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THE MESTA
within its once considerable power. For a time it was still moder-
ately effective in this endeavor, especially against the smaller and
more remotely situated private and public landholders — the
peasants and the isolated villages. The increasing volume of
denunciation which was being hurled at the Mesta by its op-
ponents and critics, and the unrestricted character of its royal
concessions, have given rise to the supposition that the havoc
wrought by that organization was at its worst during the reign of
Philip II. As a matter of fact, the evidence seems to show that
the real reason for the complaints against the sheep owners was
not oppression on their part, but expansion, both actual and
prospective, on the part of the local agricultural interests. The
latter represented, broadly speaking, the movement to enclose
common lands for local pastoral as well as arable activities. Re-
dress against the decisions of the entregadores was now available
for the townsmen in the chancillerias, which had opened a way
for retribution to all opponents of the Mesta. During and after
the last decade of Philip’s reign the scores of decisions rendered
each year on enclosure charges, brought by the Mesta’s attorneys,
were almost uniformly in favor of the defendants, who were
rapidly learning to pool their interests and the costs of their litiga-
tions. Furthermore, the financial distress of the crown gave to
the Mesta’s opponents quite as much of an advantage as it did to
that organization, and, as indicated, the towns frequently cap-
italized this opportunity.
At least as early as 1575 agriculture was undoubtedly beginning
to suffer from the distress which was later to turn to ruin.1 But
in the combination of causes which contributed toward this, the
Mesta was not first, nor even among the first. It cannot, of course,
be absolved entirely, for the migratory flocks contributed their
share of the devastation. Other causes were, however, far more
potent: emigration to America and to the cities, excessive taxa-
tion, and the spread of mayorazgos (a form of large scale land-
holding by the nobility). Probably the chief cause of agricultural
1 Cf. Ansiaux, op. cit., in Revued’économie politique, June, 1893, p. 562; Raymond
Bona, Le problème mercantiliste en Espagne au XVIIe siècle (Bordeaux, 1911),
p. 60.
COLLAPSE OF THE PASTURAGE PRIVILEGES 337
decline was the persistence of the very enclosures for which the
towns had fought so stubbornly: ox pastures, local swine fields,
and grazing meadows for non-migratory sheep, all of which were
preserved by antiquated ordinances and cherished mediaeval
town charters.1 The pastoral industry played its part in this
dismal process of agrarian decay, but it was the sedentary branch
of it, rather than the Mesta. The organization of migrating
herdsmen was fast losing its effectiveness ; its power and prestige
had most certainly been broken for all time a generation before
the end of the sixteenth century.
The depressing annals of Spain’s economic decadence in the
seventeenth century contain few episodes more dreary than the
seemingly interminable struggle of the Mesta to regain its lost
standing and to enforce some of its ancient claims to the pasture
lands of the south and west. A succession of extravagant con-
firmations of its mediaeval charters was issued by the last three
feeble Hapsburgs (1598-1700); but the sweeping terms of these
decrees, especially the notorious one of 1633, in no way repre-
sented the actual status of the Mesta with reference to its pas-
turage problem, any more than they reflected the impotence of
its itinerant judiciary.
During this despairing period the crown and its officials
proved to be constant friends of the Mesta, but unfortunately
nearly useless and very costly ones. Throughout the reign of
Philip III (1598-1621) the Mesta was advancing 63,000,000
maravedis a year to the royal exchequer as a rental for the lands
of the military orders.2 For this sorely needed contribution the
king could afford to be gracious, to renew old charters, and to
elaborate new ones granting special permissions for the further
devastation of forests, with privileges to trim branches for fodder
“ in every dry season.”8
1 These and other causes for agricultural decay during the generation previous
to 1618 are clearly stated in Lope de Deçà, Govierno Polylico de Agricultura (Madrid,
ι6ι8), and in Sancho de Moncada, Restauraciin politico de Espana (Madrid, 1619).
See also the anonymous Discurso acerca de las . . . causas de la despoblaciin
(Madrid, 1842), which presents contemporary views of the same period.
2 Paris Bib. Nat., Mss. Esp. 359, fol. 24.
, Arch. Mesta, Provs. ii, 26, 39; iii, 4 (ɪʤðɪ lf>55 S∙)∙