234
THE MESTA
In the course of the decade 1526-36 there were more than
fifty hearings held by the pesquisidores. They usually sat for a
few weeks at some large city, such as Leon, Toledo, Segovia, or
Seville, and inspected the taxation privileges of various neigh-
boring towns, nobles, or ecclesiastical establishments.1 As a
rule they were expected to cooperate with the Royal Council by
submitting their recommendations to that body for confirma-
tion. Notwithstanding this understanding, which was not always
clearly stated in their instructions, by about 1545 we find them
following the example of Corregidores and chancillerias, and de-
veloping unmistakable signs of restive ambition. Occasionally
they disregarded their supposed obligations to the Council and
the Mesta and handed down decisions of their own, or accepted
the contentions of the defendant tax collector when the latter’s
prestige made such a step expedient.
Curiously enough, this procedure was not immediately
checked by the Council, in spite of energetic protests from
Castejon, the Mesta,s attorney. In fact, it soon became evident
to the sheep owners that even if the pesquisidores remained loyal
to the Mesta, their days of usefulness to that body were nearly
over. Towns and nobles began to question the authority of these
special inquisitors, whom they naturally regarded, not as rep-
resentatives of the Royal Council, but as officers of the hated
Mesta.2 Finally, in 1540, the Chancilleria of Granada calmly
proceeded to usurp for itself the position, supposedly reserved to
the Royal Council, of appellate court for pesquisidor decisions.
In the course of a notable and acrimonious suit between the
Mesta and the city of Murcia, the latter’s attorney delivered a
scathing denunciation of the sheep owners, those magnate male-
factors, those tax-dodgers, who were “ the cause of the scandal-
ɪ Some of the forms of taxation in which these investigators were especially in-
terested were the estancos and barcajes, ferry tolls levied at the numerous rivers and
streams which cross the peninsula from east to west. Cf. Nueva Recop., lib. 6,
tit. ɪɪ, Ieyes ɪo, 13.
2 The earliest example of this is found in a case between the Mesta and the
Portazguero of Campana de Albalâ, near Plasencia (Arch. Mesta, C-2, Campana,
1526), when the plea was made on behalf of the town that, as a suburb of Pla-
sencia, it should enjoy the latter’s well known exemption from any intrusion of
Mesta officials.
TAXES UNDER THE HAPSBURGS AND BOURBONS 235
ous rise in the prices of grain and wool, of food and clothing.”
There was, he declared, no precedent for the admission of the
entregadores or any other Mesta judges, such as these pesquisi-
dores, within the jurisdiction of the city, which included a wide
area of the surrounding country. The chancilleria concurred
fully with this view, and thereby established a precedent which
became a formidable weapon in the hands of the towns. The
Pesquisidores lingered on for many years; the last instances of
their activity on behalf of Mesta tax exemptions occurred in
1597.1 Nevertheless, their utility to the Mesta had clearly
ceased before the accession of Philip II in 1556. Occasional
cases were still heard by them; but the number was small, and
the Mesta attorneys were soon disheartened by the regularity
with which the chancillerias took over the appellate function of
the Royal Council.2
By г551, the ever watchful but now discouraged Mesta attor-
ney, Castejon, was lamenting the woful lack of judicial protec-
tion afforded to his clients.3 Warnings were, therefore, sent out
by the Council to thirty-seven cities and towns that its agents,
as well as its decrees, were to be implicitly obeyed. It became
evident, long before the great Hapsburg Emperor retired behind
the portals of his monastic retreat in 1556, that autocratic cen-
tralization could not sweep aside or even minimize the taxation
privileges of the towns. Corregidores, chancillerias, and pes-
quisidores were equally useless for this purpose, though they were
employed by the sagacious Catholic Kings and their illustrious
grandson to smother for a time the smouldering fires of separa-
tism. But as the distracting cares of his world empire diverted
the attention and energies of the Emperor, the incompetence of
his subordinates gave the towns and other local interests their
opportunity; by the early 1540’s, the old régionalisme was once
more bursting into flame. Occasionally thereafter the chancil-
lerias supported the rulings of the entregadores regarding local
taxes; but more and more frequently, as the reign of Philip II
1 Arch. Mesta, A-3, Alarc6n, 1597.
2 On other aspects of this sixteenth-century rivalry between Chancillerfas and
Council, cf. pp. 115-116.
3 Arch. Mesta1 Prov. i, 48.