CASTLE CHANCERY OF NOVHOROD-SIVERSKYI: PERSONAL STAFF

Abstract

The article analyzes personal staff of castle chancery of Novhorod-Siverskyi during its functioning (1636-1648). The origin of its officials and lower staff was established and their career was investigated within the chancery and in the nobility’s society. It was proved that all permanent employees were clients of Oleksandr and Yan Pisochynskyis, who were captains. They received from patrons land estates on the rights of ownership or lease for the service in the chancery. The article describes staffing flows of lower employees from chanceries of Ukrainian palatinates of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth to castle chancery of Novhorod-Siverskyi. Newly created in the middle 1630-s, a castle chancery of Novhorod-Siverskyi as a centre of the royal administrative and judicial power could not rely on fact of law and office administration schools existence in the region, so, staff for it was involved from other territories of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The court of O.Pisochynskyi, which has been formed mostly from ex-participants of military expeditions in ruled by him chapters, was the main supplier of staff for the chancery. Another part of employees consisted of well-experienced castle chancellors and councilmen of the Ukrainian voivodeships of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth – Volyn, Kyiv and Braclav ones. The professional skills of applicants, akin links and personal fidelity to the captain were the criteria for the acceptance to the chancery. The geographical origin of the officials and lower staff of the chancery was diverse enough. We can separate three regions of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, because people of this origin were fulfilling the staff of the Novhorod-Siverskyi castle chancery: Great Lithuanian principality, the Crown where Masovian voivodeship grounds dominated, and Ukrainian voivodeships. The general portrait of one of the officials of the chancery relies on the next characteristics: a noble; poor, who, as a rule, did not have any land behind the borders of Novhorod-Siverskyi district; well prepared in a field of law and office administration; a denominationally diverse (Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant); economically and, of course, personally dependent from a patron. For the lower chancery staff this list was broadening to the non-compulsory noble origin, high career mobility, mixing of work in chancery with the legal practice, at first, the participation in court proceedings as representatives of sides. In the context of the general portrait, the Novhorod-Siverskyi castle chancery slightly differed from its analogues in the neighbor Ukrainian voivodeships.