320
THE MESTA
km,0TL% other devices to place more town lands at the disposal
of the Mesta herds was the encouragement of the hoja system of
cultivation.1 Under this arrangement a section or hoja of cul-
tivated land was left fallow each year, and was therefore avail-
able for pasturage and fertilization by the passing flocks. Medi-
aeval Castilian agriculture had never become sufficiently ex-
tensive or important to develop an active and methodically ad-
ministered three-field system. There had, however, been more
or less irregular practices regarding the leaving of untilled strips
(entrepanes'), resembling the English balks, between the panes
or grain fields. Isabella was keenly interested in the pastoral
possibilities of these untilled entrepanes and the fallow hojas,
and did much, through instructions to Corregidores and various
other officials, to encourage these agricultural practices.2 In a
word, the constant purpose was clearly to check any shrinkage
of local pasturage which might interfere with the migratory
sheep industry.
Even the forestry policy of their Catholic Majesties was
shaped toward the same objective.3 Some of their legislation on
this subject at first appeared to be directed toward conserva-
tion. It was, however, conservation for the benefit of the flocks,
and therefore wofully short-sighted, so far as any assurance of
the permanence of the woodlands was concerned. The interest
of Isabella in this matter was particularly active.4 Unfortunately
her most important edicts on the subject not only lacked any
restrictions on the practice of burning forests to improve pastur-
age, but they actually stipulated that the welfare of the sheep
must be safeguarded, and that herdsmen should be permitted
“ to cut smaller trees as fodder during the winter, or when pas-
turage is scarce.” 6 In other words, the old Mesta privilege to
ramonear — ζ cut branches ’ — was fully confirmed and enforced
by special royal judges and by the corregidores, in the face of
1 See above, p. 21. 2 Arch. Mesta, R-ι, Rabanos, 1496; B-2, Barco, 1502 ff.
, On the relations between migratory sheep and the forests in the Middle Ages,
see above, pp. 306-308.
4 Clemencln, El6gio, p. 248: an edict of 1493 regarding the conservation of
monies.
• Ramirez, op. cit., fol. Ixii v, 1496; Nueva Recop., lib. 7, tit. 7, ley 7.
PASTURAGE PRIVILEGES OF THE MESTA
32i
certain commendable old town ordinances which seem until
that time to have been moderately successful in protecting
forests against the flocks.1
This reign was indeed the crucial period in the history of
Castilian forestry;2 and the desolation which was wrought in
the wooded areas of the kingdom had its beginnings in the un-
compromising partiality of Ferdinand and Isabella for the pas-
toral industry. Other factors doubtless contributed toward the
same end, namely, the spread of population, the construction of
the American silver fleets and the naval armadas, and various
conditions of climate and soil. But undoubtedly the annual
havoc wrought by the migrants under the unrestricted patronage
of the new autocracy explains very largely the denudation which
so impressed the Venetian ambassadors and other observant
travelers in the middle decades of the sixteenth century and by
no means escaped the alarmed attention of the Castilians them-
selves.3 The few dispirited attempts by the Hapsburgs to remedy
the situation proved ineffective for two reasons: first, because
contradictory privileges annulling any conservation measures
were being bestowed upon the Mesta;4 and secondly, because
the administration of the few forestry reforms proposed in such
decrees as those of 1518, 1548, and 1567 was left to the now
decadent local governments, and was not given any support by
the central authorities.5 It was not until the coming of Charles
ɪ Arch. Mesta, T-7, Trujillo, 1504: litigation between that town and the
Mesta, in which the royal courts finally upheld the rights of the sheep owners to
free access to the woodlands of Trujillo’s jurisdiction. C-ι, Câceres, 1508 ff.;
S~5, Solano, 1503: similar material regarding wooded areas of western Estremadura.
2 Cavaillês, “ La question forestière en Espagne,” in the Annales de géographie,
ɪs July, i9°5, PP∙ 3i8~33i∙
a Laborde, Itinéraire descriptif de l’Espagne (Paris, 1826, 6 vols.), v, p. 328,
points out the need of bringing lumber from Flanders and woodsmen and carpen-
ters from Italy in 1534 for the construction of artillery. See also the sixteenth-cen-
tury description of the country in Cânovas del Castillo, Decadencia de Espafia
(2d ed., Madrid, 1910), p. 43, and in Libros de Antaho, viii, pp. 23τ-352, paragraphs
20, 66, 68, 88, the latter contrasting the dense forests of the north coast with the
desolation of Castile. Cortes, Valladolid, 1555, pet. 67; Toledo, 1559, pet. 78;
Nueva Recop., lib. 7, tit. 7, ley 21.
4 Nueva Recop., lib. 7, tit. 7, Ieyes 15-17.
5 Docs. Inéds. Hist. Esp., xx, p. 552; Cavaillês, op. eil., pp. 319-320; and Arch.