Inspection of Customs Houses and Tollgates in the Voivodeship of Kalisz from 1571. Edition of Akt rewizorów ziemskich

Abstract

The mid-sixteenth century in Poland was a period of intensified work on the reinforcement of monarchic rule and the stabilisation of state finances. An enormous contribution was made by the execution of the laws movement, whose undertakings resulted in, i.a. regaining a considerable part of the illegally seized royal landed estates. In the 1560s it also involved a detailed inspection of property belonging to the king. This task aimed not only at becoming acquainted with the detailed economic state of royal landed estate complexes leased by the starostas, but also at estimating the revenue they supplied. After all, the estates in question constituted one of the permanent pillars replenishing the state budget, which, apart from immense sums obtained from extraordinary taxes, included also proceeds from customs and the right to mint coins. Despite the fact that since the 1970s pertinent writings have been familiar with the 1571 inspection of customs and tolls in the voivodeship of Kalisz, preserved in the Central Archives of Historical Records in Warsaw, it was treated as an inferior source and even as outright useless for historical studies. Karol Buczek – the author of an introduction to an inspection of roads in the voivodeship of Little Poland (1570) – recognised that the fundamental object of the interests of sixteenth-century inspectors involved main roads and that this work was conducted in a slipshod manner. The same author even declared that the text of the revision does not make a great contribution to the state of research, since the customs houses and tollgates mentioned in the text were known, even if only from preserved inspections dating from the period of the execution of property. Today we may say that Buczek’s opinion was overly harsh and cursory. Customs houses and tollgates were mentioned sporadically in inspections from the 1560s, but the overwhelming majority remained ignored in heretofore literature. The contents of Akt rewizorów can prove that the tour of the voivodeship (carried out upon the basis of a constitution passed by the Sejm of Lublin in 1569) was satisfactory. Despite the absence of any sort of assistance – be it only a list of customs and toll grants – the officials, i.e. the subcamerarius, the standard-bearer (vexillarius), and the tribunus managed, with the help of interviews with the local residents and own familiarity with the terrain, to travel across the entire voivodeship of Kalisz within its sixteenth-century borders and to record probably all the existing customs houses and tollgates. The source also provides much information about the emergence of main and side roads, whose course could change depending on the weather, time of year, or relations between particular neighbourslandowners. The published source is a loose-leaf volume comprising part of a larger book containing assorted inspection material – nine leafs of clean copy in one person’s handwriting. It ends with the signatures of three inspectors who supervised the whole operation, and their armorial seals. A major part of Akt rewizorów was written in Polish, and Latin was used, as a rule, for all passages originating from documents confirmed by the inspectors. A critique of the text made it possible to precisely establish the date of the document’s origin (20 April – 20 June 1571).