53/6/0/-/40

One entry of five pages in a book of decrees of the land court at Konin for the years 1722 to 1780, kept in the State Archive in Poznań (Archiwum Państwowe w Poznaniu). It is a decree of January 1728 in a suit of the Chełmski brothers of Łukom against Krzysztof Prusimski of Trąbczyn, which sends a commissioner onto the disputed ground. It is in Latin and is one document.

Historical background

By the 1720s Trąbczyn belonged to Krzysztof Prusimski and the neighbouring estate of Łukom, or Łukomia, to the Chełmski family. The two estates had been at odds over their boundary since the sixteenth century (53/6/0/-/17, 53/6/0/-/36). Between them lay woodland and a former pond, by then marsh and meadow, which each side claimed and used.

A land court heard suits over wrongs done, but not the question of where a boundary ran, which belonged to another court. Where the two were bound up together it could send a sworn commissioner onto the ground, with friends named by each side, to hear old witnesses on oath and decide. A decree that appointed such a hearing was a “decretum locationis”.

This decree was used again half a century later. The commission that fixed the boundary in 1775 had before it “the Konin land court decree … on Monday after the Sunday Septuagesime in 1728, concerning that same stawisko and the transgressions committed upon it, with a field session assigned to the ground”, and it read the sworn testimony taken in 1728 beside its own: 53/17/0/-/Konin Gr.145. That decree calls Krzysztof Prusimski the grandfather of Antoni Prusimski, the Starost of Niszczewice, and the Antoni named here, Krzysztof’s son, the Starost’s uncle.

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 sitting. The first page carries the heading of the court’s sitting: held at Konin on the Monday after Septuagesima Sunday 1728, by adjournment from the sitting of the Monday after Saint Matthew’s day in 1727 [1].

The parties. Franciszek and Józef Ścibor Chełmski, heirs and possessors of Łukom, Łomowo and other villages, are plaintiffs. They had cited Krzysztof Prusimski as principal, his son Antoni, six noblemen in his service, who are named, and subjects of Trąbczyn whose names were still to be found out. The suit had been brought at the sitting after Trinity 1727 and was not reached then for the press of business [1].

The charges. Prusimski, the plaintiffs say, set neighbourly friendship aside. Earlier wrongs they had kept out of the public records for the sake of that friendship. Now he had a hundred threescore of shingles, made on their own ground, burned together with a hut, so that the children who lived in the hut were nearly burned, and he refused to make the loss good. He had four working oxen, kept for their glassworks, taken in an armed raid on their ground and held for some time. When Józef Chełmski demanded redress, he plotted against his life. And while the brothers were away at the Crown Tribunal at Piotrków, he sent his son, his retainers and his subjects, armed with sabres and with long and short guns, onto ground that had belonged to Łukom from of old, to take it for himself; they seized hay there, loaded on carts, in no small number of cartloads, and so caused the loss of livestock [1].

The decree. Józef Chełmski appeared in person for himself and his brother; the Prusimskis and the others appeared through Konstanty Marszyński. Because the question of the ground belongs before its own court, the land court finds that a sworn commissioner of the provinces of Poznań and Kalisz must go onto the ground, with two friends named by each side. The parties have agreed on Wojciech Biskupski. They are to bring him and the friends, at their common cost, to the ground from which the dispute arose, on the Monday after Misericordia Sunday. The commissioner and the friends are to examine sworn witnesses of great age who know the matter, on the ownership of the disputed ground and on the violence and damage, and to decide all the claims. An appeal to the land court lies only from their final sentence. Each party is to pay a penalty of fourteen Polish marks, half to the other side and half to the court. A party that does not comply is banished from the Kingdom, the banishment to be proclaimed by a court messenger and carried out by the starost’s castle court [1].

Form and language

The heading of the sitting stands at the top of leaf 368. The entry begins a quarter of the way down leaf 372, under its own heading, fills leaves 372 verso and 373, and ends in nine lines on leaf 373 verso. Other entries stand on the first, second and last of these pages and are not transcribed. The Latin is abbreviated in the manner of the court books; the transcription fills the abbreviations out. A clause left out by the clerk and added at the foot of leaf 372 with a mark is given where the mark places it.

Related holdings

Earlier suits between the two estates before the same court: 53/6/0/-/17 and 53/6/0/-/36. A later one, over potash: 53/6/0/-/45. The decree of 1775 that ended the dispute and cites this one: 53/17/0/-/Konin Gr.145.

Scans

The archive supplied five images: three single pages, one image of two facing pages, and the label on the cover of the volume. The image of two pages was cut at the fold; the single pages are used as they are; the label is not a page. All five pages are kept whole, although other entries stand on three of them.

Transcription

The editor transcribed the heading of the sitting and the entry and supplied them by paragraph, not line by line, with the clerk’s abbreviations filled out and eleven marks of doubt.

Check against the scans

An AI model (Claude) read all five pages word for word against the scans and corrected 29 readings. Ten of the eleven doubts are settled; one stays. Most corrections are small. Those that change the sense: the sons are cited “with their parents, the servants and subjects with their lords”, a set phrase, where the first reading had a decree; the shingles burned were “a hundred sixties”, six thousand; the hay was taken “in no small number of cartloads”, and its loss caused “the loss of livestock”; and the court, “deciding” the plaintiffs’ cause, finds one thing, that a commissioner must go onto the ground. Each change is logged with its reason.

Division and dating

The entry is one document, with the heading of its sitting as its first page. The heading gives the day: the Monday after Septuagesima Sunday 1728, which was 26 January.

Translation

The English is the editor’s own translation and was not made again. It was changed in sixteen places where the Latin had been corrected. The editor’s notes and glossary are not used here. An automatic check compared the terms of the two texts.

Summary

The summary was written in German from the corrected Latin and translated into English. Each of its twelve statements was then checked against the document. One was weakened, because the word for what was done with the hay is not surely read; the rest held.