338 THE MESTA
In this connection, it may be said that it appears not unlikely
that the Mesta used its influence with the monarchs to secure the
expulsion of the Moriscos in 1609. The records of its litigations
against individual enclosers of pasturage for arable purposes
show, during the last years of the reign of Philip II, a surpris-
ingly large number of Morisco defendants. Although a con-
siderable part of the Moriscos were peddlers, traders, and
mendicants, by far the greater number were peasant agricul-
turists. Their expulsion, though explicable and even defensible
on some grounds, was nevertheless unquestionably one of the
severest losses ever known in Spanish agrarian history.
The President of the Mesta proved to be one of its most helpful
defenders in this trying period. He secured aid from the Royal
Council against speculation in pasturage and to prevent en-
closures. He was even able, on one or two occasions, to bring the
dreaded power of the Inquisition to the defence of the sheep
owners, since he was also connected with that high ecclesiastical
court.ι The Royal Council issued edicts which were designed to
aid the Mesta in its difficulties, but were so grotesque in their
terms that they were time and again laughed out of the high
courts of the realm. Three of these edicts might be mentioned as
illustrations: that of 1604, which declared that all cultivated
enclosures not twenty years old were to be thrown open to the
Mesta flocks; that of 1658, which inaugurated the practice of
granting the Mesta a moratorium on its pasturage rentals for six
or more months;2 and that of 1690, which fixed all pasturage
prices at the figures prevalent in 1633Л These are but three of the
many examples which might be cited to illustrate the futility of
effort to legislate into existence agrarian conditions favorable to
the Mesta.4 To accept such pronouncements at their face value,
or to assume that they represented the real power of the Mesta,
would be even more seriously misleading than has been the ac-
ceptance of similar documents of the reign of Philip II. By 1570
or 1580 there was an obvious discrepancy between the prestige
* Arch. Mesta, A-ρ, Antillo, 1614 δ.; Paris Bib. Nat., Res. Oa 198 ter, no. 33.
2 Arch. Mesta, Prov. ii, 50.
s Ibid., Prov. i, 99 (1604); Arch. Ayunt. Burgos, Ms. no. 1059 (ι68o).
4 Cf. Nueoa Recop., lib. 3, tit. 14.
COLLAPSE OF THE PASTURAGE PRIVILEGES 339
ascribed to the Mesta by various royal decrees and the actual
strength of that body. By 1640 or 1650 this contrariety between
written laws and actual fact was no longer simply obvious; it
had become ludicrous.
A prolonged campaign of propaganda in defence of the Mesta’s
hopeless claims to pasturage privileges had been carried on at the
royal court,1 in the halls of the Cortes, and throughout the king-
dom. The agitation was being carried on, not only publicly by
means of such widely discussed defences of the Mesta as that
written by the former entregador, Саха de Leruela,2 but also less
conspicuously through such devices as lavish distributions of alms
in towns whose Cortes deputies showed signs of being hostile.8
Olivarez, the approachable minister of Philip IV, was consulted
in 1631, and finally, with his powerful backing, the most notorious
of all the Mesta’s royal charters of privileges was promulgated in
March, 1633.4
This edict of 1633 marked the theoretical zenith of the Mesta’s
pasturage privileges. By it, the organization was given full juris-
diction over the entire pastoral industry. Local, non-migratory
sheep owners were subject to the fines and other molestations of
officials of the Mesta, but without the enjoyment of any of its
privileges. The old rule of posesiôn, which had been rapidly be-
coming a dead letter, was renewed. All land turned from pasture
to arable during the period 1590-1633 was to be reconverted to
pasturage at once. Royal commissioners were appointed to keep
records of the existing agrarian situation, to prevent all extensions
of enclosures, and to require royal licenses for any cultivation.
But in spite of all these elaborate precautions, this decree of 1633,
like the others that had gone before or were to come after, proved
futile, chiefly because the Cortes soon saw to it that the local
justices were given a large measure of control over its enforce-
ment.6 The Mesta had ostentatiously voted to confer the title of
l There is a lengthy memorial presented to the crown in 161g in the Bib. Nac.
Madrid, Ms. no. 2350. Other references are given in the Concordia de 1783, i,
fol. 266.
, La Abundancia de Espana (Naples, 1631; Madrid, 1632).
3 See above, p. 289. 4 Nueva Recop., lib. 7, tit. 7, ley 27.
t Arch. Mesta, Prov. ii, 17 (1639).