lation of rules, promulgated in 1457, became the basis of all later decrees upon the subject. Though occasionally amended, it was never abolished or even seriously revised as long as the servicio y montazgo was collected. In fact, the desires of sixteenth-century autocracy for revenue and for concentration of administrative functions seem to have been well satisfied with the traditions established by the grasping favorites of Castile's darkest days of mediaeval decadence. The Quaderno of 1457 confirmed all of the rates and rules established in 1416 and 1442.1 It was carefully specified that the tax applied to animals being taken to markets outside their home towns, as well as to those being taken to southern pastures. Furthermore it designated the puertos reales or royal toll gates on the cañadas at which the tax was to be collected, whereas in previous years collections had been made at points the location and number of which had been determined supposedly by tradition, but more probably by what the traffic would bear. The toll points named in 1457 became the puertos antiguos of later ages, and the last year of the servicio (1758) found the list only slightly changed. The sheep were to be counted while en route northward as well as southward, and although the servicio was to be paid, as of old, on the southward journey, if the count on their return showed an increase, the extra animals were also to be assessed. Attempts at evasion were punishable with heavy fines and in addition to this the rate of the tax was to be quadrupled upon the offenders. Exemptions were subject to cancellation without notice, in order to insure the proper behavior of the recipients of those favors.2

1 Arch. Mesta, B-1, Badajoz, 1727, contains a copy of the greater part of this code; see below, pp. 391-397. Parts of it also appear in Nueva Recop., lib. 9, tit. 27. The puertos reales were all near the southern terminals of the cañadas, in Estremadura, La Mancha, Murcia, and the valley of the Guadalquivir. In 1457 they were at Candeleda, Aldeanueva de la Vera, Montalbán, Rama Castañas, Socuellamos, Venta del Cojo, Torre de Esteban Ambran, Villaharta, Perdiquera, Malpartida, Puerto de Pedrosin, Abadia, and Albala. Later changes in this list are noted in Cortes, Toledo, 1480, pet. 90; Brit. Mus., Ms. 1321 k 1, no. 1 (1401); and Quad. 1731, pt. 2, p. 180 (sixteenth century).

2 A feature of this Quaderno which does not concern us was the travesio, or royal tax on certain local, non-Mesta sheep called riberiegos, which pastured just beyond the borders (riberas) of their local jurisdictions.

With such a detailed tax schedule in force, it would seem that both the crown and the sheep owners should have known where they stood as to revenues and obligations respectively. Though obviously drawn up in the interests of favorites who planned to exploit the royal incomes, the code of 1457 was nevertheless looked to hopefully by the Mesta members as being at least a definite enumeration of their fiscal burdens. Unfortunately, however, the usual discrepancy between written laws and actual administration was never more grossly exemplified than under the last mediaeval monarch of Castile.

The closing decade of the dissolute regime of Henry IV brought his kingdom to its lowest levels of moral depravity, political iniquity, and economic confusion. The history of the servicio y montazgo during the period of degradation from 1464 to 1474 presents a convincing illustration of the hopeless demoralization of the times. Exemptions from the tax were scattered broadcast by unscrupulous lessees and collectors. Tax receipts were even being sold firmado en blanco-' signed in blank '—with the spaces for the amounts left open to be filled in by the purchaser as desired.1 The clergy, who had always been exempt from the national servicio or general subsidy, now claimed freedom from any assessments of the sheep servicio; and since the monasteries, notably such opulent establishments as Las Huelgas at Burgos and Nuestra Señora at Guadalupe, were among the largest sheep owners of Castile, such exemptions made serious inroads upon the servicio y montazgo. The widespread lawlessness and disorder wrought havoc with Mesta flocks. Armed with sheep tax 'leases' from Beltran or Pacheco, the robber baron friends of those two worthies

1 Hernán Pérez del Pulgar, Crónica de los Reyes Católicos (Valencia, 1780), p. 165; Ordenanzas Reales de Castilla, lib. 6, tit. 4, ley 26.

2 Complaints against this discrimination in favor of large sheep owners were first presented in behalf of small owners in the Cortes at Cordova in 1455 (pet. 13). In nearly all of the later Cortes of the reign these complaints were repeated.

'A vivid picture of the storm of outlawry which broke over Castile during this period can be found in the records of the Cortes; e.g., Cortes, Salamanca, 1465, pet. 16; Ocaña, 1469, pets. 19, 23. Further discussion by contemporaries of the deplorable financial conditions under Henry IV is found in Pulgar, op. cit., p. 5. See also Schaefer, in Arch. für Geschichte und Literatur, iv, p. 72.

accosted the shepherds at every crossroad and wayside castle demanding servicio y montazgo.'

All the old paraphernalia of long forgotten mediaeval feudal dues was brought out and used by 'the crown and its defenders' as a disguise for further exactions from the sheep owners. Chief among these devices were the juros de heredad, or annuities, with which the crown had in past centuries rewarded the services of loyal followers in the Moorish wars.1 A common form of such juros in the fourteenth century had been a privilege to levy a tax upon the sheep passing a certain point. The favorites of the impotent Henry were not long in resorting to this device as a means of rewarding their clamoring adherents. The henchmen of grandees and even of royal counsellors soon appeared along the cañadas, and confronted the Mesta members with juros which entitled the bearers to parts of the royal servicio y montazgo.3 1 The best account of the juros is found in Brit. Mus., Harleian Mss. 3315, p. 56: description of financial affairs of Spain, compiled by an officer of Philip II's exchequer in 1577. The juro de heredad is there described as "la renta que el Rey da cada año a una persona. . . . Ay tres maneras de juros, como son juro al quitar juro por vida y juro perpetuo." The titles are of course derived from the different durations of the income. According to A Short Account of the Spanish Juros, a fifteen-page anonymous pamphlet printed in London in 1713, the name juro is due to the oath taken by the king to respect the titles of the recipients of such annuities.

...

2 An example of this is found in the juro de heredad awarded to the town of Cáceres in 1303 by Ferdinand IV, " por servicios muchos y buenos que el concejo de Cáceres fizieron a los Reyes onde yo vengo y a mi." Ronda, a mediaeval tax to which sheep owners contributed heavily for the maintenance of the night watch around the town (see below, p. 428), was also extensively revived and falsely described as a royal impost. Ulloa, Privs. de Cáceres, p. 131.

Arch. Osuna, Infantazgo Mss., caj. 1, leg. 11, no. 6 (1467); Arch. Mesta, Prov. i, 68 (1468). These annuities were promptly taken over and carefully regulated by the Catholic Kings as part of their extensive fiscal reforms, and soon developed into helpful revenues. During the sixteenth century the juros de heredad became, like their English counterpart, the benevolences, valuable sources of income to the autocracy.

An illustration of a juro granted in the shape of a share of the servicio y montazgo by Isabella in 1481 is found in Brit. Mus., 1321 k 1, no. 1. The recipient, Gutierrez de Cárdenas, "treue de mi por merced de juro de heredad para si et para sus herederos et subcessores et para quien del 6 dellos ouiesse causa la renta del servicio y montazgo travesío de locos con ganados que inuernasen en todas dehesas del arcobispado de Toledo." On the history of the juro de heredad in the sixteenth century see Ansiaux, op. cit., pp. 534, 542; Piernas y Hurtado, op. cit., ii, p. 67; Altamira, iii, p. 261.

In vain the Mesta's attorneys at court and its lobbyists at the Cortes presented repeated protests against these incessant and all-pervading 'royal' taxes; but there was no one to hear who had the power or will to act.1 These were days of ignominious impotence for the monarchy, culminating in the final insult of the dethronement of Henry in effigy on the plains outside the walls of Ávila. At the Cortes of Santa Maria de Nieva in the fall of 1473, only a few months before his death, Henry tried to make belated amends for the profligacy of his reign. Full assent was given to the pleas of the deputies that all annuities, tax privileges, and exemptions granted since 1464 be cancelled; but as long as the monarchy continued as it had been, such enactments could only be futile formalities. It was not until the dawn of a new era with the accession of Ferdinand and Isabella in 1474 that the long hoped for reform came.

1 Cortes, Cordova, 1455, pet. 27; Salamanca, 1465, pets. 16 ff.; Ocaña, 1469, pets. 14, 15, 19, 23; Santa Maria de Nieva, 1473, pet. 18; Quad. 1731, pt. 1, pp. 131 ff.

2 Altamira (ed. of 1909), i, pp. 605–615.

CHAPTER XIV

ROYAL SHEEP TAXES OF THE AUTOCRACY

Reforms of Ferdinand and Isabella. The crown and the fiscal rights of the Military Orders. Hapsburg exploitation of the pastoral industry. The Fuggers and the Mesta. Bankruptcy of the monarchy in the seventeenth century. Reforms of Charles III.

THE bankruptcy of the royal exchequer was one of the most perplexing of the many distressing legacies left by Henry IV for his youthful successors, Ferdinand and Isabella. As their policies grew more and more ambitious, as the war against Granada reached its climax and was followed immediately by the tremendous enterprises in the New World, the needs of the treasury became a cause of constant preoccupation. Revenues that had been dissipated had to be regained; economical administration had to be devised; all possible resources had to be tapped, and by no means the least of the potential incomes were the taxes derived from the migratory pastoral industry.

The sessions of the first Cortes summoned by the young sovereigns, namely those which met at Valladolid and Madrigal in 1475 and 1476, were therefore confronted with exacting tasks. Before any constructive legislation could be undertaken there had to be a thorough clearing away of the accumulation of exemptions, juros, and the many other devices by which the income of the crown had been squandered. The servicio y montazgo was among the first of the once royal incomes to be taken up in this reform campaign. It was decreed that not more than one such servicio was to be collected from any sheep owner in a given year; and that one was to be collected only by the crown or its authorized agents and lessees.1 Armed with this mandate, and with the assurance of its enforcement by all the powers of the newly united monarchy, the Mesta's attorneys and the royal

1 Arch. Mesta, Prov. i, 5, 7 (1476 ff.): records of suits brought under this decree.