In particular, they sought to expand their power in the field of treasury. The reason for this lay in the needs of the defense of this borderland land of the Polish Republic, which the Sejm, in the opinion of the assembly members, was no longer fully satisfying. And so we read in the instruction of June 5, 1628, that the assembly requires that sufficient defense be devised for our countries, otherwise, because ordinata charitas incipit a se ipso, we would be close to imposing our subsidies on the soldiers of these Russian countries. The Wisze sejmik even gives a directive to the treasurer, to whom they hand over the collection of the levies collected in 1619, that these taxes should be used for no other purpose than the defense of the Russian countries 1). In 1646, with the resolution of the king for the recruitment of a soldier for two years, it was stipulated at the Wisła sejmik that money should be spent only with the consent of the sejmik, and the crown treasurer submitted that even if the Senate ordered it, he should spend it nowhere else but where there was a mens and the consent of the Wisła sejmik 2). However, when the demands in this way of expanding the competences of the sejmik sometimes became impossible, the Wisła sejmik rebuked this impossibility. The deputies of the Sejm of 1634, sent to hear the treasurer's accounts, did not give a receipt for it, they took the matter to their brothers, i.e. they wanted the treasurer to "send to these assemblies and justify himself with his opinion of the number". The Wisze sejmik rightly condemned such demands, pointing out the impossibility and harmful consequences of great illegality if the treasurer were to send from sejmik to sejmik the accountants of his stewardship to advise them. In any case, the Wisze sejmik is also moving on the path of rapidly expanding its competences, so here we will cite one of the numerous examples, the most important one with significant consequences. In the ladum of the April sejmik of 1647 we read that "if the sejmik did not stand up or no defense was planned, we would like to adopt the constitution from the previous sejm's approval of this sejmik, retained in casum without asking for common support, we leave it in pleno workore and we convene the sejmik six weeks after the sejm." This was already a transfer of parliamentary matters from the sejm to the sejmik, but it was covered by necessity and defense, and even by an earlier sejm decision. In this way, the sejmik slowly shifts to the power of convening assemblies, a power which, as we will see, rested in the king's hand, and which was already attempted to be weakened by limiting the sejmiks or by illegally convening them.
There is no doubt that the power to convene assemblies rested with the king. This is evident from the king convening pre-sejm sejmiks and from the fact that after each broken sejmik, a permit for a new sejmik was required, which was granted by the king, as evidenced by a similar permit from 1584 3). Then the king himself instructs the inhabitants of Sanok, who, threatened by the enemy, convened an assembly
') No. 121 art. 3. ^) No. 226 art, 3. ') No. 32.
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in 1618 and the levies decided that with the addition of J. kr. This (reconciliation) was to be for you as the lord and head of this Republic, because it was a noble thing, according to the old tradition, in such an important matter for the dignity of His Majesty. You have to look back and see where you went wrong, it's beyond your understanding J kr. So that after such a private meeting this tax may have its own effect - in other words, the king repeals the resolution of the levy, because after a private meeting, and since not everyone allowed it, the resolution cannot take effect >), the nobility of Sanok, instructed by the king about the source of convening the assemblies, soon protests against the Wisze sejmik of because of the illegal conduct of the same: because the sejmik in Wiśnia was held only for the Lviv and Przemyśl lands and not for the Sanok lands, therefore it was not possible to include the Sanok lands in the Wisnia resolutions 2). It clearly turns out that the nobility of the Ruthenian voivodeship knew that the king was the source of convening the assemblies.
II.