IIO
THE MESTA
evident that the opportunities to overawe the local officials and
peasantry in a small country town were very tempting to the
entregador and his numerous assistants, and therefore, dangerous
to the ends of justice.1 This particular reform was not secured,
however, until it was introduced as one of the conditions of the
subsidy of г 650.2 As a further restriction, the extent of the juris-
diction of an entregador around the point where he was holding
court was cut down to a radius of five leagues, and the Cortes
were particularly watchful that this limit was not exceeded.3
The frequency of the visits of the entregadores to any one lo-
cality did not escape the attention of the sixteenth century re-
formers. The earlier appointments of the proprietary entregador
were for life, and no limit was placed upon the number of visits
made in a given period by his subordinates. The term of office of
the latter was usually two years,4 until the opening of the six-
teenth century when it was reduced to one.5 This remained the
law until x589, when it was determined that the four entregadores
should be named every two years.6 This matter of the period of
the entregador’s incumbency did not concern the towns so much
as did the intervals of peace which they enjoyed between the
visits of the Mesta judges. To the many denunciations of the
entregador which have just been noted, there was added another
regarding ‘ the almost perennial nature of that office, which had
lost completely its proper intermittent or occasional activity at
any given point.’7 In view of this, it was asked that his visits to
any one place be limited to once in six years. This was modified
in the Cortes of 1531 by a plea for a four-year interval, which met
with no satisfactory response from the crown at that time or at
1 Corte∖, Burgos, 1515, pet. 26; Cortes de Castilla, viii, p. 263 (1587).
2 Escrituras . . . de Millones (1734), fol. go. Arch. Mesta, B-3, Bitigudino,
1749, gives the details of a curious dispute between two towns, each of which in-
sisted that the other was the larger and more important, and therefore the proper
place for the court of the entregador.
8 Corles de Castilla, xix, pp. 232-234 (16∞). Arch.Mesta1 Prov. iii, 14 and 29,
royal decrees of 1692 and 1722 confirming this. The same, iv, 7, gives the list
of the twenty-six audiencias of entregadores; Concordia de 1783, ii, fols. 192-199,
201-203, gives similar data for 1761 and 1779.
4 Arch. Mesta, B-r, Baeza, 1432. s Arch. Ayunt. Cuenca, leg. 12, no. 5 (1509).
• Concordia de 1783, i, fol. 75 v. 7 Cortes, Madrid, 1528, pet. 126.
the Entregador and the towns
III
any of its later repetitions. There does not appear to have been
any effective reform of this difficulty, for there are numerous in-
stances of annual visitations along the canadas down to the last
years of the office of entregador.
Indeed, the regular succession of evasive answers on the part of
the crown to all of the above protests regarding the residencia and
the frequency of visitations, and the other lesser complaints which
were repeated over and over during the reigns of the first three
Hapsburgs, leads one to ask why these complaints began to fall
off during the first decade of the seventeenth century. The ex-
planation is surely not to be found in the satisfaction given to the
complainants by such replies as “ the Royal Council will take up
the matter with its senior member, the President of the Mesta,”
or “ such action will be taken as seems necessary.” The reports
of the Cortes sessions of the time give indications, it is true, of
various steps taken to adjust the differences between that body
and the Mesta, such as the appointment of commissioners, inves-
tigators, and arbitrators to make the necessary reforms for the
betterment of the relations between the towns and the migratory
sheep owners. The most important force, however, which calmed
the stormy protests of the local interests, the most effective
agency for the adjustment of their complaints, was not the legisla-
tive power of the national assembly, but the appellate jurisdiction
of the two high courts of justice, the Chancillerias of Valladolid
and Granada.
We have already observed how the centralizing policy of Ferdi-
nand and Isabella had deprived the proprietary entregador of any
appellate jurisdiction over his subordinates, and had made the
crown and its well organized high courts, the Chancillerias, the
sole judicial superiors of the entregadores. This step was intended
at the time to concentrate even further the control of the Mesta
and its affairs in the hands of the central government. As a mat-
ter of fact it had precisely the opposite effect; it proved to be the
first move toward the alienation of that control from the hands of
the crown and the Royal Council. It meant the creation of a
rival power, to which the opponents of the Mesta were later to
turn in their search for an ally of sufficient prestige and authority