THE NOBLE DEMOCRACY 253
We hereby commend their lordships, our envoys, to seek the bonum patriae in faith, hon-
our, and conscience, so that our freedom be embellished... and to communicate in all
matters with other provincial envoys.
Given at Rawa, in the sejmik of nobles, 7 February, AD 1667,
Jan Chryzostom z Goslawic Pasek,
Deputy chamberlain, Marshal of the Sejmik.^4
The Sejm, or Diet, was instituted later than the dietines, and in many ways
was subordinate to them. It certainly depended on them for the execution of its
decisions. It seems to have been inspired by the experience of the Estates of
Royal Prussia which had continued to function after the incorporation of that
province into Poland in 1466.^5 It first met in 1493 in Cracow, at royal request, as
a 'parliament' of the Kingdom, with only forty elected envoys present. After
1569, it was transformed into the joint assembly of the united Republic. It con-
sisted of two chambers - the Senat or 'Senate', with 140 members, and the Izba
Poselska or 'Chamber of Envoys', with 143-95 from the Kingdom, and 48 from
the Grand Duchy.
The Senate was composed from the chief officers of Church and State - 2
archbishops, 17 Roman bishops, 4 Marshals, 4 Chancellors, 2 Treasurers, 33
Palatines (Wojewoda), 77 Castellans (kasztelan), and the Starosta of Zmudz.* It
was presided over by the Marshal of the Crown, and attended by the king. It had
grown out of a medieval Royal Council, and in addition to its function as a
chamber of the legislature, it retained its original function as the chief executive
authority. In between sessions it appointed sixteen 'resident' senators, who
stayed with the king and dealt with the day-to-day business of government. Its
140 members were organized according to an ancient order of seniority. They
sat round a rectangular floor with the king on his throne at one end, the bishops
on their benches at the other, the state functionaries and Palatines in their arm-
chairs down the sides, and the Castellans packed in round the back.
As a rule, the lower chamber received two envoys from each of the provincial
dietines, and two from the City of Cracow. In the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, when envoys from lands lost to the Republic continued to sit and
when some provinces such as Royal Prussia sent as many as eight envoys each,
the original 143 members rose to 182 in 1702 and exceptionally, in 1764 to 236.
The chair was taken by a 'Marshal of the Sejm', elected by the envoys at the start
of each session. According to the Union of Lublin, the Chamber was to meet
with the Senate for a six weeks' session at least once in every two years, and to
deliberate from 9 a.m. to dusk, except on Sundays and Saints' days. From 1702
to 1764, the sessions were fixed well ahead, customarily on the first Monday
after St. Michael's Day, every alternate year. If these sessions of the full or
'Walrty Sejm' lasted the normal six weeks and in their regular cadence, they
were called 'ordinary' sessions. If they met at urgent request for a shorter period,
* The four Hetmans or Military Chiefs were the only high officers of state without senatorial
rank.