14
THE MESTA
Previous to the reign of the Catholic Kings the disposal of mes-
tenos or mostrencos had not caused any serious difficulty. The
officials of the towns and of the Mesta handled those of their
respective flocks, sedentary and migratory. Occasionally, how-
ever, royal officials disposed of unclaimed stray animals, on the
theory that the king as lord of the whole realm had title to all
ownerless property.1 On a similar basis, the lords of various
towns laid claim to all or part of the local mostrencos as one of
their seigniorial privileges.2 The marked increase of the pastoral
industry during the first half of the sixteenth century, the grow-
ing importance of the Mesta, and the new claims to mostrencos
advanced by the increasingly powerful church element all served
to make this question of the disposal of mostrencos one of the
difficult problems of the pastoral industry at that time.
The accounts of the Mesta after about 1525 show steadily
growing returns from the farming out of mostrenco privileges in
various districts. During the reign of Charles V the incomes
from this source contributed largely to the affluence of the Mesta
treasury in that period.3 But the penury and weakening admin-
istrative powers of later monarchs gave various rivals of the Mesta
an opportunity to obtain titles to stray animals in different parts
of the country. The towns, military orders, and nobles began to
reassert their claims to local mostrencos, of which they had been
deprived by the avidity of the Mesta during the earlier decades of
the century.4 The most formidable of its rivals was the church,
1 Bib. Nac. Madrid, Ms. 13126: a grant of the mostrencos of Burgos by the
crown to certain royal creditors (1287). Cortes, Toro, 1371, pet. 17: protests re-
garding the disposal of the mostrencos by royal officers. Cf. Jordana, Voces Fore-
stales, p. 186.
2 Arch. Osuna, Mss- Béjar, caj. 6, no. 52; caj. 9, nos. 6ι, 63: royal recognition
of the title of the Dukes of Béjar to all mostrencos on their estates. Ibid., Mss.
Infantazgo, caj. 3, leg. 2, no. 19, and leg. 5, nos 7, 19, 20, 22, 23, 25: a series of
fifteenth and sixteenth century agreements between the Mesta and the Dukes of
Infantazgo, by which the latter received a third of the proceeds from the sale of
mostrencos on the ducal estates and the Mesta two thirds.
, See below, pp. 284-285.
4 Arch. Burgos, Ms. 4332, and Arch. Hist. Nac., Calatrava Mss. Reales 341:
royal orders of 1580 ff. confirming claims to mostrencos in spite of protests from the
Mesta. Concordia de 1783, ii, fols. 65-82: summaries of a series of royal decrees,
mostly of the period 1561-99, assigning sedentary mostrencos to local authorities
and restricting the Mesta’s authority to strays of the migratory flocks.
ORIGINS
ɪs
which had been granted title to certain mostrencos by the Cath-
olic Kings in 1484, 1496, and 1502 as a means of assisting the
fund of the cruzada, the propaganda work for the Faith against
the Moors and the pagans of the New World.1 The Mesta fought
this concession vigorously, but without success; in fact, the
campaigns of the devout Philip II against Turks, Protestants,
and American pagans resulted in further concessions of mostrenco
rights to the church and corresponding losses to the Mesta. By
the middle of the seventeenth century there remained for the
latter only the right to such stray animals as were actually in the
migrating flocks at the time of the semiannual meetings.2 The
ancient right of local mestas to deal with mostrencos, which had
gradually been encroached upon and absorbed by the national
Mesta, was thus taken from that body and returned to town
mestas, churches, and other local bodies.
These were, then, the successive episodes or elements out of
which the Mesta emerged and from which it drew inspiration:
the migratory sheep industry of Iberian and Visigothic times, the
sheep and the pastoral customs of the Berber invaders, and lastly
the mediaeval town mestas, or gatherings of shepherds to dispose
of stray animals. Each of these factors contributed toward the
origin of the Castilian Mesta in the latter half of the thirteenth
century, and had a fundamental influence upon its character and
later history.
The course of that history and the importance of the Mesta
may best be studied under two general headings: first, the inter-
nal organization of that body; and secondly, its external rela-
l Soldrzano, Politica Indiana, bk. iv, cap. 25. The decree of 1484 gave to the
commissioners of the cruzada ’ a fifth of all mostrencos, incomes from bull fights,
a∏d properties of persons dying intestate. Ulloa, Privs. Cdceres, pp. 308-311.
, Arch. Mesta, Prov. i, 107, contains a series of documents, 1496-1640, on the
conflict over the mostrencos. The claims of the church are set forth in Concordia
17%3, ɪɪ, fol. 70. The introduction into America of these ecclesiastical titles
to mostrencos is illustrated in a representation of the bishop of Linares on the sub-
ject, from the Archive del Gobiemo de Saltillo, prov. Texas, no. 370 (1784), a copy
°f which is in the library of Professor H. E. Bolton, Berkeley, California. The laws
regarding the disposal of mostrencos in the eighteenth century are found in a printed
0Wer in Brit. Mus. 8228.1. 13, i, fols. 345-352, and iii, fols. 137-149.