126
THE MESTA
other decrees of the Council and the unbroken flow of plaintive
protests from the Mesta had, however, no permanent effect against
the popularly indorsed campaign of the chancillerias. In 1629
they upheld the town alcaldes of Belalcazar in an important test
case against an entregador. The high court forbade the latter to
try gypsies and other wandering miscreants of uncertain domicile,
whose thefts of cattle and sheep had been acknowledged without
question hitherto as bringing them under the jurisdiction of the
entregadores.1 Petitions of the Mesta to the Cortes, asking that
the entregadores be empowered to expel gypsies from the coun-
try, were sarcastically denied, with the implication that the towns
were quite able to take over one more of the functions of the en-
feebled itinerant magistrates.2
The last important attempt by the Royal Council to obstruct
the complete triumph of the chancillerias over the Mesta and its
judges came in 1677. In that year the maximum entregador,s
sentence from which there could be no appeal to the higher courts
was raised by the Council from 1000 maravedis to 3000.3 This
mandate, like so many of its predecessors, was received at Val-
ladolid and Granada with expressions of profound respect and of
implicit obedience, and then calmly ignored.
Whether we ascribe the success of the two high courts in frus-
trating and discrediting the Mesta and its entregadores to popular
support, to the triumph of the ancient Spanish separatism over
the decadent Hapsburg centralization, or to the characteristic
maladministration of otherwise excellent laws, the fact remains
that those courts did accomplish their object. The reform move-
ment of Charles III and Campomanes in the succeeding century
was occupied, so far as the entregador was concerned, only with
the disposal of the last relics of a few perfunctory powers exer-
cised by that dignitary.
of posesi6n or right of perpetual tenancy in lands once occupied by the Mesta. This
jurisdiction of the Council, as opposed to the chancillerias, was confirmed in 1603,
1609, 1633, and 1640.
ɪ Arch. Osuna, Bejar, caj. 16, nos. ι6, 22, and 25. See also above, p. 89, n. 2, on
the marauders known as gclfines.
2 Corles de Castilla, xxviii, p. 396 (1615).
a Arch. Mesta, Prov. iii, 3.
DECLINE OF THE ENTREGADOR
127
Before we take up the details of those last rites of the entrega-
dor, there remain for brief discussion a few points concerning the
President of the Mesta and his duties as superintendent of the
entregadores. After the Mesta had purchased the control of the
entregadorships in 1568, the President of the sheep owners’ or-
ganization had exercised a general supervision over its itinerant
judges. He issued instructions to them, fixed their routes, heard
the complaints presented against them at the Mesta meetings,
and in general brought them more directly under the control of
the sheep owners.1 These functions had given his associates on the
Royal Council, to whom he regularly reported, an increased
interest in the welfare of the entregador. We have already ob-
served how this interest had found ample opportunity for expres-
sion in the long struggle between the Coimcil and the chancil-
Ierias during the latter part of the sixteenth century. In a similar
manner the Presidency of the Mesta under the seventeenth-cen-
tury Hapsburgs brought the Royal Council to the side of the
Mesta during the struggles of the latter with the Cortes. In fact,
the President of the Mesta was frequently delegated to represent
that body and also the Royal Council in the arbitration confer-
ences with deputies of the national assembly.2 This close alliance
of the Mesta with the highest political officials of the realm proved
to be of little avail to the herdsmen; nor was the Mesta the only
party of the alliance to suffer a loss of power. The Council like-
wise felt the rapacity of the chancillerias, notably when the latter
proceeded to try cases involving the lands of the old military
orders, in spite of the fact that such cases had always been handled
by the Consejo de las Ôrdenes, a body closely allied with the
Council. The decrees of the Council and of the President of the
Mesta * sternly forbade such transgressions, but the chancillerias
1 Occasionally the entregadores refused to be guided by the wishes of the Mesta;
cf. Arch. Mesta, C-4, Caracena, 1752: a notable case in 1522 when the Mesta was
unable to induce an entregador to accept its recommendations.
2 Ibid., Prov. i, 87 (1593). The gradual emergence of the President as the domi-
nant force in the Mesta during this period prepared the way for the coup by Cam-
Pomanes, when, in his capacity as senior member of Charles’s Council, he succeeded
to the presidency of the Mesta. From this vantage point he directed the investi-
gations of that body which practically put it out of existence in 1783.
, Ibid., A-6, Almod6var, 1615; and A-6, Almagro, ι6ι6.