Poles by the sword, or by hereditary right, but through election, challenging him to implement the promises he had so often made. Demanding action not words, he ended by imploring God to put fire in the king’s heart.32
Leszczyński probably did not expect quite so much fire. In the royal proposals Sigismund August publicly endorsed the executionist programme. He stated that decrees had gone out to sejmiks expressing his intention to implement execution, and that holders of royal lands were to produce documents proving that they held them lawfully.33 As excitement mounted, envoys ripped their own documents to shreds and cast them at the king’s feet; others observed that ‘it is not the documents but we who are guilty, and our greed, from which the commonwealth never gains any benefit’.34
The move had been well prepared.35 With royal support for execution, the 1562–3 sejm, in stark contrast to its predecessors, passed a range of statutes concerning the royal domain. The constitutions of 1440, 1454, and 1504 were confirmed, and measures taken to implement them. Proof of the right to hold royal land was to be ascertained by compulsory inspection of all relevant documents; lands held in breach of the law were to be returned to treasury control. Mortgages on lands issued before 1504 were to be honoured, as were loans raised with council consent to finance the Prussian war in 1520; all others were subject to revindication, apart from those issued in Mazovia before 1529. Detailed clauses dealt with the various types of leases on royal lands, and clear principles were laid down, such as the stipulation that lifelong leases were to be for one life only. One quarter of the revenue from all royal lands was to be paid to the treasury for defence of the realm. Audits were to be undertaken of all royal estates to establish the size of their revenues. Legislation against incompatibilities in office-holding was reasserted.36
The 1562–3 executionist legislation was followed up at the sejms of 1563–4, 1565, 1566, and 1567, despite considerable resistance from those who stood to lose out, and from nobles from Ruthenia, where many held royal land on military tenures designed to encourage szlachta colonization of the south-eastern borderlands to provide defence against the Tatars, which had created a bewildering patchwork in which royal and szlachta holdings were jumbled together, and there were many estates whose exact legal status was unclear.37 The Ruthenian Orzechowski emerged as an eloquent opponent of execution, attacking the ‘demagogues’ who, he claimed, were evidence of the sejm’s decline.38
The complexity of the task was revealed by the audit of royal estates undertaken between 1562 and 1564, and by inspection of the bewildering array of contracts, gifts, and leases, which continued until 1569. Holders of royal land had considerable room for manoeuvre. Particularly troublesome were frymarki—exchanges of pieces of land usually carried out to consolidate holdings—since it often came to light that royal land had been swapped for noble land that itself turned out to be royal land. Nevertheless, the legal situation was generally clarified, if only on paper, and important advances were made. The quarter (kwarta) levied on royal estates and paid into a quarter treasury established at Rawa in 1569 became institutionalized, although Sigismund August was careful to insist that this was his free gift, and that therefore the monarch was not obliged by law to sanction its payment from royal estates. At the 1567 sejm, after furious lobbying from office-holders, the king was allowed to assign lands as a reward for good service. In order to establish the principles that were henceforth to govern distribution of the royal domain, revenues were divided into five. The quarter was converted into one fifth—though it was still called the quarter—one fifth was to be paid to the leaseholder, and the treasury was to receive the remaining three-fifths.39 An important battle had been won.
1 The Order ruled 59 per cent of Livonia; the rest was under the control of the archbishopric of Riga (16 per cent) and the bishoprics of Dorpat, Reval, Ösel, and Courland, and of the city of Riga: Sucheni-Grabowska, Zygmunt August, 485.
2 Christoph Schiemann, Rußland, Polen und Livland bis ins 17. Jahrhundert, ii (Berlin, 1887), 208–309; Knud Rasmussen, Die livländische Krise 1554–1561 (Copenhagen, 1973), 208–25; Андрей Янушкевіч [Andrei Ianushkevich], Вялікае княства Літоўскае і Інфланцкая вайна 1558–1579 гг. (Мінск, 2007), 21–53; Sucheni-Grabowska, Zygmunt August, 490–516; Jasnowski, Czarny, 286–91.
3 Ferenc, Rudy, 252–3.
4 ‘Poszelstwo Riczerstwa kxiestwa wielkiego Litewskiego ku kroliowy Je Mczi do Wilna zobozu’, in XVI amžiaus Lietuvos ir Lenkijos politinės kultūros šaltiniai (1562 metų tekstai), ed. Jūratė Kiaupienė (Vilnius, 2008), 74, 79; Oskar Halecki, ‘Sejm obozowy szlachty litewskiej pod Witebskiem 1562 r. i jego petycya o unię z Polską’, PH, 18 (1914), 322–6; Ferenc, Rudy, 242–3.
5 ‘Aby ye kro mscz zlozicz raczil sziem spolny spany poliaky y vnią aby byly wiedinostwie naywieczey dlya dwv prziczin Dlia iednego pana obranya y dlia yedney obrony aby spolnie szeimowaly y prawa yednego vziwaly’: ‘Poszelstwo’, 74.
6 ‘Poszelstwo’, 74–5; Halecki, ‘Sejm’, 326. The nobles did not, as Dembkowski suggests, carry out their threat: Harry Dembkowski, The Union of Lublin (Boulder, CO, 1982), 77.
7 ŻDU, ii/i, 157, 367–8; BCzart. 1604 III, 1, 55–74; BCzart. 2208, IV, 1, 267–88. Kiaupienė’s edition of the Czartoryski sources contains a partial facsimile reproduction of the version in BCzart. 1604, and a full facsimile of the version in BCzart. 2208: XVI amžiaus, 75, 77, 84–5, 89–110.
8 Jūratė Kiaupienė, ‘Mes Lietuva’: Lietuvos Didžiosios Kunigaikštystės bajorija XVI a. (viešasis ir privatus gyvenimas) (Vilnius, 2003), 101–7; Jūratė Kiaupienė, ‘Litewskie cechy kultury politycznej szlachty Wielkiego Księstwa Litewskiego w XVI wieku’, in Jerzy Wyrozumski (ed.), Kultura Litwy i Polski w dziejach (Cracow, 2000), 67–78; and Jūratė Kiaupienė, ‘The Grand Duchy and the Grand Dukes of Lithuania in the sixteenth century: Reflections on the Lithuanian political nation and the Union of Lublin’, in Richard Butterwick (ed.), The Polish-Lithuanian Monarchy in European Context, c.1500–1795 (Basingstoke, 2001), 82–92. Cf. Halecki, ‘Sejm’, 350–2; Halecki, Dzieje, ii, 153–5; Любавскій, Сеймъ, 635–6; Грушевьский, Історія, iv, 361–3; Jasnowski, Czarny, 347–8; Stanisław Cynarski, Zygmunt August, 2nd edn (Wrocław, 1997), 107–8; Dembkowski, Union, 76–8.
9 Kiaupienė, ‘Litewskie cechy’, 75; Kiaupienė, ‘The Grand Duchy’, 87–8. For a fuller treatment of Lithuanian clientage see Kiaupienė, ‘Mes Lietuva’, 137–64.
10 Andrej Januškevič [Андрей Янушкевіч], ‘Między królem a Radziwiłłami: kształtowanie kariery politycznej Jana Chodkiewicza w przededniu unii lubelskiej 1569’, in Markiewicz and Skowron (eds), Faworyci, 167–79; Янушкевіч, Велікае княства, 292–7; and Янушкевіч, ‘Унія з коронаі ва ўнутранаі палітыце ВКЛ перад люблінскім соймам 1569 г.’, БГА, 10 (2003), 29–36.
11 For example Ferenc, Rudy, 242–4.
12 Januškevič, ‘Między królem’, 170. Jasnowski has no doubts concerning the petition’s anti-Radziwiłł tenor: Czarny, 348.
13 Jučas, Unija, 245.
14 Любавский, Сеймъ, 496.
15 For examples, see Любавский, Сеймъ, 496–508.
16 Любавский, Сеймъ, 519–23.
17 Kiaupienė, ‘Grand duchy’, 87.
18 Sigismund August to Rudy, Cracow, 2 June 1548: Listy króla, no. 11, 53; Jasnowski, Czarny, 403. For Poles in the chancery under Czarny, see Jasnowski, Czarny, 377.
19 Błaszczyk, Litwa, 102.
20 AZR, iii, no. 11, 25.
21 Ferenc, Rudy, 51.
22 Marek Ferenc, Dwór Zygmunta Augusta (Cracow, 1998), 55; Agnieszka Marchwińska, Królewskie dwory żon Zygmunta Augusta (Toruń, 2008), 160.
23 For example the document of 4 October 1519 in which Sigismund I granted Bona the duchy of Pinsk was drawn up in Cracow and witnessed by three Lithuanians: Iury Ilnich, marshal of the court, Bohush Bohovitynovych, and Vasyl Vasylevych Kopot: Pociecha, Bona, ii, 415.
24 AZR, iii, no. 13, 50–1; Любавский, Сеймъ, 579–80.
25 Fifty-eight names of those who attended the 1554 sejm are known; though many were wealthier nobles and council lords, middling and lesser nobles were also present: Любавский, Сеймъ, 495.
26 Sigismund August to Rudy, Cracow, 6 January 1550, Listy króla, no. 68, 142–3.
27 Jasnowski, Czarny, 341–3.
28 ‘Posselstwo ku krolowy Je Maczi od slyachty mnieyszy Polsky z nowego miasta’: XVI amžiaus, 40; ‘Responsu Regia Maiestatis nunciis a nobilitate Minoris Poloniae’, 26 May 1562: XVI amžiaus, 65–6.
29 In his reply, dated 24 September, he responded only to the request to allow the levy to disperse on account of the shortage of supplies: ‘Отпис до Панов Рад от его к(о)р(олевское) м(и)л(о)стеи Жикгимонт’, Vilnius, 24 September 1562: XVI amžiaus, 111–12.
30 Sucheni-Grabowska, Monarchia, 182.
31 Marcin Bielski, Kronika Polska, Zbiór Pisarzów Polskich, vi/xvii (Warsaw, 1832), 144–5; Cynarski, Zygmunt August, 97, 101.
32 ŹDU, ii/i, 6–7.
33 ŹDU, ii/i, 8.
34 Bielski, Kronika, 145.
35 Sucheni-Grabowska, Monarchia, 182.
36 VC, ii/i, 94–119; Szulc, Z badań, 92–100.
37 Władysław Pałucki, Drogi i bezdroża skarbowości polskiej XVI i pierwszej połowy XVII wieku (Wrocław, 1974), 9; Anna Dembińska, Polityczna walka o egzekucję dóbr królewskich w latach 1559/64 (Warsaw, 1935), 126–37.
38 Stanisław Orzechowski, Quincunx, in Dialogi polityczne, 147, 159.
39 VC, ii/i, 198; Pałucki, Drogi, 203.