122
THE MESTA
provision was made by the Cortes that no Corregidor should
regard this as a pretext for visiting any given locality in his dis-
trict more than once a year to make investigations of the ad-
ministration of justice or to levy penalties.1
A striking feature of the documents of this period is the willing-
ness shown by the Mesta to go more than half way to meet the
Cortes in the work of reform. This attitude was very different
from that of two generations before; it was, in fact, expres-
sive of the change which had been wrought in the standing and
influence of that body.2 Occasionally the Cortes were checked
by the crown when the proposed reform seemed too drastic. This
occurred when the suggestion was made by some deputies that the
residencia or examination of a retiring entregador be held by one
of the openly hostile high appellate courts at Granada and Val-
ladolid. The king and his Council were able to persuade the
legislators to retain the practice of residencia by the President of
the Mesta accompanied by a delegate of the Cortes.3
The nobles, clergy, and other great landowners had already
been participating actively in the concerted attack upon the
entregador. In 1634 the powerful Duke of Infantazgo had been
given full assurance by the President of the Mesta that the en-
tregadores would have due respect for the ancient exemptions
which forbade the Mesta judges to enter the towns under the
Duke’s suzerainty.4 Furthermore, the large migratory herds of
certain ecclesiastical bodies had occasionally been given priv-
ileges which were distinct from and in opposition to those en-
joyed by the Mesta.δ The archbishopric of Toledo, for example,
had long regarded its flocks and pastures as superior to the laws
of the Mesta, but was compelled to submit to that body during
mately to the substitution of the Corregidores for the entregadores when the latter
were abolished in 1796.
1 British Museum, T. 91 * (4); decree of 15 Sept., 1618; see also Massachusetts
State Library, Catalogue of the Laws of Foreign Countries (Boston, 19n), p. 278.
, Cortes de Castilla, xxvi, pp. 4, 21 (1610); xxviii, pp. 267, 380 (1615).
8 Ibid., xxviii, p. 193 (1615).
4 Arch. Osuna, Infantazgo, caj. 2, no. ι8. Earlier evidence of a similar nature is
found in the same archive, Belalcâzar, caj. 5, nos. 29, 32, and 33 (1456).
6 Cortes, Cordova, 1455, pet. 13. A few monastic orders had regular member-
ship in the Mesta1 notably the monastery of San Lorenzo at the Escorial.
DECLINE OF THE ENTREGADOR
123
the latter’s golden age under the first Hapsburgs. In 1540 the
Royal Council had ordered the cardinal-primate of Toledo to with-
draw the excommunication and censures which he had imposed
upon an entregador who had been opening certain lands of the
archbishopric to the Mesta flocks. The pressure of the autocracy
had brought the primate to accede; but in the early seventeenth
century, when the attacks of the Corteswere proving so successful,
all of the great ecclesiastical landowners joined in the movement
against the Mesta and shared in the triumph over that body.1
The attitude of the church toward the Mesta and its judiciary
soon took on a more aggressive tone. By 1640 the herdsmen
were appealing to their staunch protector, the Royal Council, to
aid them in stopping the inroads which were being made upon the
jurisdiction of the entregadores by ecclesiastical judges. The
only response to these appeals, however, was a timid warning to
the bishop of Âvila that certain of his subordinates had no right
to hear cases involving Mesta pasturage privileges, even though
the pastures involved were the property of his cathedral.2 At
about the same time the entregadores visiting the vicinity of
Salamanca found their jurisdiction greatly curtailed by mandates
issued “ by authority of the maestro de escuela and other eccle-
siastical judges of the university and of the cathedral ” of that
city,’ who enforced their decrees by the excommunication of any
entregador disobeying them. The Mesta appealed again and
again to the Council to check this t atrocity ’ ; but the decree of
1644, which was intended to accomplish that purpose, did not
have any permanent effect.4 The impotence of the entregadores
at this time was quite as noticeable in their relations with the
titled and ecclesiastical landowners as it was in their dealings
with the towns and their defenders, the Cortes and the chancil-
Ierias.
As the seventeenth century wore on, the two Chancillerias re-
mained firm in their support of the local interests as opposed to
1 Arch. Mesta, T-2, Toledo, 1540 ff. 2 Ibid., А-g, Avila, 1640.
* Ibid., S-ι, Salamanca, ι668.
4 Arch. Mesta, Prov. ii, 32: “ Para que Ios provisores, vicarios, y demas jueces
ecclesiasticos se inhivan del conocimiento de ciertas causas tratadas por Ios entre-
gadores.”