THE MESTA
238
Philip II, in fact from about 1550 onward, the Mesta contended
that the flocks of its members should pay only tolls and actual
damages, whereas the non-migratory estantes should pay not
only the damages done by them but also whatever penalties and
fines were stipulated in the town ordinances.1 Let local flocks
be punished according to local laws, but transhumantes owed
no such obedience, and could, they alleged, be held only for such
damages as Mesta officials were ready to approve. Toward the
close of the century, however, after the loss of several costly
litigations, the Mesta was humbly willing to have the damages
assessed by two property-holders of the town where the offence
was committed — an old, but long forgotten, custom dating from
the fourteenth century.2 By 1600 the opposition of the Mesta
to local taxation of its flocks had thus simmered down to feeble
protests, uniformly futile entregador decisions, and occasional
equally resultless decrees of the Royal Council.
There remain for our consideration here two other phases of
the Mesta’s fiscal relations during the sixteenth century, namely
its obligations to the military orders and to various ecclesiastical
establishments. In the Middle Ages, both of these groups of
institutions were on practically the same footing as the nobles
and the cities; like these they represented what we have been
designating as local interests, the decentralizing forces of separa-
tism. Under the influence of the sixteenth-century autocracy,
however, they assumed a different position with reference to the
fiscal affairs of Castile in general and the Mesta in particular.
tary orders and churches (below, p. 242). During the reign of Ferdinand and
Isabella, the old form of quinto occurs in one or two instances, but under Charles
V it became quinta, possibly to distinguish this local fine from the quinto or royal
fifth of the product of the mines of Castile and later of America. Cf. Arch. Mesta,
A-9, Avila, 1502; A~4, Alcaraz, 1512; A-7, Andujar, 1530; T-2, Toledo, 1551;
M-3, Medellin, x553.
ɪ The usual penalty for such trespass by strays was the très tanto or triple the
amount of damage done. Arch. Mesta, B-4, Buendia1 x594; M-3, Mestanza,
159l; P-5, Pozuela, 1593.
2 The town of Madrid was among the most persistent defenders of this local pre-
rogative of levying penalties in addition to damages. Arch. Ayunt. Madrid, Mss.
sec. 2, leg. 214, no. 4 (1537) ; leg. 358, no. 57 (1567) ; Quad. 17 31, pt. ɪ, p. 53 (1347) i
Nueva Recop., lib. 3, tit. 14, ley 4.
TAXES UNDER THE HAPSBURGS AND BOURBONS 239
Under Ferdinand and Isabella, the crown acquired control of
the great military orders, by the election of Ferdinand to their
grand masterships, and by the foundation of the royal Consqo de
las Ordenes in 1488.1 The fiscal relations of the Mesta and the
military orders were, therefore, considerably affected, as will
be pointed out below, though the tax prerogatives of the orders,
as such, were by no means taken over by the crown. Similarly
the taxes and fines paid to religious establishments by sheep
owners, and especially the disputes incident to such payments,
were materially altered when the Pope granted assistance in the
shape of various ecclesiastical incomes to the Spanish sovereigns
for the prosecution of the war against the infidel.2 Because of
these grants, the relations between crown and church also under-
went an important change, which, as in the case of the military
orders, indirectly affected the tolls and dues paid by Mesta mem-
bers to ecclesiastical establishments.
From their very beginnings in the twelfth century, the four
great military orders of Santiago, Calatrava, Alcantara, and
Montesa had been rewarded for their services in the wars of the
Reconquest by royal and papal grants of taxation privileges.3
The significant feature of these concessions in the present con-
nection is the fact that among the largest of these incomes were
the rents of pasture lands granted to the orders as encomiendas
or fiefs. These great estates comprised one hundred and five of
the most frequented southern and western dehesas or pasturage
districts.4 Asidte from these rentals, there were other payments
made to the orders by Mesta members in the form of dues and
1 Semanario Erudito, iii, p. 164.
2 Notably for the wars against Granada (1482-92), Tunis (1535), Algiers (1541),
and against the Turks intermittently for some years before and after Lepanto (1571).
3 Danvila, “ Origen, naturaleza, y extension de Ios derechos de la Mesa Maestral
de la Orden de Calatrava,” in the Boletin de la Real Acad, de la Hist., xii, pp. 116-
163 (Madrid, 1888): surveys of the incomes of Calatrava from its earliest years
until the nineteenth century.
4 The use of the term dehesa in this connection, indicating a pasturage region or
district, is not to be confused with the other and more common sense of a local en-
closure of pasturage. See below, p. 303. For the location and descriptions of these
encomiendas, see Fernandez Llamazares, Hisloria Compendiada de las Ordenes
(Madrid, 1862), pp. 388 ff., and also the excellent map in Alvarez de Araujo, Recop.
Historica de las Ordenes (Madrid, 2875); see also below, pp. 271, 282.