ιι8
THE MESTA
ally, though a far from effective one. Judged by the formal
Mesta privileges of the time, the first third of the seventeenth
century was the zenith of that organization’s power, with the
climax reached in the sweeping concession of 1633.1 The mass of
material, however, introduced in the sixteenth-century litigations
cited above, gives ample evidence that the prestige of the Mesta
and its entregadores was on the wane long before the death of
Philip II in 1598. The attempts of the crown after that time to
revive the Mesta’s power as an asset to the country, and par-
ticularly to the royal treasury, were more and more obviously
selfish efforts to gain immediate profits regardless of any ultimate
improvement in the welfare of the realm.
The Cortes, ever eloquent in the interest of the towns and of
the scattered landowning classes,2 became steadily stronger in
their contest with the Mesta and its judges. In 16∞ they began
the practice of appointing committees to investigate charges
brought against individual entregadores. The deputies thus
took over a function which had long since been the acknowledged
right of the President of the Mesta and his associates in the
Royal Council.3 This was followed up by more elaborate arrange-
ments for the supervision and control of the meetings of the
Mesta through highly paid and specially commissioned delegates,
who were named by the Cortes shortly before each meeting of the
sheep owners. These appointees made full reports and recom-
mendations to the national assembly at each session of that
body.4
of all such profits. Within a few years this had become a fixed sum, which, with other
royal incomes from the Mesta, amounted to about ι,7∞,∞0 maravedis annually.
The Mesta received the remaining two-thirds, which it shared, in the case of penal-
ties for enclosures, with the entregadores. Those officers had been receiving a fixed
salary of 500 ducats a year, during the latter part of the sixteenth century, as a
substitute for the irregular income from shares in many fines. In ι688 this figure
was cut to 300 ducats, but was raised to 400 two years later, at which it was kept
until the abolition of the office in 1796. Quad. 1731, pt. 2, p. 288; Nov. Recop., lib.
7, tit. 27, ley 5, cap. 32.
ɪ Usually bound with the 1639 edition of the Mesta laws; see below, p. 413.
2 The procuradores, or deputies, from Soria and Segovia usually defended the
cause of the Mesta in the Cortes debates.
3 Cortes de Castilla, xix, p. 561 (ι6oo); xxvii, p. 241 (1612); xxxiii, p. 215 (1619).
4 Ibid., xix, pp. 121, 525, 537, 659 (1600); xx, pp. 157, 264, 377, 547 (1602).
DECLINE OF THE ENTREGADOR Iiφ
The rigors of this campaign drew frequent protestations of in-
nocence from the Mesta, and pleas that its entregadores be
allowed to perform their ancient duties in protecting the welfare
of the herdsmen, which had always been the first need of this, the
greatest industry of the country.1 Its bid for crown favors with
the new grants to the royal exchequer from entregadores’ profits,
introduced in 1602, had secured a few liberal renewals of the old
privileges, the most extreme being that of 1633. However, these
concessions were only powerful on paper, whereas the Cortes,
though sadly lacking in constructive ability, were thoroughly
active, and awake to their own power to overturn.
The determined hostility of the deputies, which was displayed
in the debates on the question of Mesta reform, and the proposals
which the Cortes were entertaining for the drastic investigation of
that body and its affairs, so startled the sheep owners that they
held no meetings in 1603. This was the only gap in the long series
of Mesta sessions for over three centuries.2 A few years later the
Cortes sent to Simancas for certain documents bearing on the
Mesta,3 and, shortly afterward, shrewd attorneys of the herds-
men secured a writ from the Royal Council and the king, au-
thorizing the transfer of all documents in the archives at Siman-
cas dealing with the Mesta to the latter’s own collection.4 Here
they were carefully guarded for three hundred years, untouched
save for purposes of litigation in defence of the ancient privileges
of the herdsmen.
Another aspect of the aggressive intentions of the Cortes to-
ward the Mesta was revealed when the former refused to grant
concessions to the pastoral industry except in exchange for modi-
fications of the subsidies to be paid to the crown by the cities of
the realm. Such subsidies were to be voted only in conjunction
1 Cortes de Castilla, xx, pp. 615-616 (1602).
s Aich. Mesta, Acuerdos and Cuentas (1604).
3 Cortes de Castilla, xxiii, p. 456 (1607).
4 The titles of the documents removed at that time fill seventeen manuscript
volumes, now in the Mesta archive, and comprise about three thousand items.
This accounts for the fact that, with the exception of a small collection of documents
on taxes, there are less than half a dozen manuscripts now at Simancas which deal
at any length with the Mesta.