By 1600, Poland Lithuania was a state run by the nobles and for the nobles. These measures extended the control of the nobility over the executive, legislative and judicial powers of the kingdom. Therefore, the elective nature of the monarchy was considered the fundamental guarantee of liberty and freedom for the nobility.
Following the extinction in the male line of the Jagiellon Dynasty in 1572, the right of all nobles to participate in royal elections was confirmed. After the Parliamentary Union of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in at Lublin in 1569, the diet became exclusively noble. The Statute of Nihil Novi of 1505 dictated that all new legislation had to be approved by the Diet. The Chamber of Envoys: composed of 2 delegates from each local Dietine.The Senate: comprised of Chief provincial officials such as Bishops, Castellans, government ministers and palatines.There was a Bicameral Diet made up of two assemblies: The Polish Nobility was organised in a Diet and Dietines. The Privileges of Piotrkow in 1496 banned non-members of the nobility of Poland from buying landed estates, awarded even wider powers to the Szlachta, and restricted even more peasant mobility. The Granting of total jurisdiction over their serfs was further confirmed by a Grant of Sigismund I in 1518. The Polish-Lithuanian nobility had an enormous degree of control over their serfs. No member of this nobility could be imprisoned without a formal conviction of a crime. The Nobility of Poland was exempt from taxation since 1374, especially on the transmission mortis causa of hereditary noble land or feudalistic states. If a judicial case involved a nobleman, a Polish or Lithuanian holder of nobility always could appeal to a separate court with judges designated by the nobility itself (not even by the King or other powers or authorities). This meant that the nobility of Poland was totally in control of their own judicial affairs. This fact was legally approved in Poland in 1578, and in Lithuania in 1580. Privileges and organisation of the Polish and Lithuanian Nobility It was indeed a haven and a model, and foreign visitors stared with envy at the matchless power and privileges of the nobility of Poland and Lithuania. The noble elite of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth personified the merits of the ideal noble state. The Nobility of Poland did inspire admiration and even reverence. The Polish Nobility were not common people but legally recognised noblemen who also were meant to be gentlemen. In England, for example, the English Gentry were after all commoners. The Polish Nobility was at the same time gentry and nobility, and though the idea of gentility was important for the nobility of Poland, the quality of being noble was far more important and formally recognised by a functioning legal system. The Szlachta was a lawfully privileged and elite order, and no member of this nobility was a commoner at law. The Polish and Lithuanian Nobility, whose proper and original name is Szlachta, certainly was a legally demarcated state with extensive legal rights.
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