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THE MESTA
been accustomed to sublet their pasturage leases.1 The trade
diezmos at the inland custom houses, or puertos secos, on the
Aragonese border were made to yield heavily by a skilful device.
Vaguely worded charters were magnanimously bestowed upon
the Castilian Mesta on one side of the boundary, and upon
various Aragonese sheep owners’ gilds of Saragossa and Albar-
racin on the other. The flocks of all these organizations were
permitted “to migrate freely”—but not free—∙“in either
direction across the border.” When they reached the boundaries,
however, they found that ‘ registration fees’ were being carefully
assessed upon them, and export duties were exacted for all such
animals as did not return to their home pastures.2
Other devices for raising funds were also employed, among
them being the ancient royal claim to mostrencos or lost sheep.
Regulations regarding the crown incomes to be derived from this
source were even introduced into the New World, a so-called
‘ Mesta ’ having been organized in Mexico within a few years
after the conquest had been completed.3 The juros or annuities
sold or leased by the crown to nobles, towns, and churches were
rapidly increased. Among the items thus alienated for sorely
needed cash were the once treasured returns from the servicio y
montazgo.
This royal sheep tax became, in fact, one of the most exploited
of all the dwindling revenues of the monarchy. New collection
points were created by the crown, not only along the southern
highways, but also near the Aragonese and Navarrese borders.4
Privileges to collect tolls at these new toll gates were leased to
creditors of the crown, and the lessees promptly amplified their
exactions without either official authorization or restraint.6 When
ɪ Arch. Mesta, C-2, Calatrava, 1558 ff.
2 The wool export tax of 1558 also bore heavily upon the Mesta. Cf. Haebler,
p. 119.
3 Actas de Cabildo del Ayuntamienlo de Tenuxtitlan, Mexico de la Nueba Espafia
(Mexico, 1859), iv, pp. 313-314: ordinances of the town council of Mexico city and
royal cêdulas (1537-42) regarding the establishment of a Mesta like that of
Castile. Cf. Recop. Leyes Indias (Madrid, 1774, 4 vols.), lib. 5, tit. 5, Ieyes 1-20.
4 Haebler, op. cit., pp. 109, 115-116, 129.
5 The royal sheep toll gates were now arranged in five groups, of which the heads
were Venta el Coxo, Rama Castanas, Montalbân, Abadia, and Villaharta; the
ROYAL SHEEP TAXES OF THE AUTOCRACY
277
the Mesta attorneys induced certain Cortes members to protest
against these extortions, the king’s response dryly expressed the
intention ‘ to do whatever contributes most to the good of our
kingdoms and to our service.’ The word servicio was thus
subtly used in a double sense, to indicate both ‘ service ’ in gen-
eral, and the ‘ subsidy ’ or servicio (y montazgo) :l the good of
the royal revenues was not to be neglected, at least in theory.
In vain the Mesta sought to invoke the aid of its supposed
allies, the crown and its agents. The attorneys of the sheep
owners soon realized, however, that this matter of the king’s
income involved a very different question from the problem of
local taxes, which had been so readily, and, for a time, effectively
solved by the sweeping measures of the autocracy. When it
came to the curtailment of royal incomes the response of the
crown to the Mesta’s pleas was usually desultory or non-commit-
tal and frequently an open refusal. In spite of repeated pleas on
the part of the Mesta, there were almost no instances of the in-
vestigation of Servicio collections by the juezes Pesquisidores,
last named, situated near the much frequented Calatrava pasture lands around
Cordova, assessed over a million sheep a year. Arch. Mesta, Cuentas, January,
1520 S. On the abuses of Servicio lessees cf. Arch. Mesta, Prov. i, 28, 63 (1330);
B-2, Barca de Oreja, 1530, a mandate of a royal councillor threatening a penalty of
death for any further aggressions by a servicio lessee. Cortes, Madrid, 1528, pet.
142, alluded to collection of servicio y montazgo in the northern cities of Zamora
and Toro. Among the most common offences of these lessees were the old devices
of heavy fees for receipts, for recounting flocks, and for affidavits of various sorts.
The selection of the best breeding rams (morruecos) of a flock as part payment of
the toll was another of these violations of long standing rules and common justice
to the shepherds. The poorer animals in the flocks of any one owner were usually
sent ahead of the other animals in order that they might have the better pasturage.
The collectors frequently detained all of the flocks of a single owner so as to select
the best animals as their assessments, leaving out the weaklings and the borregos
(yearlings). Arch. Mesta, Provs. iii, 8, and i, 57 and 59 (1539 ff.); Arch. Ayunt.
Burgos, Mss. nos. 665, 745, 748, 951, 1048, 1571, 3754> 4640: a series of sixteenth-
century suits and decrees regarding excessive and illegal exactions by servicio y
montazgo collectors at unauthorized toll points and from non-migratory flocks. In
Burgos and vicinity this tax was sometimes called the toll “ de pata hendida ” —■
cloven hoof — (see below, p. 288, n. 3) and with this name as a pretext, the servicio
lessees laid claim to various local taxes on pigs and cattle, whether migrating or
not. Similar trespasses on local tax prerogatives are noted in Arch. Mesta, S~5,
Socuéllamos, 1537-55, and V-6, Villazgo, 1563.
1 Cories, Madrid, 1534, pet. no.