THE NOBLEMAN'S PARADISE 169
In 1569, noble land accounted for roughly 60 per cent of the total surface of
the Republic, as against 25 per cent belonging to the Church and 15 per cent
belonging to the Crown. But, since an increasing proportion of the Crown lands
were leased to noblemen, and since the bishops, who controlled a large part of
Church land, were in effect clerical magnates, the noble sector was in practice
still larger. On this noble land, the population had no recourse to the royal
courts, and lived almost entirely at the mercy of their noble lords.
The geographical pattern of noble landholding was extremely complicated.
In some areas, such as Volhynia or Kiev, a large part of the noble land was
concentrated in the hands of just a few magnates. In pre-union Lithuania,
about one-quarter of noble land belonged to less than 2 per cent of the nobil-
ity, the other three-quarters being divided among more than thirteen thousand
families. According to the Popis Wojska Litewskiego, or Military List, of
1528, which recorded the assessment of the nobles' estates, 23 families were
assessed on average at 261 knights each, a total of 5,993; the remaining 13,060
families could only raise 19,842 knights between them, an average of 1.52 per
family.^13 In other areas, like Mazovia, or Podlasie, the magnates played no
part whatsoever, and the noble sector was dominated by the plots of the petty
nobility. Even within the same province, neighbouring localities showed
marked variations. In Royal Prussia of the 1570s, for example, the neighbour-
ing palatinates of Chelmno and Malbork, differed from each other in several
important respects. In Chelmno, the holdings of the nobility were roughly
equal to those of the Church and the Crown. In Malbork, they represented
only one-sixth of the total, and in the absence of any significant ecclesiastical
holdings, were dwarfed by Crown estates and the royal towns. In Chelmno,
the average nobleman, possessing 3—10 lan, held strips scattered through sev-
eral villages. In Malbork, a much smaller number of nobles possessed larger
holdings of 10—15 lan. No one, in either palatinate, could rival the Bishop of
Chelmno, whose 112 villages, organized in four 'keys' round Lubawa Castle
formed the one large latifundium of the region.^14 In the province of Malopol-
ska, too, it is interesting to see that in the sixteenth century the holdings of the
Church were still greater than those of any secular magnate. Despite the fact
that grants of Crown land to the nobles had been particularly liberal in the
vicinity of the ancient capital, no single nobleman could match the wealth of
the Bishops of Cracow. In the land-tax assessments of 1564, six of the
province's ten wealthiest properties were still shown to belong to the Church.
In contrast to the assessment of the Bishop at 457 zl., of the Abbey of Tyniec
at 311 zl., and of the Cracovian Chapter at 202 zl., the Castellan of Cracow,
Spytek Jordan, was assessed at 383 zl., the Starosta of Biecz at 154 zl., the
Starosta of Krzepice at 145 zl., and the Wielkorzqdcy (Royal Governor) of
Cracow at 143 zl.^15 Significantly, all the prominent noblemen of this period
owed their landed wealth directly to their possession of high public offices.
Private landed fortunes in Poland were as yet relatively modest, and were
much inferior to those in Lithuania. (See Map 12, pp. 172-3.)