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The article is an attempt to explain in what way the eighteenth-century city of Vitsyebsk got interested in its history which led to the emergence of a number of local texts of historical nature: "The Book of Vitsyebsk Privileges", and "Pantsyrn and Averka’s Chronicle". The main factor of the awakened interest in historical sources and history was the struggle for power. In 1729-1730 and 1748-1750 the city was shaken by two consecutive confl icts over the city's mayoralty which sparked interest in documents of Vitsyebsk registry. This led to decisive steps in order to preserve municipal records. The first "Book of Vitsyebsk Privileges" was compiled between September of 1733 and November of 1735. Its emergence was related to the struggle for power in 1729-1730 and to the drive of the local government to prevent such a situation from happening again in the future. The second edition of "The Book of Vitsyebsk Privileges", by Michał Stawski, appeared in 1758. It was made for the municipal council as an argument in their struggle with the Jewish community. Ten years later its several copies appeared, prepared by Stephen Averka, who wanted to gain money from selling information needed by the local community. While copying "The Book of Privileges", Averka came up with an idea to compile the history of his native city. The first draft of his future chronicle he included in one of the copies of "The Book of Privileges" (May 1768). A manuscript, known as the "Pantsyrn' and Averka's Chronicle" was created by Averka in July 1768. Despite all its imperfections and flaws, the text can be regarded as the first written history of Vitsyebsk.

Polish-Lithuanian Seym of 1576 convened at Toruń was the first ordinary parliament under the reign of the second freely elected Polish king, Stephen Bathory (1576–1586). According to the opinion of legal historians this Seym was ineffective since no parliament-adopted statute (in the old-Polish terminology referred to as the constitution) was issued during its stormy debates. This was due to fact that at that time there appeared a serious divergence between what the monarch (who was preoccupied with the civil war between the Crown and the city of Gdańsk) expected from this Parliament and the Polish-Lithuanian gentry that tended toward fundamental constitutional reforms. In my opinion, this Parliament, functioning under the pressure of necessity, went as far as adopting two enactments of the end of November 1576, referred to as the ordinances. One of them dealt with the duty of the towns to accommodate the royal officers. The other one limited itself to appointing special deputies of both houses of the Seym, and equipping them with the task of collecting and administering a socalled defense tax. In the volumes of Metrica Regni Poloniae, numbered 113–115, there were also registered a plenty of privileges issued for towns and some social groups at that period. There were also contained in them some documents illustrative of parliamentary debates.