Noble Ascendancy
Its new-found economic strength helped the nobility of the Commonwealth expand its already extensive privileges and political influence. At first the szlachta sought to limit its obligations to its rulers.
It cajoled the kings practically to eliminate the taxation of the nobility. Loath to go off on arduous campaigns when there were fat profits to be made from their estates, the erstwhile warriors-turned-entrepreneurs also tried to limit their kings’ right to make war. In the late 15th and early 16th centuries, the szlachta gained control of the local assemblies (sejmiki) and, somewhat later, of the sejm, the general assembly of the Commonwealth, which possessed the highest legislative and executive authority in the land. The szlachta was now in a position to limit the prerogatives of its kings more successfully than any other nobility in Europe. In 1505, the noble-controlled sejm passed the Nihil Novi Law which forbade the king to pass any new edict without the consent of the nobles’ representatives. And in 1573, after the Jagiellonian dynasty died out, the szlachta gained the right to elect its monarchs and to define their prerogatives by means of a contractual arrangement called the pacta conventa.Limiting royal power was only one of the nobility’s goals. It also wished to deprive every other group in society of the possibility of threatening its favored position. Although the magnates, who numbered less than 100 families, belonged to the noble estate, their virtual monopoly on high offices, their vast landholdings, and their willingness to exploit their fellow nobles raised the ire of the middle nobility especially. Therefore, in the early 16th century, the szlachta managed, if only temporarily, to limit the magnates’ access to offices and lands.
The towns were another target of the nobles’ aggrandizing tendencies. Viewing them as their commerical rivals, the nobles did their best to undermine them. In 1505, they deprived most of the towns of voting rights in the sejm.
Hoping to eliminate their role as middlemen in trade, in 1565 the noble-dominated sejm forbade native merchants from traveling abroad for goods. This action resulted in foreign merchants dealing directly with the nobles and catering to their wishes. Meanwhile, the sejm freed the nobles from import and export duties. Unable to withstand the pressure from the noble-dominated countryside, many townsmen decided to join it. Rich burghers invested their capital in estates and tried to marry their daughters into noble families. Craftsmen, unable to find work in the stagnating towns, moved their shops to the estates of the nobles. In Ukraine and elsewhere in the Commonwealth, the pace of urbanization slowed perceptibly.This expansion of the nobility’s privileges was the work of the Polish szlachta. In the Grand Principality prior to 1569, the Ukrainian nobility, especially its lower strata, did not enjoy such great rights as its Polish counterpart. The grand prince could still deprive nobles of their lands with relative ease, and the obligations that they owed their monarch were much greater than in Poland. A major reason why the lower nobility of the Grand Principality supported the union with Poland was that it wished to obtain rights similar to those of the Polish szlachta. But this meant that Ukrainian nobles would have to adapt to Polish ways. It involved accepting the szlachta system of government, adopting its laws and customs, and eventually using its language. Even a change of religion was encouraged because Polish law stipulated that a nobleman who adopted Catholicism would automatically receive the rights of a Polish nobleman. In short, for Ukrainian noblemen to enjoy equal rights with their Polish colleagues it was necessary that they become more like the Poles.