186
THE MESTA
effectively, Coria’s officers were intercepting the herdsmen at
their destination, namely on lands of Caceres, to make sure that
all had paid the toll in passing. It was against this trespass
that the latter town protested, and in proof of its rights there was
cited a recognition of its montazgo privilege by Alfonso VIII,
who won the town from the Moors in the latter part of the twelfth
century. This ancient montazgo was “ two sheep from every
flock and five swine from every drove . . . to be collected weekly
until the animals left the town lands.” The latter clause sug-
gests the penal attitude of the older montazgos.1
In the final decision of the queen regent and her counsellors,
who heard the case, it was clearly indicated that the montazgo
was now recognized as a tax paid to towns for the use of their
pasturage, and not a toll payable to the lord of any given point
along the march of the sheep. Câceres, as the owner of the pas-
tures, was the rightful collector of the montazgo of this district,
as against Coria, whose claim to such a tax rested solely upon the
control of wayside toll points.
So widely had this case been accepted as a precedent, that when
Alfonso XI and his successors came to assert themselves and to
strengthen certain claims of the royal exchequer upon the migra-
tory flocks, they found the towns in full control of all pasturage
taxes on the sheep.2 The crown had, therefore, to resort to an
extension of the royal serυicio de ganados, or subsidy on cattle
and sheep, which had been created by Alfonso X in 1270. In
1343, Alfonso XI, with characteristic vigor, took over certain
local montazgos, combined them with the serυicio, and thus there
arose the royal servicio y montazgo?
The strong and able kingship of Alfonso XI, who attained his
majority in 1324, was marked by two characteristics in the matter
1 Compare the law of Cuenca, “ expelling strange sheep from the town lands at
once, but without injury ” (1268).
2 The recognition of the right of the pasturage towns in Estremadura to these
taxes is shown in the wording of the protest of the Mesta against the rondo. and
other local dues in the Cortes of Valladolid in 1325 (pet. 30). After the usual pro-
test against the inj'ustice of these local taxes, the sheep owners acknowledge that
‘ those towns in Estremadura which had had these taxes [previous to the present
reign] were entitled to continue them,’ an admission hitherto not thought of.
3 See below, p. 261.
TAXES DURING THE RISE OF THE MESTA
I≡7
of local sheep taxes. First of all, there was a noticeable lack of
royal recognitions of town titles to such taxes. As was indicated
above, but four or five such documents are noted during the
twenty-six years of his personal rule, as contrasted with the
nearly annual occurrence of these recognitions during the two
previous reigns. None of those granted by Alfonso XI was more
than a perfunctory confirmation of older privileges, which only
incidentally applied to sheep taxes.
The second characteristic of this sovereign’s position in the
fiscal history of the Mesta was his exercise of royal powers in
supervising the administration of these local taxes. Although
unable to dislodge the now firmly established practice of the as-
sessment of montazgos by towns, military orders, and other land-
owners, he undertook to regulate and restrict them through
various crown officers. His favorite instruments in this work were
naturally the royal entregadores, the judicial protectors of the
Mesta. It will be remembered that these magistrates were crown
appointees, serving under the direct supervision of the king, to
whom, in the years of such able monarchs as Alfonso XI, they
were directly responsible. The royal sage of the previous century,
the founder and first patron of the Mesta, had, at the beginning
of his reign, taken the first steps toward regulating local sheep
taxes by codifying such fiscal operations of the military orders.
Alfonso X’s code of 1253 had its counterpart in Alfonso Xi’s
decree of 1328.1 Both were royal prescriptions of the montazgo
rights of the ⅛ilitary orders. Theoretically the latter was in-
tended merely as a supplement to the former; but as a matter of
actual practice, it embodied the necessary steps for the first real
enforcement which the older measure had known. The essential
feature of the decree of 1328 in this respect was the appointment
of two ‘ entregadores of the shepherds, acting for the king, who
were to see to the enforcement of the original montazgos of two
sheep from every thousand.’ There is no mention of any com-
1 Arch. Hist. Nac., Mss. Calatrava, Docs. Particulares, no. 22r. Alfonso was
then in his sixteenth year, but the vigorous lines of his later policy were already
being planned out by his advisers and were soon to be taken up by the precocious
young sovereign himself.