248
THE MESTA
Mesta. Its entregadores were ridiculed, its pleas before the high
courts were summarily dismissed, and the efforts of its once
omnipotent ally, the Royal Council, were frustrated and scorn-
fully ignored. Even the President of the Mesta, king’s councillor
though he was, proved ineffective.1 The great days of Haps-
burg autocracy were past, and with them had vanished the
greatness of the Mesta.
Old concordias or tax agreements were renewed, but upon
terms still more unfavorable to the sheep owners.2 New forms
of local taxes were encountered by the herdsmen all along their
once inviolate highways. The owners were required to ‘ register ’
their flocks at frequent intervals, and to pay liberal fees for
receipts.3 The horses used as pack animals were made the excuse
for other taxes,4 in spite of the protestations of Mesta attorneys
that their clients never dealt in horses. Bridge and ferry tolls
were increased in number, partly because intermittent Portu-
guese raids from 1640 to 1665 had interrupted the use of the old
western highways and had turned the transhumantes to other
routes.6 Numerous new salt taxes and levies for the payment
of wolf bounties were particularly burdensome to the herdsmen.6
Churches levied with impunity their full diezmos upon the flocks,
and these taxes were paid with scarcely a murmur.7 But more
offensive than all these were the assessments upon passing Mesta
shepherds of part of the local contribution, or repartimiento, of
the royal subsidy, as though the migrants were permanent resi-
ɪ Arch. Mesta, A-4, Alaejos, 1640: the first decree of the President attempting
to check the activities of local toll collectors.
2 Ibid., B-2, Banes, 1602 ff.; M-4, Montalbdn, τ6ιo.
s Ibid., C-2, Canena, 1634; U-r, Ubigues, 1660.
, Ibid., B-4, Buenache, 1615.
t Arch. Osuna, Infantazgo Mss., caj. 2, leg. 9, no. 9. Arch. Mesta, A-5, Al-
conera, 1817, gives the history of various seventeenth and eighteenth century
pontajes (bridge tolls) and barcajes or Iurias (ferry rates) at different points in
Estremadura. For curious Navarrese laws of the sixteenth and seventeenth cen-
turies upon these tolls, cf. Alonso, Recop. Fueros y Leyes de Navarra (Madrid,
1848, 2 vols.) and Nov. Recop. Leyes Nav. (Pamplona, 1735, 2 vols.), lib. 5, tit. 5.
6 Arch. Mesta, Prov. iii, 15; M-4, Merida, 1698.
7 Arch. Osuna, Béjar Mss., caj. 57, no. 33, caj. 58, no. 29; Arch. Mesta, C-2,
Calatrava, 1570, contains seventeenth-century data on the payment of diezmos to
churches in lands of the three leading military orders.
TAXES UNDER THE HAPSBURGS AND BOURBONS 249
dents of the wayside locality. In 1656 Caceres and other larger
cities of Estremadura resorted to these new exactions, and were
so successful in collecting them and in ignoring the stern man-
dates of the Royal Council that other towns soon followed their
example.1
Little remains to be told of the Mesta’s efforts in the course of
the eighteenth century to protect its members from the wide-
spread local tolls and taxes and indiscriminate fines.2 The Presi-
dent of that body continued to issue mandates to obnoxious
town tax gatherers, but it was not until the firm hands of Charles
III, and his sagacious minister, Campomanes, had taken charge
of affairs (1759-88), that the orders of the crown and its council-
lors were given any attention.3 The entregador had long since
ceased to be useful as an arbitrator of tax matters, or, in fact, in
any other capacity, and the enlightened despotism of Charles
was soon engaged in preparing for the abolition of the itinerant
judiciary. The Sala de Mil y Quinienlas, that high appellate court
to which the Mesta turned as a final refuge late in the seventeenth
century,4 was induced to issue in behalf of the Mesta occasional
decrees against the taxation edicts of high officials.6 The Royal
Council, however, was no longer active in defending its once
pampered ward, save in one or two instances.6 The shrewd
Charles III occasionally seized an opportunity to embarrass
some troublesome noble or high ecclesiastic by having the Coun-
cil make a vigorous investigation and cut down the tax privi-
leges of the unruly magnate.7
‘ Arch. Mesta1 Prov. ii, 52.
2 On the prevalence of indiscriminate local taxes during this period, cf. Des-
devises du Dezert, L’Espagne de l’ancien régime: Institutions (Paris, 1899), P∙ 374∙
s Arch. Mesta, C-6, Cactu Nino, 1762; C-5, Carneros de Calatrava, 1786.
4 See p. 129.
6 Arch. Mesta, S-5, Siguenza, 1752; M-4, Merida, 1729 and 1746; E-3, Espinar,
1753. The alcayde or custodian of the Alcazar at Segovia was reprimanded by this
Sala for levying excessive taxes upon passing flocks. Arch. Mesta, S-4, Segovia,
1744∙
’ In 1729 the Council issued a perfunctory order forbidding all new sheep taxes,
but it was never followed up. Arch. Mesta, Prov. iii, 46.
7 Arch. Mesta, A-8, Atienza, 1782; V-6, Villarta, 1762: a restriction of the tax
privileges of the archbishop of Toledo; S-5, Siguenza, 1762: an investigation of
the sheep taxes collected by the dean of the church of Siguenza.