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hereditary, it was in theory elective. After the latter period the Election of the king.whole nobility met in arms to elect a king, and, though a relation of the old line was preferred, he was considered to have no claim. This assembling of the Pospolite, as it was called, was in an emergency the prerogative of the king, and during an interregnum of the Primate, the Archbishop of Guesna, who acted as interrex. The election was not legal unless it was unanimous; and when this was accomplished, seldom without violence, the republic imposed upon the new monarch a contract styled "pacta convents," the conditions of His privileges.which he swore faithfully to observe. His privileges were few. He always presided in the national assembly, and he might if he chose command[1] the army. But his most important function was the appointment of officers of state. These are said to have amounted in all branches to the astounding number of 20,000; but only the most important, about 140, The Senate.composed the Senate, which was the middle estate of the realm and the read executive.
Besides the bishops there were three great orders in the administration, of which only the first two had seats in the How composed.Senate. These were the palatines, the castellans, and starosts. Each palatine, like a Norman baron, was the military commander and supreme judge in his province or palatinate; he was also its recognised political head. The castellans were his deputies, who discharged the same functions in a more confined area. The starosts were inferior magistrates, with military and judicial duties, whose chief privilege was the high The officers of state.value of their benefices. There were twelve great dignitaries who were entrusted with the higher executive—six for the kingdom of Poland, viz., the Grand Marshal, the Grand General,[2] the Second General, the Chancellor, the Vice-Chancellor, and the Grand Treasurer, and six parallel officers for the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The latter, when incorporated with Poland in 1386, had insisted on a distinct administration; but the arrangement proved most unfortunate, for the Polish magnate had no authority over his Lithuanian compeer. In the army, as in the administration, they might act quite independently of each other, and the very equality made a collision inevitable. Over the Senate as a whole the king had no real power, but the Diet exercised a rigid supervision.
This body—the third estate of the realm—had originally been The Diet.composed of the whole adult nobility. So jealous were the Poles of their privileges that it was not till- ↑ This is denied by Salvandy, Histoire du Roi Jean Sobieski, vol. ii. p. 52, ed. 1876, though he has elsewhere admitted it by implication (vol. i. p. 402-3).
- ↑ The generals had no seat in the Senate by virtue of their office, but the king always made them palatines or castellans. Daleyrac, Polish Manuscripts or Secret History of the reign of John Sobieski, ch. i. p. 9.
