53/6/0/-/36

Two entries on two pages of a book of decrees of the land court at Konin for the years 1641 to 1644, kept in the State Archive in Poznań (Archiwum Państwowe w Poznaniu). They are judgments by default which Jerzy Chełmski obtained against the Trąmpczyński family of Trąbczyn at the court’s sitting of 1644. They are in Latin and are two documents.

Historical background

In the seventeenth century Trąbczyn belonged to the family that took its name from it, the Trąmpczyńskis, who bore the by-name Otto. The neighbouring estate of Łukom, or Łukomia, belonged to the Chełmski family. The boundary between the two estates ran through woodland and was disputed for two centuries; it was fixed by the commission of 1775, whose decree is 53/17/0/-/Konin Gr.145. That decree cites judgments of these same years over notches cut into trees and mounds newly raised.

A boundary was marked by mounds of earth and by notches cut into trees. To cut such notches in a neighbour’s wood was to claim the ground as far as they reached. The court that decided boundaries was that of the sub-chamberlain, which went out onto the ground.

A plaintiff before a land court had his opponent cited by one of the court’s sworn messengers, who laid the citation at the opponent’s manor. If the opponent, called aloud at the first term, did not appear, the plaintiff obtained judgment against him by default, “in the penalty of contumacy”. Such entries are short and follow set words. On this opening of the book there are several, each headed by the name of the party in default.

The volume belongs to the archive’s fonds “Księgi sądu ziemskiego w Koninie”, the books of the land court at Konin. According to the archive’s description of the fonds, the land court at Konin was a court of the nobility. The starost or his deputy, as the king’s lieutenant, had the leading part in it, with the judge, the sub-judge, the voivode, the chamberlain and the standard-bearer. The court travelled round the palatinate and held its sittings in the district; the terms at which it sat were called “roczki”. It was competent in every suit in which a nobleman was the defendant, except those assigned to other courts, such as the dietine courts or the royal court, and except uncontested business. In 1792 its competence passed to a new land court, the “sąd ziemiański”. The fonds holds resignations, inscriptions, reports, judgments, papers brought in for entry, registers of causes, citations, extracts and inquiries.

Contents

The notches. Jerzy Chełmski, plaintiff, had cited the four brothers Marcin, Wojciech, Władysław and Andrzej Trąmpczyński, sons of the late Stanisław, and Stanisław’s widow Anna of Słończyce, who held her dower and a life interest in what he left; any of the brothers under age were cited with their guardians. He charged that they had sent their subjects into his own woodland of the village of Łukom and had about eighty notches cut into trees in the manner of boundary marks, meaning to add a great part of his ground to their own. He reckoned the harm, leaving the ground itself aside, at a thousand Polish marks and as much again in damages, and asked that the marks be annulled once the sub-chamberlain’s court had been brought out. The defendants were called by the court’s messenger and did not appear at the first term, and Chełmski, with the court’s leave, condemned them in the penalty of contumacy. A second messenger, Bartłomiej Koelmarek of Łukom, declared in court that he had laid the citation on the Monday before at the manor of the cited in the village of Trąbczyn, in the presence of the household [1].

The timber. The second entry is a like judgment against the same defendants. They are charged with having lately felled about a hundred trees fit for building, chiefly pines, and about three hundred cartloads of firewood in the woods of Łukom, and with having used them as they pleased. The harm is reckoned at three hundred Polish marks. For everything else the entry refers to the one before it [2].

Form and language

The first entry begins a third of the way down leaf 641 verso, under its heading, and ends with one line at the top of leaf 642 recto. The second follows it there in eight lines. The rest of both pages belongs to other entries, which are not transcribed. The Latin is heavily abbreviated; square brackets in the transcription show letters that were supplied.

The entries have no date of their own. The heading of the sitting stands on leaf 612, which the editor transcribed but which is not among the scans: “Actum in Terminis Terrestribus Particularibus Coninensibus feria Secunda post Octavas Festi Sacratissimi Corporis Christi proxima Anno Domini Millesimo Sexcentesimo Quadragesimo Quarta in Conin Celebratis”. That is: done at the particular land court terms of Konin, held at Konin, on the Monday after the octave of Corpus Christi 1644, which was 6 June. The year of the documents is taken from this heading.

Related holdings

The decree of the commission that fixed the boundary between Trąbczyn and Łukomia in 1775: 53/17/0/-/Konin Gr.145. A later suit between the two estates, over potash: 53/6/0/-/45.

Scans

The archive supplied one image, which shows two facing pages of the bound volume. It was cut at the fold into two pages. Both are kept whole, although other entries stand on them above and below these two.

Transcription

The editor transcribed the two entries and supplied them by paragraph, not line by line, with many marks of doubt: the hand is small and abbreviates nearly every word. The editor also transcribed the heading of the court’s sitting from leaf 612. That leaf is not among the images, so the heading is quoted in the description of this holding and is not a page of the edition.

Check against the scan

An AI model (Claude) read both entries word for word against the scan and corrected fourteen passages. The other entries on the same two pages are judgments of the same kind in the same set words, and they settled nearly every doubt. Three corrections change what the entries are taken to be. The heading reads “Contumaces”, in default, and not “Concessionis”. The closing words are those of a default judgment: the defendants, called and not appearing, are condemned in the penalty of contumacy. And it was the Trąmpczyńskis’ subjects, not agents, who were sent into the wood. One mark of doubt remains, and in three places the editor’s reading stands because the scan does not decide. Each change is logged with its reason.

Division and dating

Each entry is a document. Neither has a date of its own. Their year is taken from the heading of the sitting they belong to, which opened on 6 June 1644; the day of these judgments within the sitting is not known.

Translation

The English is the editor’s own translation. It had been made from the first reading of the Latin, and its notes marked each place where that reading was in doubt. It was revised wherever the corrected Latin required it, which is in most sentences; the editor’s terms and wording are kept where the Latin under them did not change. Two of the editor’s twenty-six notes are kept. The others discussed readings that are now settled. An automatic check compared the terms of the two texts.

Summaries

The summaries were written in German from the corrected Latin and translated into English. Each of their thirteen statements was then checked against its document. All held.