The National Archives of Hungary (Budapest, 2006)
NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND SPECIAL ARCHIVES OF NATIONAL COLLECTION - Hungarian National Archives by Géza Érszegi and István G. Vass
The Regnicolaris Archives can be divided into three different parts. (N section) These are: Palatine Archives, Archives of Lord Chief Justice and Archives of the Country. The palatine archives theoretically contain the archives of the palatines, the first dignitaries of public law and the archives of the royal governor during the Hapsburg reign. In general, the material is not continuous and not complete. The position of palatines was rarely occupied by kings. The documents of palatines and governors were partly held in the family archives in the 16 th and 17 th centuries and were partly lost. Several palatines did not leave any records. During the reign of Ferdinand I, under the leadership of the royal governor a modern Governorship was formed in the town of Pozsony (Bratislawa nowadays). Meetings with six to ten councillors took place on a regular basis. Its competence covered the whole internal administration of the country and to a certain extent covered foreign affairs. Its influence diminished after the Chamber in charge of finance became subordinated to the court, (1548) and to the military organizations of the fortresses under the War Council of Vienna, (1556). After this it was responsible for smaller endowments, activities of public administration and primarily with administration of justice. The archives of palatines and governors from the 16 th and 17 th centuries are unequally distributed; some are of greater quantity from the turn of the 17 th and 18 th centuries; while others at the end of the 18 th century to 1848, are of a significant quantity. At the beginning of these archives, they relate to the smaller grants of palatines, to the operation of country, head judges and their authentic functions. From the end of the 17 th century, the more general public administrative, political, military problems surface. Since from the 17 th century the current palatine used to be the Lord Lieutenant of Pest county and the Lord/ chief justice of Jászkun districts, the archives of the palatines deal with these areas, too. The documents oiLord Chief Justice, the second dignity of public law after the palatine, can be found in the Archives of the Lord Chief Justice. These documents are the files and the records of official, mainly judicial and authentic local operation of the chief justice. The written material is in chronological order according to the time served on the bench for each chief justice. The Archives of the Lord Chief Justice are incomplete, mainly at the very beginning. It dates from the year, 1655. Other materials referring to this archive can be found in the archives of families; the members of which used to be Lord Chief Justices or officers working with them. We have already mentioned the establishment of the Archives of the Country. The Hungarian estates that accepted the rule of Hapsburg kings and still ensured its own privilege within and outside this law also wanted to ensure its political influence on the country. They built the most sophisticated forms
