2l6
THE MESTA
effective than the itinerant royal counsellor-inquisitors, them-
selves among the highest nobility of the realm.
Emboldened by the success of these officials, the Mesta ven-
tured to suggest even more direct action on the part of the crown.
In August, 1487, on the occasion of a royal visit to Cordova, the
centre of a much frequented winter pasturage area, the ever
present attorney of the sheep owners persuaded their majesties
to issue summonses to a score of neighboring towns, commanding
the municipal officers to present before the Royal Council within
thirty days adequate documentary evidence justifying their
collection of sheep tolls. The Council sat in judgment upon
this evidence, and the fines which it usually levied were set
aside to help finance the wars against the Moors.1 The latter
point explains, in part, the interest of the Catholic Kings in
encouraging the Mesta in its prosecutions of local tax collectors.
In January, 1488, when the court was visiting at Saragossa, the
tireless Mesta attorneys brought similar suits against twenty-
eight Castilian towns. The efficacy of the Mesta’s crafty tactics
in thus using the Royal Council as a court of first instance is
demonstrated by the fact that the decisions of this, the highest
judiciary in the land, were almost invariably favorable to the
sheep owners “ because of the rebeldia [absence from court] of
the defendant.” The latter circumstance was by no means to
be attributed to insubordination on the part of the defendant
town in question. It was undoubtedly due to the excessive cost
and difficulty of preparing on short notice for the presentation of a
case before the royal court at the distant Aragonese capital.2
1 In some of these cases the Mesta attorney pleaded that local tolls were the
chief cause of the exorbitantly high prices then prevailing (1487-88). Arch. Mesta,
S-4, Segura, 1487; A-3, Albacete, 1487. Similar complaints were made in the
Toledo Cortes of 1480, pet. 90.
2 Fifteen of the twenty-eight towns involved were poverty-stricken villages in
the remote southern pasturage regions of Estremadura, Andalusia, and Murcia. A
few of the remainder, however, were cities of the first importance, noticeably Se-
govia, which was summoned to justify tolls being levied by villages within its juris-
diction. This is an interesting indication of the responsibilities incumbent upon
the city-head of a comunidad, or group of towns under the control of one. Arch.
Mesta, S-4, Segovia, r488; ibid., M-7, Murcia, 1488. On the importance of the
comunidad in the question of litigation between the Mesta and the towns, see
above, p. 115.
TAXES UNDER FERDINAND AND ISABELLA 217
A further purpose of the Mesta in prosecuting this new cam-
paign is discerned in the fact that only royal agents could be
effective within the jurisdiction of certain important pasturage
centres. By virtue of long cherished charters, the extensive
rural districts of such cities as Seville and Plasencia were exempt
from the visitations of the entregadores,ɪ The Mesta now found
its first effective means of forcing the officials of proud provincial
capitals to recognize the prestige of the grazier magnates.
In some instances the defendants were not towns but private
individuals — Jewish concessionaires to whom the local sheep
tolls had been farmed out. Enmity had been brewing for cen-
turies between these ‘ unbeliever ’ tax-gatherers and the sheep
owners. The Mesta officials lost no opportunity to denounce
these ‘ persecutors of Christian shepherds,’ and the organization
now found itself in a position to strike a decisive blow. There is
every reason to believe that Jorge Mexia, the energetic attorney-
general of the Mesta, who was never far from the royal presence,2
had not a little to do with the edict for the expulsion of the Jews,
which was signed at Granada on March 30, 1492. Scores of the
most irritating and persistent foes of the Mesta were thus elimi-
nated; and the latter added another politico-economic triumph
to its already imposing record.
The ambitions and activities of the Mesta moved rapidly dur-
ing these propitious times. A prolonged visit of the court at any
1 See above, pp. 105 ff. Arch. Mesta, C-ι, Câceres, 1490; E-ι, Encina Sola
(suburb of Seville), 1487.
2 Much of this success of the Mesta and of its utility to the crown may be as-
cribed to the constant presence of the sheep owners’ attorney-general at the royal
court. This was, of course, one of the great advantages of the Mesta over its op-
ponents, and the completeness of its archive is the best evidence of the thorough
efficiency with which Jorge Mexia and his successors did their work. An illus-
tration of their method is to be found in a case brought before the Royal Council by
Mexia in 1487 regarding tolls levied at Albacete in Murcia on flocks en route from
Castile to the east coast lowlands (Arch. Mesta, A-3, Albacete, 1487). The Royal
Council was much occupied with preparations for the Moorish wars, but Mexia
persisted. His portfolio of documents on the case contains almost daily memoranda
noting conferences with various councillors until the matter was formally taken
up. Mexia served the Mesta in this important capacity during the whole of the
crucial period from the accession of Ferdinand and Isabella until 1502, when the
work was taken up by an almost equally aggressive lieutenant.