 The nobility (or "szlachta") in Poland constituted a greater proportion of the population than in other countries, up to 10%.In principle, they were all equal and politically empowered, but some had no property and were not allowed to hold offices or participate in sejms or sejmiks, the legislative bodies.Of the "landed" nobility, some possessed a small patch of land that they tended themselves and lived like peasant families, while the magnates owned dukedom-like networks of estates with several hundred towns and villages and many thousands of subjects.