ιi4
THE MESTA
appeals from the sentences of entregadores. During the latter
half of the reign — beginning about 1535 —-this change in the
attitude of the Chancillerias gradually become apparent. Whereas
the earlier decades of the century showed them to be quite sub-
servient to the wishes of the crown and its council in favoring the
Mesta by regularly upholding the sentences of the entregadores,
none of the later years passed without one or two decisions which
were either complete reversals of the sentences of entregadores,
or else serious modifications of them. Year by year the rulings
against the entregadores grew in number. By the opening of the
reign of Philip II, it was becoming evident to the antagonists of
the Mesta that a method had at last been found for securing a
fair hearing of their cause.
The Chancillerfas, probably because of their isolation from the
newly made capital,1 became bolder each year in their refusal
to abide by the expressed desires of the Royal Council that the
ancient privileges of the Mesta and the increasingly arbitrary
sentences of the entregadores be invariably upheld. We have
here the beginning of the rivalry between these two elements of
the government, the executive and the judiciary, the Council and
the high courts — a rivalry which was to last nearly two centuries
and was to take on many different forms.2 This new alignment of
forces was of the gravest importance for the Mesta, which was
thenceforth to see the Council, its staunch ally and protector,
checked and harassed at every turn by the new sponsor of local
as contrasted with centralized interests. The court at Granada
was the one to which most of the appeals from entregador de-
cisions were carried by the towns, because its jurisdiction com-
prised most of the southern pasture lands.
The heavy costs of fighting an appeal against the elaborate
legal machinery of the Mesta made the procedure impossible for
any save the more important landowners, military orders, great
nobles, cities, and ecclesiastical bodies. For the smaller villages
there was at first no recourse from the molestations of the entre-
1 Madrid was made the ‘ ûnica corte ’ in 1560.
2 José G6mez Centuri6n, Jovellanos y las 6rdenes Militares (1912), pp. 28-32,
points out other phases of this rivalry.
the Entregador and the towns ɪ ɪ 5
gadores. The increased activity of these magistrates, however,
at last impelled the weaker opponents of the Mesta to concerted
action. Before the reign of Philip II was half over, we find
them occasionally forming alliances for the purpose of carrying
appeals through the chancillerias. As many as forty-five or fifty
towns sometimes joined forces to defend the pasture lands used in
common by them. Counsel was engaged and cases were fought
out successfully in the high courts. Had these temporary unions
possessed that solid, permanent basis so characteristic of the
Aragonese Comunidades, to which in some respects they were
strikingly similar, the history of the Mesta and its entregadores
would probably have been a much shorter and less conspicuous
one.1 Unfortunately, however, the Castilian towns, accustomed
though they were to their hermandades or brotherhoods for the
maintenance of order, were nevertheless quite ignorant of the
possible advantages of any economic leagues, save in a few isolated
instances. The contrast between the two kingdoms in this regard
is explained in part by the relatively stronger position of the cities
in the Aragonese political machinery.
As the chancillerias persisted in their intentions to give the
landowners at least a fair hearing, the Royal Council found it
increasingly necessary to act in behalf of the Mesta and the en-
tregador. As early as 1550 the Council had deemed it necessary
to warn these two courts that they were not empowered to hear
cases concerning perpetual leases of pasture lands. A few years
later, in 1561 and 1563, two more decrees were issued forbidding
the chancillerias to hear appeals from entregador decisions in
cases involving pasturage.2
The two high courts had become bolder in their aggressive
attitude toward the entregadores, and had begun to go beyond
the mere reversal of the decisions of the Mesta judges. They
frequently issued injunctions commanding the itinerant magis-
trates not to hear cases in certain towns and upon certain subjects.
Repetitions of such mandates brought forth two angry decrees
from Madrid in 1569, ordering the courts at Valladolid and
1 See above, p. 99.
2 Quad. 1731, pt. ɪ, pp. 124-125: pt. 2, p. 242.