252 THE MESTA
results, to look after the sheep taxes and to prevent extortion.1
These and many similar mandates were of little avail; they were
received with expressions of profound respect by the grandees
and others to whom they were addressed, and then straightway
forgotten.
In 1828, eight years before the Mesta was abolished, an un-
official investigation by its archivist, Matias Brieva, revealed
nearly two hundred local taxes which were being levied each year
upon the migratory herdsmen.2 The reactionary regimes of
Charles IV and his dissolute son, Ferdinand VII, had apparently
aided the cause of the sheep owners by eliminations of tolls and
taxes to the number of over a hundred. There were still twenty-
nine concordias or tax agreements in force between the Mesta
and such towns as Talavera2 Cordova, and Plasencia, such
nobles as the Dukes of Béjar, of Infantazgo, of Alba, and of
Frias, and the Hermandads of Ciudad Real and Toledo. Many
of these concordias dated back to the fourteenth century, but
their ancient conditions, and in some instances even their rates,
were still the same after some four hundred years of usage.
In a word, throughout its long history the Mesta members
were ever confronted with this problem of their fiscal relations
with towns, individuals, and ecclesiastical establishments. From
the earliest times, when they led their first flocks down across
the wide Castilian plains, they had been met by local officers
who proceeded to levy what were at first penalties and fines for
trespass, and what later became fixed charges, taxes, imposts,
and tolls. When the Mesta was favored by the patronage of an
aggressive monarch devoted to the idea of centralized govern-
ment, as were Alfonso XI and the Catholic Kings, these local
exactions were restricted, systematized, and carefully supervised.
Whenever, on the other hand, the weakness of the sovereigns
gave the old Spanish spirit of separatism^ of local independence,
any opportunity, great numbers of persistent local tax gatherers
came forth to meet the shepherds all along the canadas. As long
as there were transhumantes in Castile, just so long would they
1 Brieva, pp. 230,266,300,338,371,375: decrees of 1788,1796,1799,1814,1816.
1 In a special Iegajo or packet of the Mesta archive, marked Derechos.
TAXES UNDER THE HAPSBURGS AND BOURBONS 253
be viewed with that suspicion which awaited all forasteros,
strangers, who ventured to transgress upon the ancient privileges
and property rights of a Castilian landowner, whether the latter
was a town, monastery, military order, grandee, or peasant.
Partly, then, as a source of revenue and a compensation for
such trespasses, but more particularly as a recognition of the
sanctity of cherished local privileges, these taxes were devised
and exacted as long as there was a migratory sheep industry in
Spain.