220
THE MESTA
the single purpose of guarding royal prerogatives and prestige
throughout the realms. All of the agencies and officials described
above were used effectively to circumscribe the tax privileges of
towns, nobles, ecclesiastics, and military orders. They helped
to enrich the royal coffers by their ample fines and thereby
aided materially the preparation for those two great undertakings
of the Catholic Kings, the expulsion of the Moors from Spain and
the exploration and conquest of America. Less picturesque,
though quite as important, was the fact that in their capacity as
fiscal agents of the central government they served as valuable
instruments in the all-important work of unifying Castile.
For our present purpose, it is essential to appreciate another
feature of this development, namely, its effect upon the local
fiscal relations of the sheep owners. Municipal and private sheep
tolls and taxes now became standardized and systematized; and
the hopeless lack of uniformity and confusion which had hitherto
harassed the herdsmen when on their marches gradually disap-
peared. Their fiscal obligations were defined, combined, and
simplified.1 Local toll schedules were cut down and made uni-
form.2 Furthermore, they were required to be kept in a public
place at each toll point,3 in order to prevent extortion and fraud.
Entregadores at intervals were empowered to examine these
1 A similar reform was undertaken in 1497-99 for the carreteros or teamsters,
for whom a special juez COnservador, a member of the Royal Council and thus com-
parable to the President of the Mesta, was later named. Nov. Recop., lib. 7, tit. 28.
See above, p. 172, on earlier efforts at standardization and uniformity.
2 The best and most important illustration of this was the schedule of local
montazgos which was fixed for the entire kingdom by a royal decree: see below,
p. 222. One of the most helpful reforms was the enforcement of an ancient privi-
lege of the Mesta which forbade the collection of a ram Qnorruecd) or bell ewe
(oveja encencerrada} as part of any toll on a given flock. Quad. 1731, pt. ι, p. 17:
decree of 1285. This law had been quite ignored, as a rule, though the towns some-
times acknowledged the justice of it; e.g., Arch. Osuna, Mss. Santillana, caj. 9,
leg. i, no. 7,1426: in levying montazgos the second pig or sheep entering the com-
mon was to be taken, so as to spare the more valuable leader. In the reign of
Ferdinand and Isabella, however, a series of royal mandates and court proceedings
guaranteed, in no uncertain terms, the immunity from seizure of the highly prized
leader of the flock. This exemption was soon extended to all breeding rams. Arch.
Mesta, C-ιo, Cuellar, 1488; Prov. i, 15 (1496) and i, 58 (1498), A-4, Alcintara,
1501.
3 Arch. Mesta, Prov. i, 58 (1498).
TAXES UNDER FERDINAND AND ISABELLA
221
schedules in order to make readjustments and to guard against
illegal alterations.
By 1516, the year of Ferdinand’s death, approximately three
hundred towns, villages, religious establishments, and nobles
were levying tolls and dues of one sort and another upon the
migrating herdsmen. The accounts of the Mesta1 give no in-
dication of the amount that was paid each year in this form, be-
cause the payments were made by the individual owners and
not by the organization. The pretexts and forms of the various
exactions were of the greatest diversity, and their forty or
more names afford tempting opportunities for the speculative
philologist.2
Originally all of the many local levies upon the flocks were in-
tended for one of two purposes: first, as punishment for tres-
passes upon public or private lands; or secondly, as a payment
for such services as the suppression of robber bands, the main-
tenance of a bridge, ferry, or drinking place, and especially for
temporary pasturage. It can be readily appreciated that these
two purposes frequently merged; for example, when trespasses
upon supposedly forbidden pastures became tacitly permissible.
By 1500 few, if any, of the older punitive exactions remained.
When a town undertook to levy a fine upon the owner of an of-
fending flock, the penalty was specially fixed as an ordinary fine
(pend) by some local official and was seldom disguised with one
of the mediaeval sheep-tax names. The latter were now used
to designate fixed charges, tolls, or fees, for services actually
rendered.
Of the many examples which might be selected to illustrate
local sheep taxes during the period 1474-1516, two are worthy of
attention, namely, the montazgo and the portazgo, which, as
was indicated above,3 had always been the most common and
troublesome exactions encountered by Mesta members. The
montazgo still retained, as a rule, its original mediaeval character
as a compensation to the town for the use of its montes or wooded
ɪ See Bibliography, p. 404.
2 Many of these terms seem to be quite unknown to lexicographers. See
Glossary, pp. 423-428.
’ See above, pp. 163-175.