244
THE MESTA
upon certain of its animals in both northern and southern pas-
tures,1 and although the full tenth was never levied on all of its
flocks while in the south, its members were never able thereafter
to avoid payment of the medio diezmo.
There can be no doubt that the seventeenth century, the latter
half of Hapsburg domination in Spain, was a period the equal of
which in dismal depression and sordid melancholy it would be
diflicult to find in modern history. The disasters of that dreary
epoch were largely the inevitable results of the policies and tradi-
tions formed in the previous century. The clumsy efforts to
operate the increasingly complicated mechanism of the auto-
cratic government of an empire that had become, by 1580, the
largest in history had exhausted the laborious Philip II in spite of
his stubborn determination. And when his successors sank from
short-sighted asceticism to feeble incompetence and finally to
hopeless imbecility, the elaborate administrative machine which
had been built around and upon the autocrat collapsed into
worthless wreckage.
The chief contributions of the Mesta to the economic ruin
which accompanied and partly caused this political decay will
be considered later.2 The present problem, namely the fiscal
relationship between the Mesta and the towns, throws some
much needed light upon the real influence of the sheep owners’
organization upon the country’s affairs, administrative as well as
economic. We shall find that the Mesta was by no means so
potent an engine of destruction as it is usually represented to
have been. Its aggressions had long since ceased; in fact, as has
been already indicated, the middle decades of the sixteenth cen-
tury saw the unmistakable beginnings of its decline. Its for-
tunes were bound up with those of the autocracy, and when that
failed the Mesta failed also.
To say that ‘ the four million sheep of the Mesta were now [ɪn
the reign of Charles II, ι665-1700] the undisputed masters of
ɪ Arch Mesta, P-3, Plasencia, 1594. These rates were applied to horses and the
other larger animals belonging to Mesta members.
2 See below, pp. 336 ff.
TAXES UNDER THE HAPSBURGS AND BOURBONS 245
the immense dreary plains of Castile,’1 gives an entirely erroneous
impression. The ‘ mastery ’ of the Mesta had been lost a hun-
dred years before the imbecile Charles II first sank into his
throne. Ever since the 1540’s and 1550’s the sheep owners had
been fighting a losing fight. We have already observed this with
regard to the efficacy of the Mesta ,s entregadores and of its con-
tentions in fiscal relations with the towns.
The assumption of most historians, that the agricultural ruin
of Castile was both caused and followed by the extension of
Mesta pasturage, is due to the reliance of such investigators ex-
clusively upon the empty legal phraseology of contemporary
statutes and royal decrees. This question of the conflict between
arable and pasture interests belongs to a later chapter, but the
evidence, offered by the fiscal affairs of the Mesta during the
seventeenth century, proves not only the helplessness of that
body but the complete inability of its only allies, the crown and
the Royal Council, to save its high-sounding and oft confirmed
tax privileges and exemptions from violation by the towns, the
nobles, and the churches.
Within a decade or two after the death of Philip II in 1598,
the entregadores had lost practically all their prestige as arbitra-
tors of tax disputes. They had become so harmless, in fact, that
Câceres, Plasencia, and other towns, which had jealously guarded
their ancient privileges of exemption from entregador visits, now
scornfully allowed these itinerant justices the freedom of their
jurisdictions. Meanwhile the cities carried their tax claims be-
fore the Chancillerias, where full confirmation was promptly con-
ceded to them.2 Against the tax privileges of the nobility and
high ecclesiastics the entregadores were equally powerless.3 In
its conflicts with the nobles and church officials, the Mesta had
occasional unexpected assistance from its enemies, the chancille-
rias. These high courts became much interested in weakening the
1 Maurice Ansiaux, “ Histoire économique de l’Espagne,” in Revue d’économie
politique, December, 1893, p. 1053, with references to Weiss, Colmeiro, and others.
2 Arch. Mesta, C-r, Câceres, r628.
a Arch. Osuna, Manzanares Mss., caj. 3, leg. 5, no. 18, and Infantazgo Mss.,
caj. 5, leg. i, no. ɪo — several entregador decisions of 1599 ff. accepting the con-
tentions of tax collectors of various nobles.