286
THE MESTA
Accordingly additional sums were raised from various juros and
from a new salt monopoly, created in 1564 on the basis of various
ancient crown revenues from salt. To all of these the pastoral
industry contributed heavily, its share of the salt taxes being
especiallyburdensome.1 In 1575 the alcabala was assessed upon
all transactions at the Medina del Campo fairs, which had hith-
erto been exempt from that blighting impost. This was a serious
blow to the Mesta; for most of its wool was marketed at Medina,
and a large part of the supplies for the flocks were purchased
there. Corregidores and other royal officers participated in
campaigns to increase royal revenues from various industries,
and in spite of the terms of the transaction of 1563, these officials
undertook, quite likely with royal consent, to levy further imposts
on the transhumantes. The Mesta had issued a revised Quademo
or code of the Servicio y montazgo ;2 but, ignoring this, the corre-
gidores took matters into their own hands, even to the extent of
fixing the amounts of the servicio y montazgo to be paid by the
sheep owners of a given locality.3 As a crowning humiliation the
Fuggers, who had already taken charge of some of the Mesta’s
obligations to the royal treasury,4 brought new pressure to bear
upon the pastoral industry. In 1595 one of their house was
elected to membership in the Mesta, so as to influence the policy
of that body in this matter of increasing its contributions to the
crown.8 The close of Philip Il’s long reign, in 1598, found the
Mesta itself financially prosperous, but with its members sub-
ject to a constant succession of new demands from the rapidly
weakening royal exchequer.
ɪ Nov. Recop., lib. 9, tit. 19, ley ι. Examples of increased sixteenth-century juros
entitling the recipient to tolls from the Mesta are found in Arch. Hist. Nac., Regis-
tre de Santiago, caj. rr6, no. 6.
2 It was printed at Madrid in 1571: Declaraciin de ley del quaderno que habla
sobre Ios derechos del servicio y montazgo ... A copy is in the Biblioteca ɪnstit.
S. Isidro, Madrid.
s Arch. Osuna, Béjar Mss., caj. 15, nos. 47-48, (1593). On Philip’s employ-
ment of the Corregidores to rehabilitate his finances see also Haebler, p. 128.
4 See above, p. 282.
6 Arch. Mesta, B-2, Barca de Oreja, 1595. The Fuggers soon made use of this
advantage by causing the flocks of the maestrazgos to be exempted from various
Mesta dues and eventually from the servicio y montazgo. Arch. Mesta, Prov. iv,
и (1747); Definiciones de las ôrdenes, Alcintara, tit. 24, cap. 15 (1632).
ROYAL SHEEP TAXES OF THE AUTOCRACY
287
As was to be expected, the decadence of the seventeenth-cen-
tury Hapsburgs resulted in an almost frantic search for revenue.
So far as the pastoral industry was concerned, the older royal
taxes had already been alienated and new incomes had to be de-
vised. The greater part of the servicio y montazgo was still
farmed out by the crown to the Dukes of Maqueda — and by
them to the Mesta — for some 19,000,000 maravedis a year, but,
as explained above, this sum was depreciating steadily in actual
value. Furthermore, all questions regarding the administration
of the tax were settled between the Mesta and the Maquedas;
since 1563 the crown had no longer a voice in the collection of
this servicio.1 There were, nevertheless, numerous attempts by
fiscal agents of the crown to continue the practices of the corregi-
dores of Philip II by levying illegal servicios; but these encroach-
ments promptly brought vigorous protests, not only from the
Mesta, but from the towns. The latter instructed their depu-
ties in the Cortes to vote against the granting of the subsidy
called millones unless the Condiciones de millones (the redress of
grievances to be conceded by the crown upon receipt of the new
revenue) should include alleviation of older taxes.2
Almost every grant of millones was accompanied by such
demands for fiscal reforms, among which the readjustment of
the conditions of servicio y montazgo collections were conspic-
uous. The abuse of the Mesta by illegal assessments of the ser-
vicio did not interest the towns, save possibly Segovia, Soria,
Cuenca, and Leon, the headquarters of the transhumantes.
What was of special concern to most of the Cortes deputies was
the general principle that local privileges and exemptions should
not be violated by the feeble efforts of the incompetent seven-
teenth-century monarchs and their ministers to duplicate the
absolutism of the first Hapsburgs. The two autocratic premiers
who dominated the first half of the century, Lerma and Olivarez,
attempted to trespass upon such cherished local institutions as
the Comunidades, or town leagues for the interchange of pasturage
1 Arch. Mesta, Prov. ɪ, ɪoʒ (1621 ff.): the records of a series of suits between
the Mesta and the Maqueda family, regarding details of administering the servicio
y ɪnontazgo.
, See above, p. 120.