1

From the point of view of local taxes, the Mesta's experience under the Bourbons was as unhappy as it had been under the last Hapsburgs. The complaints which its attorneys at court had already begun to make in the seventeenth century regarding its estado miserable were multiplied many times in the eighteenth. The wars under Charles II and Philip V had played havoc with the cañadas and with the flocks themselves; and to make matters worse, the heavy taxes which had been levied upon the towns by the central government were speedily passed on in the shape of new exactions on the migratory flocks.

Two important documents show the condition of the Mesta's fiscal relations with the towns during the last eighty years of its existence. In 1758, at the urgent request of the Mesta, an exhaustive examination was made of all local sheep taxes, with a view toward eliminating any that might be illegal or excessive.❜ It was found that three hundred and twenty-one such imposts were being collected from the passing flocks by nearly as many different towns, individuals, and churches, scattered along all of the sheep highways from the mountains of Asturias and Navarre to the plains of Estremadura, Murcia, and the lower Guadalquivir. It is interesting to note that this figure corresponds almost exactly with that of the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, when the suits brought by Mesta attorneys against local tax collectors show that three hundred and twenty sheep taxes were being assessed during the period of 1474-1504 by almost as many towns and property owners. In other words, the local fiscal obligations of the transhumantes had changed but little either in number or character or even in rates after some three hundred years of tempestuous history. The names of the imposts had been somewhat changed. The ancient and once all pervasive montazgos had almost entirely disappeared, and in their stead the largest single group of tolls revealed in this survey were some seventy-eight called pasos, travesíos, and pasajes. 1 Arch. Mesta, Prov. ii, 52 (1656); iii, 15 (1682).

* Escolano de Arrieta, Práctica del Consejo Real (Madrid, 1796, 2 vols.), ii, pp. 117-118; Arch. Mesta, Prov. iv, 26.

• They were still being collected at Alcántara, Manzanares, Villa Nueva de los Infantes, and Barco de Ávila.

These were levied for passage over local or private pasturage, and therefore corresponded roughly to the mediaeval montazgos. The portazgos, or octroi on wool and animals en route to market, were collected at forty-three points, the pontazgos or bridge tolls at thirty-five, and barcajes or ferry tolls at only two. There were seven collections of the castillería, one of the most ancient of all Castilian sheep taxes, which was originally levied for the support of castles and watch towers during the Moorish wars. Some of the remaining hundred and fifty-six taxes bore other ancient names,' but by far the greater part of them were nameless tolls arbitrarily collected without reference to any traditional origin, or to any fictitious or actual service rendered. It is clear, then, that at the accession of Charles III in 1759 the assessment of tolls upon passing flocks still continued to be an accepted local privilege throughout the greater part of the peninsula. The practice was, in fact, quite as prevalent as it had been at any time since the centralizing reforms of Ferdinand and Isabella had swept aside the flagrant accumulations of illegal local taxes.

Charles III was too much occupied with the task of preparing the way for the abolition of the Mesta to pay attention to the pleadings of that decrepit body for local sheep tax reforms. In fact, practically nothing was done on the part of the crown to relieve the sheep owners from the costly annoyances of local tax collectors; and although the seventy years that followed the above survey of 1758 saw many radical changes, reforms, and reactions in Spain, the local tax problem still depressed the Mesta. A perfunctory summons was issued by the Royal Council in 1762 commanding certain towns to show their tax privileges. Various grandees were gently admonished to treat Mesta charters and concordias with respect.' Corregidores and other royal officers were advised with frequency, but apparently without

! Cf. Glossary, pp. 423-428.

* This investigation was not followed up with any aggressive measures. The Sala de Mil y Quinientas (see above, p. 129) was instructed 'to hear any cases which might arise.' Cf. Matías Brieva, Colecc. de Leyes... de Mesta (Madrid, 1828), p. 128.

Brieva, Colección, p. 132.

Ibid., p. 203, decree of 1780; cf. also Nov. Recop., lib. 6, tit. 20, ley 14.

results, to look after the sheep taxes and to prevent extortion.1 These and many similar mandates were of little avail; they were received with expressions of profound respect by the grandees and others to whom they were addressed, and then straightway forgotten.

In 1828, eight years before the Mesta was abolished, an unofficial investigation by its archivist, Matías Brieva, revealed nearly two hundred local taxes which were being levied each year upon the migratory herdsmen.' The reactionary regimes of Charles IV and his dissolute son, Ferdinand VII, had apparently aided the cause of the sheep owners by eliminations of tolls and taxes to the number of over a hundred. There were still twentynine concordias or tax agreements in force between the Mesta and such towns as Talavera, Cordova, and Plasencia, such nobles as the Dukes of Béjar, of Infantazgo, of Alba, and of Frias, and the Hermandads of Ciudad Real and Toledo. Many of these concordias dated back to the fourteenth century, but their ancient conditions, and in some instances even their rates, were still the same after some four hundred years of usage.

In a word, throughout its long history the Mesta members were ever confronted with this problem of their fiscal relations with towns, individuals, and ecclesiastical establishments. From the earliest times, when they led their first flocks down across the wide Castilian plains, they had been met by local officers who proceeded to levy what were at first penalties and fines for trespass, and what later became fixed charges, taxes, imposts, and tolls. When the Mesta was favored by the patronage of an aggressive monarch devoted to the idea of centralized government, as were Alfonso XI and the Catholic Kings, these local exactions were restricted, systematized, and carefully supervised. Whenever, on the other hand, the weakness of the sovereigns gave the old Spanish spirit of separatism, of local independence, any opportunity, great numbers of persistent local tax gatherers came forth to meet the shepherds all along the cañadas. As long as there were transhumantes in Castile, just so long would they 1 Brieva, pp. 230, 266, 300, 338, 371, 375: decrees of 1788, 1796, 1799, 1814, 1816. • In a special legajo or packet of the Mesta archive, marked Derechos.

be viewed with that suspicion which awaited all forasteros, strangers, who ventured to transgress upon the ancient privileges and property rights of a Castilian landowner, whether the latter was a town, monastery, military order, grandee, or peasant. Partly, then, as a source of revenue and a compensation for such trespasses, but more particularly as a recognition of the sanctity of cherished local privileges, these taxes were devised and exacted as long as there was a migratory sheep industry in Spain.

CHAPTER XIII

MEDIAEVAL ROYAL SHEEP TAXES

Share of the crown in local taxes. Moorish sheep tolls. The servicio de ganados or subsidy from domestic animals. Origin of the servicio y montazgo. Royal sheep tolls during the period of fifteenth-century profligacy. The tax schedule of 1457. THE fiscal history of the migratory sheep industry in other lands would lead one to expect the annals of the Castilian transhumantes to reveal at a very early date certain definite tolls being paid to the crown. We should expect to find royal imposts comparable to the early Roman scriptura and pensio, the Aragonese and Valencian carnerage, or even the Bárdenas incomes of the Navarrese crown. It is important to observe, therefore, that in Castile there is no indication of any such direct income to the royal exchequer from migratory flocks previous to the organization of the Mesta in or shortly before the year 1273. It is true that a few fueros or town charters of the twelfth century assign part of the local montazgo tax to the crown as lord of the land.2 It is likewise true that part of the local portazgos, which were by no means paid exclusively by transhumantes, were occasionally turned over to the sovereigns. These instances, however, were extremely rare, and do not in the least justify the assumptions of such recognized authorities as Schaefer, Cos-Gayon, Canga Argüelles, Gounon-Loubens, and even Colmeiro and Mariéjol, that the sovereign as such collected the montazgos and portazgos.*

1 See above, pp. 153 ff.

3

• Muñoz, p. 510 (fuero of Guadalajara, 1133); Ureña y Smenjaud, ed., Fuero de Zorita de los Canes (Madrid, 1911: Memorial Histórico Español, xliv), p. 420 (1180). On the origins of the montazgo, see above, pp. 163 ff.

See above, p. 163.

♦ The writers mentioned, whose opinions have hitherto been accepted without question, fail in the first place to make any distinction whatever between local and royal sheep taxes. Schaefer, in Archiv für Geschichte und Literatur, iv, p. 93 (1833), Gounon-Loubens, Admin. de la Castille (Paris, 1860), p. 280, and Mariéjol, L'Espagne sous Ferdinand et Isabelle (Paris, 1892), p. 217, not only describe the montazgo as a royal tax, but derive its name from" the mountain passes where it was