The name is absent



342


THE MESTA

in the pasturage regions seem to have been wiped out during the
confusion and readjustments of this period.1 The now practic-
ally impotent entregadores2 were busy for two decades making
futile efforts to secure rights of way and pasturage for the flocks
and to protect the shepherds from arrest for trespassing on the
enclosures of every wayside town?

The reign of the last and most incompetent of the Hapsburgs
brought no respite for the Mesta. Far from being an era of
complete triumph for the migratory pastoral industry, as it has
been represented by some economists, the period of Charles II
was a time of impotence and mockery for the ancient gild of sheep
owners. To say that “ 4,000,000 Mesta sheep ” migrated as
“ undisputed masters over the desolate plains of Castile ”4 im-
plies a condition of aggressive vigor and of predominance over
the agrarian situation on the part of that organization which was
very far from the actual state of affairs. As a matter of fact, its
flocks seldom exceeded 2,000,000 at any time during the last half
of the seventeenth century, and usually fell far below that num-
ber? Furthermore, each year from 1685 onward its account
books showed a condition of imminent bankruptcy. The extrava-
gant but ineffective pragmatica of 1633 was renewed by the edict
of 1680,6 which also undertook to restore the pasturage prices of
the earlier decree.7 It is significant, however, that the terms of
the decree of 1680 were not generally announced for some years,
because of the hopelessness of the situation. Even the critics and
opponents of the decrepit Mesta began to pity it?

It was quite true that by the end of the seventeenth century
agriculture had given way to sheep raising all over Castile; but it
was the sedentary pastoral industry, which was in no way what-

ɪ Expediente de 1771, pt. 2, fol. 65.

, Nueva Recop., lib. 3, tit. 14, ley 4, restricted their jurisdiction over enclosures.
8 Arch. Mesta, Prov. ii, 261 (1641 ff.).

4 Ansiaux in the Revue d’économie politique, December, 1893. Similar opinions
are expressed by Colmeiro, ii, p. 168; Weiss,
op. cit., ii, p. 102; Cos-Gayon, in Re-
vista de Espana, x,
pp. 5-39.

5 Arch. Mesta, Cuentas, 1685 fi.

• Arch. Hist. Nac., Consejo Exped., leg. 48, 1680.

’ Arch. Ayunt. Burgos, Ms. no. 1059.

8 Concordia de 1783, i, fol. 269.

COLLAPSE OF THE PASTURAGE PRIVILEGES 343

ever connected with the Mesta. Instead of being regulated and
controlled by the monarchy, through a highly centralized body,
the wool growing industry absorbed the attentions and energy of
every Castilian peasant. It was now allowed to run riot through-
out the land and to annihilate almost the last vestiges of agricul-
ture that still remained. The wool trade, which had previously
been handled to the satisfaction of buyers and sellers alike,
through the efficient Mesta agencies at Medina del Campo,
Burgos, and Bilbao, fell into confusion, and the individual sheep
owners were easily exploited by foreign buyers.

After 1700 the economic and military disturbances incident to
the war of the Spanish Succession brought a renewal of the
Mesta,s pleas which had first been heard in the Portuguese war of
1640-41. There were plaintive requests for new guarantees of
pasturage privileges, for grants of public lands “ to recoup the
national industry,” and for protection against local officials, who
were emboldened by war conditions and were harassing the herds-
men with fines for trespassing. The new Bourbon monarchy,
accustomed to the French mercantilism of Louis XIV and his
great premier, Colbert, promptly indorsed the petitions of an
organization which had once been so valuable an associate of
absolute monarchs. Posesion was renewed, and pasturage ren-
tals were put back to the figures of 1692/ with the privilege of
paying in instalments during periods of drought.2 Furthermore,
the judicial body known as the
Sala de Mil y Quinientas, which
was closely connected with the Royal Council and was therefore
friendly to the Mesta, became the court of final appeal for pas-
turage disputes.3 Finally, as a means of securing that administra-
tive concentration so dear to the Bourbon heart, and of checking
the dangerous forces of separatism, the Mesta was in 1726 given
full right to exercise all of its privileges, including posesiðn, in
Aragon. It was especially encouraged to incorporate in its or-
ganization the migratory pastoral industry of such Aragonese

1 JoaquJn Costa, Coleclivismo Agrario, p. 4S1.

1 Arch. Mesta, Prov. ii, 7 (1753); iv, 19 (1753).

• See above, p. 129. Brieva, ColeceUn, p. 68; Escolano de Arrieta, Prdetica del
Consejo Real,
ii, p. n6: decree of 1748.



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