ι88
THE MESTA
panero, or local justice to sit with these two as the representative
of the military orders. The procedure was, therefore, not a trial
in the usual joint court of entregador and local judge, but an
executive measure under royal authority. The two entregadores
made some needed modification of the earlier schedules of local
dues, by providing for the payment of two sheep per thousand as
a “ rondo to pay for guards against the golfines,” since the depre-
dations of these marauders had come to be chiefly raids upon the
migrating flocks.1
There had been previous attempts by the crown to use the en-
tregadores in checking local sheep taxes. In 1276 Alfonso X had
ordered these itinerant justices to assist in a campaign against
illegal montazgos;2 Sancho IV and Ferdinand IV undertook to
do the same in 1285 and 1295, but all of these decrees were little
more than formalities — compensations to the Mesta for the
many local sheep-tax privileges then being confirmed by the king.3
It was left to Alfonso XI to take up the matter in 1335 in a decree
which attacked with considerable vigor the spreading practice of
taxing passing flocks.4 The entregadores were to stop all illegal
montazgos, and heavily augmented penalties were fixed for any
violations of their mandates. In addition, it was carefully speci-
fied that copies of this decree were to be carried by Mesta mem-
bers while en route, and were to be regarded as having the same
authority as the original with its royal signature. This last pro-
vision was, naturally, of special importance to the migrating
herdsmen.
It should not be understood that Alfonso XI inaugurated a
campaign of wholesale confiscation of local tax privileges. In-
deed, the justice of his attitude and the fairness of his decisions
between Mesta and townsfolk were all the more striking because
of the rarity of those virtues in that unscrupulous age. Alfonso
was well aware of the tempting possibilities of the Mesta as an
instrument for the aggrandizement of centralized administrative
power; nevertheless his right to that well earned title El Jus-
Iiciero, the Doer of Justice, is convincingly demonstrated in his
1 See above, p. 89, no. 2. 3 Quad. 1731, pt. ι, pp. 16-18.
2 See above, p. ι8o. 4 Arch. Mesta, Privs. Reales, no. 6.
TAXES DURING THE RISE OF THE MESTA 189
replies to the Cortes’ petitions in 1339 and 1349 regarding the
taxation of the migratory flocks. These answers were exception-
ally fair compromises, which displayed the monarch’s due ap-
preciation both of the interests of an important industry and of
the ancient town privileges.
At the session in Madrid, in 1339, the Mesta had, through its
spokesmen, the deputies from Soria and Segovia, introduced a
petition asking that ‘ the many new montazgos recently intro-
duced by the towns should be stopped, and that none be allowed,
save those authorized by Alfonso X or Sancho IV.’1 The king’s
reply to this was not a cheerful assent, after the fashion of his
predecessors and successors. Instead Alfonso XI pointed out
that the montazgo was a tax founded on custom and should
therefore be respected. He then declared that the collection of
the montazgo should be upon a fair basis: neither favoring the
Mesta by arbitrarily extinguishing old customary sheep taxes,
nor submitting to the towns with any sweeping indorsement of
all montazgo collections.
In the same Cortes of 1339, the Mesta undertook to have
recognized as legal only those montazgos that were levied on the
southward trip. This the king indorsed, with the qualification
that if certain royal sheep tolls were not collected on the south-
ward migration, they should be levied when the sheep started
northward, “ in order that the king should not lose those revenues
to which he was entitled.’2 In 1343 the Mesta asked that the
towns collect ho almojarifazgos3 from its members, save at the
points on the canadas where such collection had been made of
old. To this the king cautiously replied that ‘ they should first
show him where these taxes were being newly levied, and then he
would take steps to guard their [the Mesta members’] rights.’ In
the same Cortes, the sheep owners petitioned that those places
which collected montazgos and other taxes should present the
evidences of their authority, whether these evidences be charters,
or privileges, or customary rights. This proposal to place all local
tax privileges on trial was answered in a characteristically
ɪ Cortes, Madrid, 1339, pet. 4.
2 Ibid., pet. 28.
3 See below, p. 424.