agrarian economy, which, most unfortunately for Castile, was not to be fully appreciated until two disastrous centuries had elapsed. The fact was that arable and pastoral life could very well be combined, and that the two were by no means hostile and mutually exclusive.1 After all, the best pasturage which the Mesta flocks could find anywhere was not the open and unkempt waste lands, nor the perennially denuded leased pastures, but the stubble straw, the vine leaves left after the grape harvest, and the fertile balks and fallow strips between cultivated patches.'

Charles was not long, however, in making his decision, for his plans and ambitions were not of the type that could wait patiently upon the development of a whole new industry. He must have funds at once, and one of the most exploitable resources available in his Spanish realms was the long established and now most flourishing pastoral industry, which was at just that time more prosperous than it had ever been before, or indeed was ever to be again. Hence the energy with which the Emperor followed up the policy so vigorously prosecuted by Ferdinand and Isabella. Forest conservation and arable land were both to be subordinated to the interests of pasturage.

With reference to forestry we have already observed the indifferent and even hostile measures taken by Charles. The claims of agriculture were given even less consideration. In 1525 it was decreed that all pasture lands brought under tillage during the first eight years of the Emperor's reign should be turned back to their original state and placed at the disposal of the sheep owners; and in 1552 a similar edict was issued, but indicating a twelve-year period. These were the first of a long series of similar enactments which punctuate the two centuries of the Hapsburg regime. In each the time limit was made longer, as the situation became more and more desperate for the Mesta in its struggle against the encroachments of settled agriculture.

1 Arch. Mesta, C-10, Cuenca, 1543: a lengthy suit between the Mesta and the town of Cuenca, which was itself a stronghold of that body, regarding the extension of arable into what had once been much frequented upland pasturage. • See above, p. 321.

See above, pp. 304, 320.

• Nueva Recop., lib. 7, tit. 7, ley 22. 'Arch. Mesta, Prov. i, 53.

1

The sheep owners' arrangements to facilitate collective bargaining for pasturage were materially assisted by their itinerant attorneys and agents and by the royal corregidores and special judge-inquisitors, who were given strict orders to stamp out the dreaded puja or competitive bidding. The crown gave further aid by annulling any town ordinances which attempted to forbid this form of collective procedure by the pasturage lessees. As a part of this same policy to suppress competition, the measures taken by the Catholic Kings against speculation in pasture lands, as well as their edicts against sub-lessees and middlemen, were confirmed and made more comprehensive. The operations of such middlemen, it was alleged, were not only unnecessary but pernicious, and were bound to increase the price of pasturage by the fees charged, as well as to demoralize the industry by the speculative factor thus injected into the negotiations: 3 views which have been strikingly persistent even down to the present day.

The reigns of the Catholic Kings and of the great Emperor brought the Mesta to the height of its prestige in the agrarian affairs of Castile. The wishes of the sheep owners coincided with the mercantilistic ambitions of those rulers, and were therefore promptly gratified by royal edicts, vigorously enforced by ubiquitous crown officials. Any opposition to the herdsmen, whether by proponents of enclosures or by landlords who wished to stimulate competitive bidding for pasturage leases, was met with sharp and decisive punishment. The Mesta was to be favored with the warm friendship of later sovereigns, but it was never again to enjoy such powerful protection as that given it, during the eighty years from 1476 to 1556, by Ferdinand, Isabella, and Charles. When the latter forsook the glamour and the cares of empire for the monastic quiet of Yuste, he left the Mesta in complete control of the rural life of Castile. It

Arch. Mesta, Prov. i, 27 (1528); ibid., A-5, Aldea el Rey, 1551; and B-1, Badajoz, 1556.

Ibid., B-1, Baeza, 1532.

Arch. Hist. Nac., Consejo Real Exped., leg. 48: provision of 19 November, 1566, confirming one of 25 May, 1552; Arch. Mesta, Prov. i, 43, 45, 46 (1538, 1551); ibid., Cuentas, February, 1544; Novisima Recop., lib. 7, tit. 25, ley 6.

is true that angry and occasionally effective protests were already being made against that organization, but the herdsmen were still in a position to enforce their extravagant pasturage claims, to invade the forests, and to check the development of agriculture and of sedentary sheep raising.

CHAPTER XVII

THE COLLAPSE OF THE MESTA'S PASTURAGE

PRIVILEGES

Pasturage legislation of Philip II. Decrees of 1566, 1580, and 1582. Futile agrarian programme. The chancillerías defend agriculture and enclosures. Opposition of royal creditors and others to the privileges of the Mesta. Exploitation of the lands of the Military Orders. Extravagant pretensions of the decree of 1633. Spread of enclosures during the seventeenth century. Mesta propaganda against agriculture. Collapse of ancient pasturage privileges in the eighteenth century. Culmination of the enclosure movement.

A CURSORY glance at the agrarian legislation of Philip II reveals at first no essential difference between the position of the Mesta under the second Hapsburg and that which it held during the reign of Charles V. Philip followed in his father's footsteps, with more or less exaggerated confirmations of his predecessor's pastoral enactments. He arrayed all the cumbersome and antiquated paraphernalia of his one-man government to defend the Mesta and its pasturage against the spread of arable enclosures. The views of practically all students of this period of Spanish agrarian history1 have been based upon the texts of such sweeping pro-Mesta edicts as those of 1566, 1580, and 1582. These decrees respectively indorsed the Mesta members' pasturage rights as against all non-migratory sheep owners, restored to pasturage all land newly tilled since 1560, and appointed royal commissioners to fix pasturage prices. If these documents be taken at their face value, then it must be agreed that the Mesta had indeed gone steadily onward to greater triumphs, and was at this time more than ever the despotic ruler of rural Castile. When we come, however, to examine the actual administration

1 See Haebler, Wirtschaftliche Blüte Spaniens, p. 24, n. 2, whose views have been accepted by Ansiaux, Goury du Roslan, and others.

* Concordia de 1783, i, fol. 88.

Nueva Recop., lib. 7, tit. 7, ley 23.

Arch. Ayunt. Cuenca, leg. 9, no. 9 (1582).

and enforcement of these and many similar laws of the period of Philip II, a very different, and from the Mesta's point of view far less comforting situation is revealed.

The first signs of successful resistance of the peasantry to the onward march of the Mesta flocks occurred some years before the retirement of Charles and the accession of Philip. As in the case of the resistance to the entregadores, the chancillerías, or high courts of appeal, proved to be the safe refuge for the farmers and the towns. The first decisions modifying and finally reversing the mandates of the itinerant magistrates regarding the rights of pasturage against arable land occur in 1539-40.1 Thereafter, as in the case of the fight against the visitations of entregadores, the towns soon learned to protect their interests by appealing to the increasing hostility of the chancillerías toward the Mesta's protector, the Royal Council. Then, too, the Castilian towns gradually learned to follow the ancient example of the Aragonese comunidades, and formed combinations of their grievances and resources. Thus they were able to fight out with marked success their litigations against the pretensions and mediaevalism of the Mesta. During the last decades of the sixteenth century there was scarcely a suit fought out in the higher courts between the Mesta and its opponents in which the latter did not combine against the common enemy. In the courts, in the national legislature, and in local meetings the towns registered their protests against the Mesta and the antiquated nomad life and depopulated countryside for which it stood. The edict of 1580, which ordered the destruction of all cultivation that had taken place

1 Arch. Mesta, C-2, Calzada, 1539; M-7, Murcia, 1540. In both cases the Mesta had attempted to secure a foothold in town enclosures.

See above, p. 123.

• A few examples will illustrate these tactics. Arch. Mesta, A-8, Arenal, 1592: twenty-five townspeople successfully defend their rights to cultivate certain parts of the local commons; A--8, Arguedona, 1593: twenty-two do the same; A-8, Arjona, 1594: thirty-six from various towns are sustained by the chancillería in their claims to enclosures; A-9, Azuaga, 1594: the same for ninety-six vecinos of this town; A-2, Ajamil, 1596: eleven towns combine to fight a suit against the Mesta regarding enclosure.

• Cortes de Castilla, iv, pp. 428–429 (Madrid, 1573, pet. 9): protests against the damages done to agriculture by pasturage and hunting privileges.