CHAPTER XIV

ROYAL SHEEP TAXES OF THE AUTOCRACY

Reforms of Ferdinand and Isabella. The crown and the fiscal rights of the Military
Orders. Hapsburg exploitation of the pastoral industry. The Fuggers and the
Mesta. Bankruptcy of the monarchy in the seventeenth century. Reforms of
Charles III.

The bankruptcy of the royal exchequer was one of the most
perplexing of the many distressing legacies left by Henry IV for
his youthful successors, Ferdinand and Isabella. As their
policies grew more and more ambitious, as the war against
Granada reached its climax and was followed immediately by
the tremendous enterprises in the New World, the needs of the
treasury became a cause of constant preoccupation. Revenues
that had been dissipated had to be regained; economical ad-
ministration had to be devised; all possible resources had to be
tapped, and by no means the least of the potential incomes were
the taxes derived from the migratory pastoral industry.

The sessions of the first Cortes summoned by the young sov-
ereigns, namely those which met at Valladolid and Madrigal in
1475 and 1476, were therefore confronted with exacting tasks.
Before any constructive legislation could be undertaken there
had to be a thorough clearing away of the accumulation of exemp-
tions, juros, and the many other devices by which the income of
the crown had been squandered. The servicio y montazgo was
among the first of the once royal incomes to be taken up in this
reform campaign. It was decreed that not more than one such
servicio was to be collected from any sheep owner in a given
year; and that one was to be collected only by the crown or its
authorized agents and lessees.¹ Armed with this mandate, and
with the assurance of its enforcement by all the powers of the
newly united monarchy, the Mesta’s attorneys and the royal

¹ Arch. Mesta, Prov. i, 5, 7 (1476 ff.) : records of suits brought under this decree.

270

ROYAL SHEEP TAXES OF THE AUTOCRACY 271
bailiffs proceeded to wipe out the dozens of privately owned
puertos reales, or ‘ royal ’ toll gates, along the canadas.

Other events soon stimulated this work. In October, 1474,
Pacheco, the grasping Master of Santiago, and therefore owner
of the sheep servicio, died and was succeeded in the grand
mastership by Rodrigo Manrique, whose death in November,
1476, put an early end to his tenure. This brought to the newly
crowned sovereigns a rare opportunity, which the sagacious queen
immediately recognized. Promptly upon receipt of the news at
Valladolid, she mounted her horse and hurried through three
stormy days and nights to Ucles, nearly forty leagues away,
where the Order was to chose its new grand master? Appearing
in person before that astonished body, she spoke briefly of the
prestige of the organization, with frequent pointed allusions to
its many incomes, several of which, including the Castilian ser-
vicio y montazgo, had once pertained to the crown. The master-
ship and its fiscal prerogatives, she said, were highly important
to, and in fact were doubtless the legal property of the monarchy.
Therefore, with calm audacity, she suggested the advisability
of electing to the mastership either her lord, the king, or his
staunch friend and councillor, Alfonso de Cardenas, a knight of
the Order and candidate for the honor. The chapter demurred,
at first, at this “ most uncommon procedure . . . but they were
much afraid and all finally agreed to obey her commands.” She
was indeed of a very different sort from her impotent brother,
the late unlamented Henry.

During the following year the king served as administrator of
the affairs of the Order.² Ferdinand was far too shrewd to over-
look such an opportunity, and the Order soon saw many of its
lucrative incomes, including the Castilian sheep tax, unostenta-
tiously turned back to the royal exchequer whence they had
originally been taken. The Catholic Kings thus regained pos-
session of the whole of the servicio y montazgo.³ In November,

ɪ Pérez del Pulgar, Criniea de Ios Reyes Catilicos, pp. 117-118

² Bullarium Equestris Ordinis S. Jacobi (Madrid, 1719), P∙ 401.

’ It will be recalled (see above, p. 263) that a small fraction of the servicio had
been retained by the crown, namely that collected from sheep migrating to Murcia.
In 1477 this share was entered on the royal accounts with certain diezmos, or im-

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