[79] Any study of lawsuits and litigants in Castile during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is bound to be incomplete. An ideal starting point for such a study would be the records of one of the king's corregidores. Sixty-seven in total, these officials were armed with extensive juridical powers that allowed them to decide important civil and criminal cases as a court of first instance. They also served as a court of second instance, reviewing appeals from the courts of village alcaldes. To my knowledge, however, the records of these corregidorial courts have either been lost or destroyed, although this lacuna might be explained by the residencia or judicial review which every corregidor, at the end of his term in office, was obliged to submit. Once completed, corregidores presumably discarded their court registers and other documents before moving on to another post. Indeed, [80] the widespread use of the residencia in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries may explain why the records of most municipal and seigneurial courts have also been lost. ⁽¹⁾

The one exception is the court of Toledo's fiel del juzgado, a magistrate whose jurisdiction was limited to the Montes, a predominantly rural, somewhat mountainous region located south and west of the former Imperial City. Although both civil and criminal cases decided by this magistrate survive, the records are far from complete. ⁽²⁾ The municipal archives of Toledo, where the fiel's records are housed, contain only those cases in which a final decision or sentencia was reached; all other cases were apparently discarded. Nevertheless, these documents provide a unique opportunity to examine the kinds of lawsuits and litigants that came before a local judge. In turn, these records allow for a comparison with the cases brought to other, more important courts. A rough profile of Castilian litigation in the sixteenth century can thus be outlined.

The mountains are as a rule a world apart from civilizations, which are an urban and lowland achievement. Their history is to have none, to remain almost always on the fringe of the great waves of civilization, even the longest and most persistent, which may spread over great distances in the horizontal plane but are powerless to move vertically when faced with an obstacle of a few hundred metres. To these hilltop worlds, out of touch with the towns, even Rome itself, in all its years of power, can have meant very little. ⁽³⁾

The city of Toledo's jurisdiction over the Montes began in in 1284, when the city government purchased this privilege from Ferdinand III, king of León and Castile. ⁽⁵⁾ The fiel del juzgado, one of a number of magistrates appointed by the city, was customarily a nobleman, one of the city's powerful regidores or aldermen. The post was elective, and the fiel was aided by a lieutenant who was generally a letrado. ⁽⁶⁾ Unfortunately, little is known about the men who occupied these positions or about the history of the court itself. In 1554, Pedro de [82] Alcocer, a local historian, noted only that the fiel "had jurisdiction over all matters pertaining to the governance of the public lands and montes of this city, in which he is supreme." ⁽⁷⁾ In practice, the fiel appears to have delegated most of his judicial work to his lieutenant, reserving for himself the right to review the initial decision. In this capacity, the fiel possessed what was known as "ordinary jurisdiction" over the Montes, and his court decided both civil and criminal disputes, particularly those on appeal from the courts of village magistrates (alcaldes ordinarios), who were scattered throughout the villages of the Montes. The fiel was forced to defend this privilege against a number of other magistrates, including the royal corregidor, Toledo's own alcalde de alzadas, and the alcaldes of the Santa Hermandad, who were primarily responsible for suits involving crimes committed in the countryside. The inhabitants of the Montes manipulated each of these competing jurisdictions to their own advantage, frequently playing one magistrate against the others. Ordinarily, the fiel's jurisdiction was supreme, and his decisions were issued in accordance with procedures set forth in the Leyes de Estilo, a series of laws originally compiled in the late fourteenth century, that gave litigants in his tribunal the right to appeal his judgments to a royal court, usually in the chancillería of Valladolid.

The lawsuits that came to the fiel in the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are cataloged according to the village in which the case initially began. ⁽⁸⁾ To read all of these cases -- several thousand in all -- is a monumental task and hardly worth the effort because the issues in dispute vary little from village to village. The following account of litigation in the Montes is derived solely from the civil lawsuits initiated in three important villages: Navahermosa (181 vecinos in 1559), Ventas con Peña Aguilera (ca. 400 vecinos), and Yebenes (ca. 900 vecinos). There is little reason to believe that their lawsuits differed markedly from those of vecinos living in neighboring communities.

An examination of more than three hundred cases that began in these villages indicates that the residents of the Montes generally [83] used the lawsuit as part of a larger strategy designed to force an out-of-court settlement in an ongoing, often protracted dispute. ⁽⁹⁾ Frequently, it was begun to delay certain defeat for one of the parties involved, in the hope that his opponent, rather than waste his time and his money fighting the case, would settle upon a compromise. Catalina de Morales, a widow from Ventas, utilized this strategy when she filed suit in 1580 against the creditors of her recently deceased spouse. Her aim was to protect her dowry, but later that year she suddenly abandoned the case. Apparently, her opponents decided to settle out of court. Pedro Albarran, a resident of Ventas, had another strategy in mind when he filed suit against his son Leonardo. In 1572, Albarran had promised Leonardo 187,500 mrs. if he agreed to marry Isabel Sánchez. The wedding occurred, but ten years later Leonardo claimed never to have received the promised money, and he obtained a preliminary judgment against his father from the fiel's lieutenant. Albarran, a seasoned litigant, delayed the final decision in the case and meanwhile filed a new lawsuit in this same court in which he argued that the promissory agreement (escritura de promesa) his son had presented as evidence against him was "forged and fabricated." Leonardo eventually won, but only after considerable delays. ⁽¹⁰⁾

Delaying tactics similar to those employed by Albarran were used by a shepherd named Esteban Garroz in his suit against the village of Malpica, which claimed that Garroz had put his livestock in a corral belonging to the village. The village's alcalde found Garroz responsible and seized his sheep, assessing them at four mrs. a head. Garroz appealed this decision to the fiel on procedural grounds, alleging that "the alcalde has no authority to hear this case." He then claimed that "without the case being finished or proven and without any information or proof against me, they condemned me on the basis of the original citation because I had admitted in my confession that I had entered my herd into the termino of the village." Citing "the little justice of the judgment," Garroz asked the fiel to return his property, adding, "I ask, above all, justice." In response, the village claimed this [84] appeal "was frivolous and malicious and designed only to delay the case." The fiel agreed, and he subsequently confirmed the alcalde's initial judgment. ⁽¹¹⁾

One other case in which the lawsuit clearly appears as an instrument intended to force a compromise occurred in 1577, when Juan Calderon, resident of Navahermosa, took his illegitimate brother Alonso to court. Their father Bartolomé had recently died, and Alonso appropriated for himself goods and property worth 100,000 mrs. from the estate. Juan, citing laws that prohibited "natural sons" from inheriting property "by any means, including contracts among living persons or a last will," went to court to force Alonso to relinquish the property in question. But Alonso was determined to fight. He claimed that the property represented only what "my father owed me for the many years of service that I gave him." And he added that his brother Juan deserved nothing "because he did not do any work around the house but spent all of his time learning how to read, write, and count." Disregarding these pleas, the alcalde of Navahermosa found in Juan's favor, but Alonso, reluctant to part with his property and perhaps thinking that a compromise settlement might be arranged, appealed first to the fiel del juzgado, and then, after another judgment against him, to the chancillería of Valladolid . Several years later, the case was still pending, and Juan, who had not yet collected, complained that "the appeal was only intended to postpone and hold up the execution of the judgment and to delay paying what is owed to me." ⁽¹²⁾

The obvious intent in each of these cases was to force one's opponent either to abandon his case or to agree to a compromise out of court. From this perspective, the lawsuit was a highly effective instrument. The vast majority of lawsuits that came to Castile's courts, including that of the fiel, never reached a final, in-court decision. At the chancillería of Valladolid -- the only tribunal for which this kind of information exists -- unfinished lawsuits outnumbered those that obtained a final judgment by a ratio of approximately fifteen to one, a difference so large as to suggest that the parties involved in most disputes were willing to compromise and to bring the lawsuit to a halt. It would probably be right to assume that litigants in the fiel's court were similarly inclined.

[85] What did they litigate about? Translated into legal language, most of the lawsuits in the fiel's court were pleitos ordinarios or pleitos entre personas. This means the cases mostly involved demands against specific individuals for breach of contract, violation of property rights, failure to pay certain debts, and the like -- issues one might expect to find in a small, local court. Debt collection looms large in the dockets of most minor courts, and that of the fiel del juzgado was no exception. Credit was not easily obtained in the Castilian countryside; consequently, unpaid debts were the most frequent source of lawsuits that came to the fiel. Circumstances varied: unpaid rents, monies owed to a tax collector, the unpaid balance of a sale involving livestock -- but the scenario was essentially the same: the creditor, as plaintiff, going to court to force the debtor, as defendant, to pay or risk a seizure and sale (remate) of his property. Closely related to such suits were the countersuits and appeals initiated by debtors seeking to halt legal proceedings against them. Before requesting imprisonment for debt, it was customary for creditors to seek a court-ordered remate of the debtor's property, by which action the latter's property would be seized, evaluated, and sold at public auction. The creditor would then collect what was due. Few debtors, however, even the indigent and the illiterate, missed an opportunity to contest such an action, even if their only purpose was to throw roadblocks in their creditor's way. This was certainly the intention of Francisco Moreno, resident of Ventas, who owed his village over 70,000 mrs. in unpaid taxes. The alcalde had Moreno arrested and ordered a remate of his property, but Moreno appealed to the fiel, asking him not only to declare the alcalde's actions illegal but also to render a new accounting of the taxes in question, a procedure designed to delay the proceedings for weeks, possibly months. ⁽¹³⁾

Less important numerically than lawsuits over unpaid debts and breaches of contract were those that involved such family matters as allowances, dowries, guardianships, and inheritance. Many of these disputes were specifically designated as casos de corte and went directly to royal justice. ⁽¹⁴⁾ An exception was the case of Sebastián Portillo, resident of Yebenes, who in 1558 came to the fiel claiming that his prospective father-in-law, Martín Añaya, had failed to comply with the provisions of a dowry agreement (promesa de dote). "I want to get [86] married," asserted Portillo, and asked the fiel to force Añaya to pay him what he had promised so that the ceremony could take place . But Añaya, who was apparently opposed to the marriage, at first refused to appear at the hearing and then threatened an appeal when the fiel finally decided in Portillo's favor. ⁽¹⁵⁾

The fiel presided in a number of other cases involving dowries and occasionally had to deal with lawsuits that involved a curator's mismanagement of an estate, but the only cases in his court that regularly involved family matters were those initiated by widows seeking to protect their property and estates. Single women living in small villages were subject to frequent harassment and often ostracized from the community by various means: charges of witchcraft, accusations of immoral conduct, and the like. ⁽¹⁶⁾ Widows were especially singled out for such treatment, but the law in the sixteenth century appears to have come to their aid. Widows were the only women entitled to litigate on their own behalf, and their cases were classified as casos de corte, which enabled them to go directly to one of the king's audiencias. Many did, but in the Montes some widows, possibly for reasons of economy, sought justice closer to home. At least one-fifth of the cases heard by the fiel involved widows. Typically, a widow went to the fiel seeking to protect her dowry from her dead husband's creditors. Luisa de Aguilera, for example, did this after her husband, Bernal Hernández, died in 1582 leaving debts amounting to over 11,000 mrs. At the request of his creditors, Hernández's property had been seized by the alcalde of Ventas, but Luisa protested and asked the fiel to separate the goods belonging to her dowry from her husband's property. The fiel so ordered, and in similar cases involving widows he generally did the same. ⁽¹⁷⁾ Ostensibly, the fiel appeared as a champion of widows' rights, but he was only acting in accordance with laws stipulating that, in the event of the death of the husband, dowries were to be returned to the widow intact. The relative frequency of these cases also suggests that widows living in the Montes frequently looked to the law for protection and support.

With the exception of widows, who are always named as such, it is difficult to identify the litigants who came to the fiel's court. Occupations are recorded haphazardly in the lawsuits, and in most instances [87] only names are recorded. Nevertheless, it appears that the most populous class in the Montes, the landless jornaleros or day workers who constituted approximately 65 percent of the region's inhabitants, rarely initiated lawsuits except as debtors seeking to halt a remate against their property. Diego González, a pauper from the village of Navahermosa, was ordered in 1537 by the village magistrate to restore some land he had illegally occupied, a common occurrence at a time when population was rising and land increasingly in short supply. González then appealed to the fiel, asking that he be paid for the cost of constructing a building he had erected on the land in question ("I beg and plead for the justicia of the building's costs"). ⁽¹⁸⁾ González was not the only jornalero in the Montes to throw himself at the mercy of the fiel's court, but, ordinarily, jornaleros were infrequent plaintiffs in this forum. Poverty may be one reason, ignorance another. Most jornaleros were illiterate and possibly unschooled in the use of the courts.

In contrast, the region's labradores, the peasant proprietors who represented about 10 to 15 percent of the local population, figured prominently in the fiel's court, as both plaintiffs and defendants. Their suits were supplemented by those of the Montes's small middle class -- a mixed group of artisans, shopkeepers, innkeepers, and itinerant merchants. Litigants who came from this group included Juan López, a hosier from Ventas, who also served as a tithe collector; ⁽¹⁹⁾ Francisco Benito, a charcoal dealer and muleteer, also from Ventas; ⁽²⁰⁾ a master stonecutter from Navahermosa; ⁽²¹⁾ and Luís Gamaro, a shop purveyor in Ventas. ⁽²²⁾ The recurrence of such individuals in the fiel's court can be easily explained. In the first place, as property owners they had inheritances and investments to protect. Second, as small moneylenders and as buyers and sellers of land, houses, livestock, and a variety of other goods, they were certain to become involved in contractural disputes, many of which were likely to wind up in court. [88] Third, since most of the artisans, shopkeepers, and labradores who lived in this region were literate, they played an active part in the management of village affairs. As a result, they were familiar with law, legal process, and lawyers, and this special knowledge is perhaps the best explanation of their frequent appearance in court.

But were the peasants and rural artisans litigious, that is, apt to bring their disputes and conflicts to court on a regular, recurring basis? It is worth repeating at this point that the fiel's court was only one of several in which the inhabitants of this region could have recourse; in the absence of records for Toledo's other tribunals, the complete story of litigation in the Montes cannot be told. Yet, looking only at the cases that came to the fiel, it appears that most of the litigants resembled what one legal scholar has labeled as "one-shotters," or individuals who litigate on an infrequent, intermittent basis. ⁽²³⁾ Pedro Alonso, vecino of Ventas, was one such litigant. Little is known about him except that in 1575 he filed suit against his father-in-law, Juan Benito. Alonso's two sons had worked as servants for Benito, but the latter, Alonso claimed, had failed to pay for their service in accordance with an original agreement. Alonso demanded immediate payment of 17,250 mrs. The fiel ruled in his favor, but this was the first and last time he ever appeared in this court. ⁽²⁴⁾

Others came to the fiel on a more regular basis . Cristóbal de Aguilera Estrada, on his return from a lengthy stay in the Indies, initiated no less than four different suits in 1583-84 in order to collect certain debts owed to his father. And Pedro Albarran, a rag dealer in Ventas, was involved in at least three lawsuits in as many years. Juan Merino, a tailor who was also from Ventas, appeared in the fiel's court almost as frequently. He first turned up in 1570 as a defendant in a lawsuit begun by a priest for whom he had fashioned a cassock. The priest claimed that Moreno's work was so shoddy that he was unfit to be a tailor and demanded that Moreno pay him 4,080 mrs., which was the value of the cloth he had originally supplied. Moreno won this case, but he was soon involved in a collective lawsuit brought by several vecinos of Ventas against the village's alcalde for alleged misuse of 45,000 mrs.in municipal funds. In 1588, Moreno was sued by Baltasar Ruíz in a case that involved the purchase of a forge worth 4,000 mrs. [89] Two consecutive judgments had gone against him, but Moreno, now a seasoned litigant, knew how to stall. He appealed the case to the chancillería of Valladolid despite Ruíz's allegation that the "appeal is frivolous and imprudent." Juan Calderon, vecino of Navahermosa, was another individual who, by the standards of the Montes, might classify as litigious. He first crops up in the fiel's records when in 1577 he brought his bastard brother Alonso to court. This case dragged on for years, but Juan appeared again in this court in 1585, when, as a creditor, he initiated suits against several individuals who owed him varying amounts of money. ⁽²⁵⁾

For all of their legal activity, none of these individuals appear as highly litigious, ever ready to drag their opponents into court. The accepted definition of a litigious person is one who litigates frequently, but litigiousness should not be thought of strictly in quantitative terms. Litigiousness is also knowing how to exploit courts and legal procedures for one's own advantage, how to wrap a determined adversary in legal red tape, how to force settlements out of court, and how to help one's lawyers in planning a successful case. Many litigants in the Montes used lawyers -- both attorneys and advocates appear in the fiel's records -- but many cases, particularly in the villages, were initiated without expert legal help. It appears, therefore, that the peasants of the Montes understood litigation. They were no ignorant countrymen, duped and befuddled by the complexity of legal process, but shrewd, calculating individuals, well acquainted with the use of the courts. These tribunals may have constituted a Cretan labyrinth, but it was a maze through which even relatively humble peasants could easily find their way.

As noted above, the fiel's court, like a modern court of small claims, was accustomed to handling cases of minor importance and worth. In important royal tribunals, such as the chancillería of Valladolid, lawsuits regularly involved millions of maravedís, but the disputes in the fiel's court were much more in keeping with the modest fortunes of the artisans and labradores who constituted its regular clientele. Between 1542 and 1612, for example, the fiel's records list sixty-five cases that originated in Ventas. In thirty-three cases the amounts are unknown. Only five were worth more than 100,000 mrs., the largest [90] of which, Sebastián de Guadalupe v. Maria de Gavira, was a dispute over houses worth 330,000 mrs. ⁽²⁶⁾ The median value of the fiel's suits, however, was only 18,000 mrs., a modest sum yet one sufficiently large to justify the cost of a lawsuit that, for the paperwork alone, averaged 800 to 1,000 mrs. ⁽²⁷⁾ Such expenditures also help to explain why minor disputes involving property worth less than 5,000 mrs. rarely came into this court.

Important as disputes over money were to lawsuits in the fiel's court, it would be unreasonable to assume that money was the only source of peasants' disputes. Sebastián de Villaröel, resident of Yebenes, appealed to the fiel after having been ordered by the alcalde of this village to pay Sebastián García 3,000 mrs. owed from the sale of thirty-one bundles of cloth. Presumably, a dispute over such a small amount could be settled without a lawsuit, but Villaröel sued because, as he put it, "the alcaldes of Yebenes are relatives and first cousins of the party with whom I am litigating; for this and other reasons I consider them as enemies. . .; and I am certain that I cannot obtain justice from them." ⁽²⁸⁾ Villaröel was understandably concerned about his pocketbooks but was money the only reason that prompted an appeal to the fiel? His concern for justicia, which in this case meant his right to a hearing in another, supposedly more impartial forum, may have seemed equally important.

Honor was yet another source of countless lawsuits in this region. Many of the criminal cases tried by the fiel began with insults, libels, palabras injuriosas,and other remarks that were considered an affront to one's reputation, public standing, and sense of self-esteem. To call a peasant "judio" (Jew), "marrano" (pig, implying that he was of Jewish blood), "hijo de puta" (son of a whore), or "bellaco" (knave) in public commonly led to incidents of aggravated assault, but insults such as these led also to lawsuits in which the plaintiff relied upon the court, rather than violence, as a means of restoring his honor and reputation. ⁽²⁹⁾

Yet these "honor" cases can be deceptive. Insults usually masked [91] deeper grievances, and the lawsuits involving libels and slanders formed only one phase in a protracted dispute. For this reason, cases involving libels and insults probably had less to do with any peculiar sense of personal honor (as many descriptions of Spanish national character would have us believe) than with the rapid economic and social changes taking place within the Montes. Prosperity in this region was translated quickly into population pressure, skyrocketing land prices, and the fragmentation of landholdings that gradually led to the growing economic and social disparities among the villagers. Such changes did not always progress smoothly. The Montes in the sixteenth century were no rural utopia; crime and violence were endemic and probably increasing, possibly as a result of the tensions that prosperity had brought.

Litigation, it appears, responded to similar cues. In the Montes, prosperity implied more trade, bigger, more substantial commercial contracts, and land that was proportionally worth more and more. Population growth, however, was fast outstripping available resources, fomenting conditions for enmities among villagers, even those who were closely related by marriage and blood. As indicated in chapter 1, a lawsuit in the sixteenth century was a good sign that other, more amicable methods of reconciliation and compromise had failed. It signaled the end of friendship, and for many it was a precursor of violence. The litigation found in the Montes also suggests that the villages of this region were not united, cohesive communities, but villages split into scores of squabbling families, neighborhoods, and groups. Indeed, the lack of village spirit helps to explain why, in 1553, residents living on the street of la Carpentería in Yebenes brought suit against the village council. For "the good and honor of the pueblo," the council had decreed that this street be paved "so that the village is ennobled and water can pass without harm." But the local residents protested, afraid that paving the street might in some way block access to their houses and cause them unnecessary expense, and then filed suit against the village council. ⁽³⁰⁾ The litigious spirit exhibited by this group of villagers is representative of that of litigants who came to the fiel's court. Lumped together, their lawsuits appear as a response to the economic and social tensions which the growth and prosperity of the sixteenth century gradually bred.

If the court of the fiel del juzgado is the only local tribunal for which litigation records survive, the only appellate court in Castile whose archives can be used for comparative purposes is the chancillería of Valladolid. ⁽³¹⁾ Even then, deficiencies in the archives of the chancillería make it difficult to compare the work of the two courts. The weekly calendars of cases over which the chancillería's judges presided have apparently been lost, and the registers of lawsuits initially brought to this court are far from complete. These lacunae make it almost impossible to determine the relative proportions of the different kinds of cases filed at the chancillería because the transcripts of the lawsuits housed in the chancillería's archives -- thousands of which are still extant -- have not yet been cataloged. ⁽³²⁾ Indeed, the only documents that can serve as an index to these lawsuits are the cartas ejecutorias or executive writs issued after a lawsuit had been concluded. These documents, conveniently arranged in chronological order, are extremely valuable because they provide the names of the litigants involved together with a brief history and summary of each case. ⁽³³⁾ On the other hand, the cartas ejecutorias are somewhat misleading because only a small proportion of the lawsuits that came to [93] the chancillería ever obtained a final writ. A visitor in 1590 reported: "The lawsuits that come [to the chancillería] are very numerous; in comparison, those that leave and are dispatched are very few . . .; it appears that 6,000 or 7,000 enter each year but only a little more than 400 ejecutorias are delivered." ⁽³⁴⁾

If this estimate is anywhere close to correct, it means that over 90 percent of the lawsuits brought to this court never obtained a final writ. Most were withdrawn or forgotten, either because litigants ran out of money -- a frequent occurrence -- or because an out-of-court settlement was reached. It appears, therefore, that the cartas ejecutorias represent only those cases that litigants fought with especial tenacity and zeal, possibly because issues of honor or principle rather than money alone were involved. As such, they cannot be considered representative of all of the cases that came to the chancillería; consequently, they offer little more than a partial glimpse of the business transacted by this court.

In the previous chapter, reference was made to a series of royal audiencias whose primary purpose was to review on appeal cases decided in Castile's lower courts. The Siete Partidas had established the right of each of the king's subjects to appeal to royal justice, and by the early fourteenth century a special panel of magistrates designed to help the king oir pleitos (decide lawsuits) was in existence. ⁽³⁵⁾ Henry II reorganized this panel in 1371, officially christening it "nuestra audiencia" and designating it as the tribunal in which appeals to royal justice would be reviewed and adjudicated according to the laws of the Partidas. From the outset, therefore, the audiencia had political as well as judicial functions since one of the aims of this policy was to help [94] the monarchy impose the laws of the Partidas upon the patchwork of Castilian fueros. Presumably, appeals to the audiencia would serve to weaken the power and independence of local jurisdictions, and, in the process, strengthen the power and prestige of the monarchy.

Originally, the royal audiencia was peripatetic, moving regularly between the towns of Segovia, Olmedo, Medina del Campo, and Madrid. Henry III settled this court at Segovia in 1391, but fifty years later famine forced it to move to Valladolid, a city located in the heart of old Castile's abundant tierra de pan y de vino (land of bread and wine). There it remained, except for brief moves during years of pestilence, political upheaval, and the return of the royal court to this city in the years between 1601 and 1606, until its abolition in 1834. ⁽³⁶⁾

The audiencia, known officially as the real audiencia y chancillería because the presence of a canciller real (royal chancellor) entitled it to issue documents in the king's name, quickly achieved prominence. Staffed principally by skilled letrados, it was described by the Castilian Cortes in 1419 as "the key to civil justice." ⁽³⁷⁾ By this date, more-over, its alcaldes de crimen (criminal magistrates) decided appeals in criminal matters and the judges of its sala de hidalguía dispatched cases of contested nobility. The audiencia also housed a sala de vizcaya in which cases involving vizcainos (persons who claimed the protection of the fueros of the Basque Kingdom of Vizcaya) were reviewed by the juez mayor of Vizcaya. Ordinances promulgated by the Catholic monarchs in 1485 and again in 1494 gave this tribunal added prestige; ⁽³⁸⁾ henceforward, lawsuits previously decided by the Royal Council were to be diverted to the chancillería to free the former for the more pressing business of state. The Habsburgs reaffirmed this policy, and the monarchy's continuing support made certain that the real audiencia y chancillería would in the sixteenth century remain the cornerstone of Castilian justice as well as the kingdom's single most important court.

Until the end of the fifteenth century, the audiencia y chancillería was officially the monarchy's only court of appeals. Some cases involving the important noblemen and other specified lawsuits were brought to the Royal Council, but it was clear by this epoch that a single audiencia was insufficient to meet the growing legal requirements [95] of the kingdom. Regions south of the Guadarrama Mountains (Andalusia, Estremadura, and New Castile), all of which were gaining rapidly in population, were far from Valladolid, and those situated along the Atlantic and Cantabrian coasts were often cut off from the chancillería during the winter months when snow made mountain passes almost impassable. The Castilian Cortes first voiced complaints about this situation during the reign of John II, but nothing was done until 1484, when Ferdinand and Isabella established an audiencia to bring the king's law to the remote and isolated kingdom of Galicia. ⁽³⁹⁾ Headed by a regente and judges known as alcaldes mayores del reino de Galicia, this tribunal was legally dependent upon the chancillería of Valladolid, to which its judgments could be appealed.⁽⁴⁰⁾

Somewhat different was the creation in 1494 of a second audiencia y chancillería with powers and privileges analogous to those of the tribunal in Valladolid. ⁽⁴¹⁾ The conquest of the old Moorish kingdom in Granada represented such a significant addition to the crown's territory that demands for a tribunal to serve the interests of the south could no longer be ignored. This tribunal, initially located in Ciudad Real, was transferred by Ferdinand to Granada in 1505, a move calculated to curtail the powerful count of Tendilla, who, ever since the city's conquest in 1492, had ruled this important city as if it were his own. Subsequently, the jurisdiction of the older tribunal in Valladolid ended officially at the Tagus River, while the new chancillería of Granada served regions further south. ⁽⁴²⁾

Later adjustments in the royal judiciary were minimal. Rejecting requests to establish an audiencia in Toledo, Charles in 1526 added an audiencia in Las Palmas to the Canary Islands and in 1556 another to serve the city of Seville. ⁽⁴³⁾ The phenomenal growth of this port city [96] played havoc with existing institutions of justice, and Charles, following a visitation by Dr. Hernan Pérez de la Fuente, nominated this royal councillor as regent of the new audiencia. Aided by six civil magistrates, four alcaldes de crimen, and a fiscal, the regent was to restore order in this troubled city and, in doing so, to strengthen royal authority at the expense of existing tribunals that were run largely for the benefit of the local nobility. Also included within the jurisdiction of the new tribunal were towns and villages dependent upon Seville. Beginning in 1566, appeals from the audiencia of the Canaries that had previously gone to Granada were to be directed to Seville. ⁽⁴⁴⁾ From this tribunal appeals went either to the chancillería in Granada or to the Royal Council in Madrid, depending upon the nature of the case.

By the mid-sixteenth century, the kingdom was thus divided into five juridical regions, each governed by an audiencia that had a number of different administrative tasks to perform, in addition to judicial responsibilities. In practice, however, the two chancillerías were by far the most important of these courts. Casos de corte, real property cases involving mayorazgos (entailed estates), and major jurisdictional conflicts belonged exclusively to the two chancillerías. The audiencias had to contend with lesser fare even though this situation led to numerous complaints. The advocates attached to the audiencia of Seville, for example, wrote to Philip II asking for an increase in the amount of fees they could collect because

the parties who litigate in this city and in this audiencia are not like those who litigate in Granada and Valladolid where there are chancillerías with a broad jurisdiction; the litigants in those cities are usually absentees and pay salaries to their advocates and the cases are ordinarily important ones dealing with mayorazgos, jurisdictions, and boundaries; . . .but this royal audiencia has neither an extensive district nor lawsuits initiated by absentees; all of the cases are brought by parties who are present, vecinos of this city or residents of nearby villages; generally, the lawsuits are worth very little and concern commerce rather than mayorazgos because this city is a marketplace with extensive commerce and trade; the lawsuits are adventurous, and, as a [97] result, the advocates are not salaried nor is there any certainty that they will be paid since the litigants frequently hire an advocate one day, another the next, and their attorneys do most of the work; . . . the audiencia does not hear casos de corte but always ordinary cases on appeal; it is not allowed to review any others, and when these lawsuits do come it is generally unnecessary to begin a complete investigation because they are already substantiated with all the allegations, briefs, proofs, and other documents they require. ⁽⁴⁵⁾

In sum, despite the elaboration of the royal judiciary in the sixteenth century, the chancillería of Valladolid still occupied the preeminent place. Its district embraced a population of approximately four million inhabitants and included such important cities as Burgos, Medina del Campo, Segovia, Toledo, and Valladolid. It also constituted the economic hub of Castile, and the prosperity of the region throughout most of the sixteenth century helped to make the chancillena the kingdom's most active and influential court.

For all their limitations, the cartas ejecutorias provide a useful index to the work of the chancillería. They also provide an opportunity to compare the cases decided by the chancillería with those of Toledo's fiel, thus highlighting the differences between a small, local court and an important appellate court. Consider, for example, the value of the lawsuits concluded at each. In 1580, the lawsuits decided at the chancillería were worth on the average nearly four times as much as those of the fiel. ⁽⁴⁶⁾ The median value of the former was approximately 80,000 mrs., those of the fiel, only 18,000 mrs. Whereas the fiel rarely had to consider a case worth over 100,000 mrs., the chancillería in 1580 issued at least fourteen ejecutorias in cases worth 1 million mrs. [98]or more. The most valuable of these, Lic. Juan Vázquez de Uceda v. Hernan Vázquez de Coronado, involved property estimated at 4.5 million mrs., a considerable sum. ⁽⁴⁷⁾ Lawsuits involving important patrimonies and noble estates were probably worth even more, but the cartas ejecutorias do not always give an indication of precisely how much money was at stake.

Because the chancillería was an appellate jurisdiction, the average value of its cases would be expected to be much more than those adjudicated in a lesser tribunal, but a word of caution is in order. The cartas ejecutorias are somewhat misleading guides to the value of the chancillería's lawsuits. The cost of litigating at this tribunal was so high that most lawsuits were abandoned well before a judgement was announced; presumably, the rate of attrition was highest among cases worth the least. ⁽⁴⁸⁾ Even so, there is little doubt that the chancillería in the sixteenth century was flooded with what were known as pleitos menudos or minor lawsuits. ⁽⁴⁹⁾ Official "visitors" to the chancillería recognized this fact and admitted that these cases were more than the judges and officials of the tribunal could easily handle. One suggested that the minimum value of cases this tribunal could consider be raised from 6,000 to 15,000 mrs. ⁽⁵⁰⁾ He also advised Phillip II that he might consider the creation of a new panel of judges at this tribunal whose sole function would be to dispatch these minor cases, but Phillip, who was generally leery of instituting administrative changes and ill-disposed toward any measure that might limit the access of the indigent to his tribunals, took no action on this or other proposals designed to streamline the royal judiciary. His judges would simply have to work harder.

Phillip's refusal to limit the chancillería's jurisdiction implied that its magistrates had a special responsibility to look after the lawsuits of the poor, humble, and the weak, no matter how trivial or inconsequential. The magistrates may have preferred to work pleitos graves since these [99] important cases added luster to their reputation and prestige, but looking after the interests of the orphans, widows, and paupers was a responsibility that the officials did not shirk. To be sure, royal visitors discovered incidents in which cases initiated by humble persons were neglected, but on the whole these litigants at the chancillería fared well. Lower courts were notorious for their susceptibility to manipulation and pressure exerted by powerful noblemen and corporations such as the Mesta, Spain's powerful sheepowners' guild. It was also generally conceded that in local tribunals peasants had little chance of securing favorable judgements against their seigneur or other individuals in a position to influence the magistrate. Fray Antonio de la Trinidad, writing in 1555, noted specifically that alcaldes and corregidores throughout most of La Mancha, Andalusia, and New Castle were clients of local poderosos, a vague term that usually referred to important seigneurs and their henchmen. ⁽⁵¹⁾ On one occasion, even Toledo's fiel del juzgado was criticized for certain "lapses" that were said to have caused "grumbling" among those who frequented his court. ⁽⁵²⁾

In comparison, the chancillería was somewhat insulated against manipulation of this sort. Admittedly, the wealthy had an advantage in dealing with the lawyers, scribes, and other court officials who were ever on the lookout for additional sources of cash, but the judges were harder to reach. Cases at the chancillería were heard collectively, by panels of two or four magistrates, and in the event of a tie the president of the tribunal was empowered to intervene. Favorable judgements, therefore, were not easily brought, although this did not prevent countless litigants from trying. ⁽⁵³⁾ Nevertheless, the chancillería enjoyed a reputation for independence that few other tribunals in the sixteenth century could match. This court, for example, frequently [100] reversed or altered approximately one-third of the decisions taken by lower courts. This statistic is a good indication that its magistrates acted independently of the decisions taken by local courts (Table 2). ⁽⁵⁴⁾ Nor did these reversals benefit only those appellants with the means to influence the chancillería's decision. Table 3 suggests that in cases that set "weak" litigants against "strong" ones, the latter did not always come out on top. In the early 1540s, for example, the vecinos of Medina de Rioseco won a series of favorable judgments against the powerful grandee, don Fadrique Enríquez, admiral of Castile, prompting the latter to complain to the king in 1543 that the chancillería's magistrates were prejudiced against him. ⁽⁵⁵⁾ And on another occasion, the villagers of Lara (Burgos) freely admitted that the chancillería was the only tribunal in which they were able to obtain justicia against Andrés de Villegas, who was described in the lawsuit as an important poderoso. ⁽⁵⁶⁾ Yet another case in which villagers defeated the pretensions of a powerful noble occurred in 1540, when the villages of Robadilla and Puñonrostro sued Francisco de Monroy, count of Leytossa, in the chancillería. The villages alleged that Monroy was illegally attempting to exact 600 mrs. in seigneurial dues from every resident despite the judgment of another lawsuit declaring them exempt from such levies. The judges, in two consecutive judgments, sided with the villagers, ordering Monroy to cease and desist. ⁽⁵⁷⁾ What finally happened in this case is not clear, but it is apparent that the chancillería was not a forum upon which Castile's seigneurs could always depend. The anonymous witness who remarked in 1543 that the chancillería "favored vassals against their lords" was surely exaggerating, ⁽⁵⁸⁾ but his opinion is valuable because it highlights the chancillerla's independent tack, especially with reference to Castile's powerful titled noblemen and grandees.

The chancillería's independence in these lawsuits is partly explained by the magistrates themselves. More will be said about these officials in chapter 5, but at least in the sixteenth century, the civil magistrates [101] of the chancillería were men whose links to the lesser nobility, years of legal training, and loyalty to the monarchy led them to be wary of the high nobility. Furthermore, royal visitations to the chancillería made it a point to punish magistrates who, in the words of one irate litigant, favored "the rich over the poor." ⁽⁵⁹⁾ Official policy and the judges' personal disposition thus combined to keep justice at the chancillería relatively immune from the machinations of the grandees. Indeed, the simple fact that these important noblemen could not expect any favors from the chancillería helps to explain why so many members of this class went directly to the king, begging for special judicial favors and asking to have their cases transferred from the chancillería to other courts. ⁽⁶⁰⁾

The chancillería's readiness to stand up to the grandees is also important because it means that this was one of the few courts in the kingdom in which humble peasants and villagers could hope to obtain a fair hearing of their complaints against their lords. They did not always win, but the very fact that villages such as Castropol and Corral de Almaguer were prepared to raise huge sums of money to carry their suits to the chancillería suggests that this tribunal had achieved considerable popular respect. ⁽⁶¹⁾ The chancillería thus offered [103]the possibility that "weak" members of Castilian society could win their lawsuits, even in cases that pitted them against the "strong". It is not surprising, therefore, that litigation at the chancillería and the king's other audencias in the sixteenth century was increasing so rapidly. In the Middle Ages, litigation was mainly the business of cathedral chapters, nobles, merchants, and important towns, but the chancillería had seemingly tapped a new judicial market among peasants, artisans, and others who in previous centuries had rarely appeared in any judicial tribunal except a local court. The independence of the chancillería and the implied promise of egalitarian justice thus appear to have been reasons why the habit of litigating and especially of appealing to royal justice became so popular during the first century of Habsburg rule.

Any lawsuit that involved a concejo (town council), a seigneurial lord (señor de vasallos), or a municipal or royal official was classified as a caso de corte, the consideration of which was the chancillería's exclusive right. ⁽⁶²⁾ Other casos de corte included suits by orphans, minors, widows, and paupers, all of whom were considered unable to defend themselves against "powerful" individuals and thus deserving of special treatment before the law. Colleges, universities, and hospitals were accorded similar treatment, and it was the right to determine such cases that regularly brought to the chancillería an extraordinary variety of litigants, rich and poor alike. In 1540, for example, a variety of artisans (including a carpenter, carter, knifemaker, and shoemaker), ⁽⁶³⁾ a shopkeeper, ⁽⁶⁴⁾ and merchants ⁽⁶⁵⁾ appeared as appellants, together with such distinguished personages as the admiral of Castile, the duke and duchess of Béjar, the counts of [104] Puñonrostro and Oñate, and the countess of Lemos.⁽⁶⁶⁾ Diego Pizarro, a relative of Peru's conquistador, also appealed to the chancillería, asking its judges to reverse a judgment brought against him by a special judge dispatched by the Royal Council. The case involved misuse of public lands owned by the city of Plasencia, and in the end the chancillería sided with Pizarro and his consorts. ⁽⁶⁷⁾ In subsequent years, the chancillería catered to an equally varied mixture of litigants that included Antonio de Salas, "a rustic, ignorant labrador" from Benavente, ⁽⁶⁸⁾ and Alonso Pérez, an innkeeper from Zamora, who in 1560 sued a local cleric "over windows opening out onto his inn." ⁽⁶⁹⁾ Also in evidence were a variety of artisans and an even larger complement of merchants, lawyers, and government officials. Nobles, both titled and untitled, also frequented the chancillería together with a broad sampling of corporate litigants that included town councils, cathedral chapters, monasteries, and guilds. Furthermore, the chancillería, like the court of the fiel del juzgado, welcomed a surprisingly large number of widows, most of whom were litigating to defend their dowries and other property rights. Unfortunately, not all of the litigants who came to this court can be identified, but the information contained on this topic in the cases represented in the cartas ejecutorias is summarized in Table 4.

It is imperative to remember, however, that the litigants represented in the cases that received cartas ejecutorias do not accurately reflect the entire spectrum of litigants who originally appealed to this tribunal. Judging, for example, from the number of cases filed in the partido known as eclesiástico, churchmen were involved in approximately one-quarter of the lawsuits initially filed at the chancillería, ⁽⁷⁰⁾ but in only a small percentage of the cases that ended in a carta ejecutoria. [105] This difference exists because churchmen, as one of the official visitors to the chancillería explained, rarely bothered to obtain these expensive documents. Presumably, many other litigants, especially those listed as paupers or those whose cases involved only minor sums, did the same. It would appear, therefore, that the chancillería catered to a much broader sample of the Castilian population than the information contained in Table 4 suggests.

What, then, is the difference between the litigants who appealed to the chancillería and those who frequented a lower tribunal such as that of the fiel del juzgado? In the fiel's court, important noblemen, royal officials, and corporate institutions such as guilds, hospitals, and town councils rarely appeared; litigants were mostly private individuals of modest means whose cases classified as pleitos ordinarios. These were private disputes over contracts, debts, property rights, and minor inheritances, the repercussions of which, both legal and political, were relatively few. To be sure, the chancillería had its own share -- too many in the opinion of some commentators -- of pleitos ordinarios, many of which were little different in kind or in substance from those heard by the fiel. But what distinguished the chancillería as a court of law and gave it a special place in legal and political circles was that minority of litigants who were involved in cases of a different sort. Special juridical prerogatives granted the chancillería the exclusive right to decide cases involving mayorazgos, jurisdictional disputes, the conduct of public officials, and other cases that touched upon matters of public as opposed to private law. These cases imparted to the chancillería's docket a character very different from that of a lower court or even one of the lesser regional audiencias such as those in Galicia or Seville. This difference was highlighted when the advocates of the audiencia of Seville complained in 1586 that their own work consisted primarily "of lawsuits of minor quality, of contracts, but no mayorazgos." They envied their colleagues in Granada and Valladolid, who, as they perceived it, practiced in "chancillerías with a very wide jurisdiction in which litigants are primarily absentees and therefore pay a salary to the advocate; ordinarily, their business consists of 'pleitos graves' or of estates and mayorazgos, boundaries and jurisdictions." ⁽⁷¹⁾

Was the advocates' description of the chancillería's lawsuits correct? [108] Unfortunately, little precise information of this nature exists. The annual registers kept by the repartidador, the official in charge of distributing incoming lawsuits to the scribes of the chancillería, survive, but these give only a rough idea of the issues raised by a particular case. The categories used by this official were primarily administrative, not legal; consequently, cases involving similar issues could be found in every one of the ten partidos (divisions) into which civil cases were separated. ⁽⁷²⁾ Nor are the brief descriptions of cases provided in these registers much use in deciding what issues the lawsuits were about. These are limited to such phrases as "sobre maravedís" (over money), "de cuentas" (over accounts), "ganados en pasto" (over livestock),"jurisdicciones" (jurisdictions), "imposiciones" (taxes), "reparos" (repairs), and the like, classifications that obscure more than they reveal. ⁽⁷³⁾

In the absence of reliable descriptions of cases that came to the chancillería, it was necessary to rely once again on the cartas ejecutorías since the thousands of original lawsuits stored in the chancillería's archives are so poorly cataloged that a random inquiry is impossible. Furthermore, a classification scheme had to be devised to allow for an evaluation of each of the cases represented in cartas ejecutorias. These cases were then classified according to content and the principal legal issue they entailed, but even this double attempt at classification has its drawbacks. Like other such schemes, it suffers from the distortions that inevitably arise when complex issues or topics are forced into a narrowly defined niche. To overcome this problem, lawsuits that were an obvious combination of two or more major legal issues have been labeled as "mixed"; otherwise, each lawsuit was classified according to what appeared, upon a close reading of the case, to be the most salient features of the dispute. Subjective judgments of this sort are likely to lead to controversy; consequently, the material presented in Table 5 should not be interpreted as an exact replica of the kinds of disputes the chancillería had to decide.

* Includes dispute over jurisdictions, court-ordered seizures (remates), failure to execute court orders, and the like.
+ Includes censos.
@ Includes disputes over title and ownership, damage to property, personal goods.
& Includes disputes over municipal boundaries, common lands, violations of local ordinances, royal privledges and laws, abuse  of public office.
$ Includes disputes over dowries, guardianships, tutorships.
# Includes all disputes over wills and testaments, mayorazgos, property of persons who dies intestate.
** This category involves cases of contested nobility heard initially in the chancillería's sala de hidalguía.
% Includes cases that fall into two or more of the above categories.

This table suggests that the description of the chancillería's business provided by the advocates of Seville in 1586 was essentially correct. They maintained that their own court specialized in "contrataciones" [109] (business contracts) because its jurisdiction was limited primany to Seville, a city they described as a "merchants' plaza and of very great commerce." In contrast, they suggested that the chancillería, owing to its "very large district," adjudicated a much wider variety of disputes. ⁽⁷⁴⁾

It is true that the chancillería's lawsuits originated in a variety of courts spread over the northern half of the kingdom, although in early years of the sixteenth century up to one-third of these cases originated in the chancillería itself (Table 6). These were mostly casos de corte or lawsuits arising in Valladolid or its neighboring villages, in which the chancillería had the right to serve as a court of first instance. Beginning in 1580, however, the percentage of these cases began to drop, possibly because of increased competition for casos de corte from the Royal Council of Castile . The establishment of the royal court in Madrid in 1561 must have also influenced this decline since officials in the king's household and government were now apt to have their cases decided by the council rather than in the chancillería, which was over two hundred kilometers and a week's journey away.

* Includes municipal, royal, and seigneurial judges.
# Includes casos de corte, criminal cases originally tried by the alcaldes de crimen, and hidalguía cases on appeal from the sala de hidalguía.
% Includes royal jueces de comisión, judges appointed by the Santa Hermandad, the Mesta, and so forth.

Meanwhile, a growing share of the chancillería's cases (38 percent in 1580) came from the courts of the royal corregidores, an increase that attests to the growing importance of these magistrates in Castile's legal life. Unfortunately, the judicial records of these officials have disappeared, but many of the residencia reports in which the record of every corregidor was assessed have survived. ⁽⁷⁵⁾ The quality and effectiveness of these inquiries varied, but if used carefully, they provide some indication of how well these officials performed the various tasks to which they were assigned. In 1558, for example, fifty-two residencias were ordered, and of these only five corregidores received negative reports, the worst among them being Lic. Núñez de Chaves, corregidor of Madrigal, who was suspended from occupying royal offices for a period of three years and also exiled from the royal court. ⁽⁷⁶⁾ Another corregidor with a tarnished record, especially in judicial affairs, was Dr. Juan de Guardiola, corregidor in Arevalo. In 1592, his [112] residencia read as follows: "He is very remiss in the administration of justice and the governance of the town; he has not presided in court nor dispatched any lawsuits for over ten months but has given everything over to his lieutenant, a native of Arevalo, who is the cause of many disturbances; as a result of Guardiola's negligence, many assaults, gambling, public sins, and vagabonds go unpunished." ⁽⁷⁷⁾ But Guardiola, a son of a royal councillor who probably had little to fear from his residencia, was clearly an exception. ⁽⁷⁸⁾ Most of the king's other corregidores appear in the residencias as conscientious, hard-working officials who were particularly aggressive in extending the king's prerogative at the expense of municipal and seigneurial courts. Their diligence in this respect accounts for complaints in 1598 from the [113] admiral and constable of Castile, the count of Benavente, the marquis of Astorga, and other grandees about the "injuries" (agravios) caused by corregidores who interfered with the jurisdiction of seigneurial magistrates. ⁽⁷⁹⁾ By extending their jurisdiction, corregidores had the opportunity to earn additional income -- they were notoriously underpaid -- but, more important, by actively supporting the royal prerogative, they also improved their chances of being rewarded by the monarch with a permanent judgeship on one of the audiencias. ⁽⁸⁰⁾ Ambition, therefore, may have led the corregidores to provide more [114] egalitarian justice than that offered by local justices, thereby providing an additional incentive for Castilians in the sixteenth century to resolve their disputes in a royal court.

The rest of the chancillería's business (32 percent in 1580) comprised cases on appeal from the courts of local alcaldes, most of whom, particularly in the north of the kingdom, were seigneurial appointees. Once again, however, little is known about these village tribunals, and there are few residencia records to fill in the gaps. ⁽⁸¹⁾ Jerónimo Castillo de Bobadilla, a prominent jurist and royal judge, claimed that most señores appointed the "cheapest" men as seigneurial magistrates, most of whom were young, inexperienced, and unqualified for the administration of justice. ⁽⁸²⁾ On the other hand, some of the kingdom's principal noble houses, including those of the constables of Castile, the dukes of Béjar, Infantado, and Medinaceli, went to considerable lengths to appoint judges who were skilled letrados trained in the law. In 1525, for example, the duke of Béjar hired Lic. Gregorio López, who later became a royal magistrate and famous for his gloss of the Siete Partidas. ⁽⁸³⁾ Juan Fernández de Velasco, constable of Castile, specifically instructed his son, the count of Monterrey, that he should appoint only letrados as judges "because experience had taught me that they are much better for the administration of justice." ⁽⁸⁴⁾ The recurrence of appeals from seigneurial to royal justice suggests, however, that señores in the sixteenth century were unable to rule their estates as they deemed fit. As in the case of the admiral of Castile, who was repeatedly taken to court by his vassals, seigneurial [115] pretensions were blunted by peasants who looked to royal justice for aid and support.

The diversity of courts from which the chancillería drew its cases also helps to explain why the docket of this tribunal, in comparison with those of the fiel and the audiencia of Seville, was so comprehensive. Contrataciones involving commercial agreements, censos, debt collection, mortgages, insurance, rentals, and the like accounted for only one-fifth of the cartas ejecutorias issued by the chancillería in 1580 (for this and other years, see Table 5). Disputes over wills and testamentary provisions, a category that includes lawsuits over mayorazgos and other inheritances, was second, with nearly 14 percent of the total; and this category was followed, in order, by procedural disputes, lawsuits over property rights, and matters of public law, a catchall for disputes over municipal boundaries, jurisdictions, and the conduct of public officials. Other issues and "mixed" disputes, most of which involved commercial and inheritance disputes, account for the remainder.

Differences between the content of the cases dispatched by the chancillería and the court of the fiel are immediately apparent. In the latter, and presumably in the audiencia of Seville as well, most cases involved contrataciones, but in the chancillería the proportion of such cases, though important, competed with a wide range of other issues and disputes . The high cost, the difficulty, and the time required to take a case to the chancillería probably explain this difference; most merchants wanted to settle their disputes quickly and get back to work. Nevertheless, the chancillería played an active role in the kingdom's commercial affairs and frequently decided cases of relatively minor importance that might have been dispatched more expeditiously elsewhere. One such lawsuit involved Martín de Baena, a merchant from Burgos, who filed suit in the chancillería against Antonio de Guadalajara to collect 11,310 mrs. owed from the sale of certain cloths. ⁽⁸⁵⁾ Another was a dispute between two cloth dyers from Dueñas over the verification of certain accounts. They had drawn up a compromise agreement before three local judges, but continuing differences between them eventually drove Pedro Rostro to file suit in the chancillería.⁽⁸⁶⁾

[116] More important were cases involving the Mesta, the sheepowners' guild. By law, the chancillería was to decide at least two cases involving the Mesta each month. Normally, these cases involved the use of pasture land claimed by the Mesta and had come to the chancillería on appeal from one of the Mesta's own courts. ⁽⁸⁷⁾ The regular involvement of the chancillería in this and other matters pertaining to the raising of sheep and the sale of wool meant that its judges were instrumental not only to the development of Castilian pastoralism -- the most important sector of the kingdom's rural economy -- but also to the export of Castilian wool to England, Flanders, and other parts of Europe. ⁽⁸⁸⁾

Other commercial cases before the chancillería touched upon fishing and whaling in the Bay of Biscay, ⁽⁸⁹⁾ iron manufacturing in Asturias and Vizcaya, ⁽⁹⁰⁾ Segovia's woolen textile industry, ⁽⁹¹⁾ financial disputes involving the transfer of money and credit, ⁽⁹²⁾ and a variety of commercial [117] transactions that began in the trade fairs of Medina del Campo, Medina de Rioseco, Feria, Tendilla, and Villalón. ⁽⁹³⁾ Simon Ruíz, one of Medina del Campo's most famous merchants, kept in constant touch with his agents at the chancillería. ⁽⁹⁴⁾ Other merchants from Bilbao, Burgos, Medina del Campo, and Segovia did the same.

The most famous of the commercial disputes that came to the chancillería in the sixteenth century involved a series of lawsuits that began after the fall of the town of Middelburg in 1572 to William of Orange and the Dutch Revolt. An important wool shipment valued at more than 130,000 ducats (ca. 50 million mrs.) was lost, and the wool shippers demanded compensation for their losses from their insurance agents. The prior of the consulado of Burgos ruled that the insurers were responsible, but the latter appealed this decision, alleging that they were responsible only for losses incurred at sea. But the law was on the side of the shippers. Normally, insurance contracts covered losses on both land and sea; consequently, the chancillería, ignoring the insurers' claim of extenuating circumstances, in 1580 confirmed the initial decision of the consulado, but to force the insurers to pay this enormous indemnity, one of its magistrates, Lic. Gil Cobos Bermúdez, had to go to Burgos to act as a special judge (juez de comisión). ⁽⁹⁵⁾

[118] A case of this magnitude and one engendered under such extraordinary circumstances was certain to attract considerable attention. Most commercial disputes were far less complicated and involved relatively simple matters of credit, debt, breach of contract, and the like. Contrataciones in this respect were the traffic violations of their day: important in terms of sheer frequency and therefore significant because they occupied much of the magistracy's time. For the judges, however, most of these disputes posed relatively few problems of legal interpretation . The chancillería consequently dispatched them routinely, generally within two or three years.

Much more troublesome and frequently more time-consuming were cases involving areas of law less developed than the law of contracts. The latter, which was derived from Roman law, was extremely precise. ⁽⁹⁶⁾ Castile's inheritance laws, in comparison, were ambiguous and often confusing, especially in cases that involved conflicts between local customs and royal law. ⁽⁹⁷⁾ Even harder to sort out were the complex inheritance suits in which various members of a single family were at each other's throats, each claiming his rights to a certain portion or share of the family patrimony. ⁽⁹⁸⁾ Many of these cases lasted a decade, sometimes more, mainly because they involved subsidiary suits over the value of the property in question, debts owed to the estate, the legality of certain testamentary provisions, the rights to the property of persons who died intestate, and the like. At the chancillería, such cases accounted only for 10 to 15 percent of the lawsuits represented in the cartas ejecutorias, but on the average they required at least twice as much time as straightforward commercial disputes. In 1560, for example, the oldest purely commercial suit pending in this tribunal was one involving a bankruptcy. This lawsuit had begun in 1547; otherwise, there were only two cases involving [119] debts that had begun before 1552. ⁽⁹⁹⁾ In contrast, there were a dozen or so inheritance cases that had begun before 1550, and one, contested by two brothers-in-law, that dated from 1540. ⁽¹⁰⁰⁾

Equally problematical were cases involving public law, especially those touching upon jurisdictional disputes, seigneurial prerogatives, and the rights and duties attached to certain public offices. A boundary dispute between the town of Castrojeriz and village of Cordilen over the rights to certain terminos (outlying districts) began in the chancillería in 1488, but did not receive a preliminary decision until 1531, a final one until 1560. ⁽¹⁰¹⁾ Almost as long was a similar dispute between the towns Santofina and Villafrechós. The case had begun in 1517, but did not receive a final sentencia until 1580, sixty-three years later.⁽¹⁰²⁾ By way of comparison, the great insurance case occasioned by the destruction of the wool stocks in Middelburg lasted only six years.

Even more difficult to resolve than lawsuits that involved hazy areas of Castilian law were those with possible political repercussions for the monarchy. Potentially, each of the "great lawsuits over estates, vassals, taxes, and town councils" could involve the chancillería in a major political imbroglio. ⁽¹⁰³⁾ One such case, which we have already encountered on several occasions, was that between the counts of Belalcázar and the city of Toledo. Beginning in 1462, the chancillería was asked to decide whether the county of Belalcázar legitimately belonged to the Zúñiga family, who claimed it by virtue of a royal gift, or  Toledo, whose title was based upon an earlier sale and who claimed that the merced (act of royal grace) in question was a fake. Overshadowing the legal issues in this lawsuit, however, were its political overtones. A decision for Toledo might endanger the monarchy's relationship with the Zúñiga and their powerful aristocratic allies, threatening, perhaps, the peace Ferdinand and Isabella had only recently imposed upon the kingdom. On the other hand, a decision [120] for the Zúñiga might loosen the monarchy's ties with the ancient Imperial City and perhaps even lead to opposition in the Castilian Cortes upon which the monarchy depended heavily for cash . Either way, the crown's vital interests might be jeopardized, and when faced with so delicate a situation, the Catholic monarchs preferred to suspend the proceedings rather than risk a potentially dangerous confrontation with either of the principal parties involved. ⁽¹⁰⁴⁾

Lawsuits involving major mayorazgos often had similar implications for the crown. One such case was that brought to the chancillería in 1572 by Iñigo de Mendoza, duke of Infantado, against the court favorite, the princess of Eboli, and her son, the duke of Pastrana. ⁽¹⁰⁵⁾ At stake was the title to the principate of Melita (in Sicily), and Philip II, having been warned by advisers "of the great importance of the case," departed from his usual practice of refusing to tamper with the ordinary procedures of his courts to allow this lawsuit to be heard before a special panel of twelve magistrates. ⁽¹⁰⁶⁾ Other cases involving one or more of the kingdom's principal houses were also accorded special treatment, and this alone is a good indication of the importance of these "pleitos graves y de tenuta" which the chancillería was asked to resolve. ⁽¹⁰⁷⁾ There is no record that lawsuits involving purely commercial matters were ever accorded such preferential treatment by the king.

One other area of special responsibility for the chancillería and with important social and political implications were the pleitos de hidalguía. These cases began in the chancillería's sala de hidalguía, where a panel of four magistrates known as alcaldes de hijosdalgos heard cases filed by hidalgos whose claim to nobility was in doubt. Ordinarily, such cases began after a municipality included on its tax rolls a resident claiming to be a noble and therefore exempt from ordinary taxation. One of the principal reasons for these suits was the [121] continuing geographical mobility of Castilians in the sixteenth century, especially that which led residents of the densely populated northern reaches of the kingdom to migrate to regions further south. Seeking immunity from taxation, many of these newcomers claimed nobility only to meet with the opposition of towns and villages interested in increasing the size of the local tax roll. To prove their claims to nobility, these "hidalgos" were obliged to take their case to the chancillería, where they had either to present a royal patent of nobility or produce witnesses willing to swear that they were indeed noble by blood ("hidalgos de linaje"). ⁽¹⁰⁸⁾

As one might expect, considerable corruption was involved in these pleitos de hidalguía. Many litigants forged royal patents, the authenticity of which the officials of the chancillería had to determine. More frequently, would-be nobles produced friends and relatives to testify on their behalf, and others were willing to pay local vecinos who would testify to their nobility. There is also some evidence to suggest that many of the witnesses who participated in these cases were paid professionals, hangers-on who were ready, as long as the price was right, to certify claims to a person's ancient nobility. With reference to one case, for example, Francisco de Castillo noted in 1592 that "all of the witnesses who took part are accustomed to give testimony in hidalguía cases for money and to state that they do not know anything . . . ; most are drunks and poor beggars." ⁽¹⁰⁹⁾

The use of false witnesses was, of course, not limited solely to lawsuits over nobility, but the crown was especially concerned with corruption in these cases because, as one official put it, "in this manner the kingdom gets many hidalgos who are not really noble." ⁽¹¹⁰⁾ Not only did this reduce the amount of money the crown could collect in direct taxes, but also shifted the burden of this taxation upon those least able to pay -- the pecheros (taxpayers). Consequently, royal visitations to the chancillería made it a point to prevent the use of "false [122] witness" in the sala de hidalguía, and the king's own attorney, the royal fiscal, was required to intervene as a litigant in each of these lawsuits to protect the crown's interests. Only rarely did the fiscal participate in either commercial or inheritance cases, and this fact also suggests that the pleitos de hidalguía were far more important than their numerical representation among the cartas ejecutorias might suggest.

The principal difference, then, between the cases concluded at the fiel's court and those represented in the cartas ejecutorias was the potential importance of some of the latter to the monarchy. Most of the lawsuits concluded at the lower court were merely routine; their potential economic, social, legal, and political repercussions were few. In comparison, the chancillería as an appellate jurisdiction was accustomed to hear pleitos graves y de tenuta, and, as the only court in which casos de corte and pleitos de hidalguía could be legitimately heard, it had to contend with lawsuits and litigants the crown could not afford to ignore. Indeed, the importance of these cases to the monarchy does much to explain why the chancillería was subject to close royal supervision, whereas municipal and seigneurial courts were, for the most part, left to police themselves. Local justice in this respect remained just that, and, as we shall see in chapter 6, the continuing vitality of some of these jurisdictions helped in the seventeenth century to strengthen local opposition to royal absolutism.

Ideally, the comparison of lawsuits and litigants in Castile's courts should be carried to the third and highest level of the royal judiciary: the Royal Council of Castile. This was a litigant's last resort; its decisions were final, although a disgruntled litigant could always ask the monarch himself to intervene. In the strictest sense, however, such a request was not a judicial appeal but a petition for a merced. ⁽¹¹¹⁾

[123] Originally part of the king's household, the Royal Council in the early Middle Ages was composed of members of the royal family and other nobles whose job was to advise the king on important matters of state. By the fourteenth century, the council had acquired some judicial responsibilities, and this fact was recognized officially by John I (1379-90), who was the first to appoint letrados as councillors. During the following century, letrado influence upon the council steadily increased, but it was left to Ferdinand and Isabella, beginning in 1480, to make it a letrado preserve. Although members of the nobility continued to receive the title of royal councillor and were allowed to participate in its discussions, the Catholic monarchs denied them the right to vote, especially in matters that touched upon law. In the turbulent years following Isabella's death in 1504, some nobles appeared once again as full-fledged councillors, but Charles V, goaded first by the Cortes and then by Comunero revolt of 1520-21, removed them once again. Henceforward, the Habsburgs were served exclusively by councillors trained in the law. ⁽¹¹²⁾

The growing influence of letrados in the Royal Council in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries corresponds neatly with the increasing importance of law to the monarchy. The House of Trastamara, which had come to power in 1369 by means of the murder of Peter I, attempted to achieve legitimacy by emphasizing the role of the king as lawgiver, lawmaker, and the fountain of justice. ⁽¹¹³⁾ They also relied heavily upon legal rather than military institutions as a way of governing Castile. Gradually, therefore, the Royal Council, as the nucleus of monarchical government, took on more and more of a judicial cast. Unfortunately, this council has not yet been studied as a judicial forum, but according to its governing ordinances its official judicial responsibilities were defined as follows:

to see and to decide lawsuits appealed (in the second instance) from the chancillerías, those involving edicts of the Cortes as [124] well as representatives seated in the Cortes, and those appealed from the special chambers of the council itself; all cases and lawsuits over such real property matters as mayorazgos, estates, and seigneurial holdings . . .; those involving the Council of the Mesta, its pastures and meadows; it also reviews visitations to tribunals and universities; residencias of corregidores and other royal judges; and the accounts of the sequestered revenues of cities, towns, estates, and mayorazgos under litigation. ⁽¹¹⁴⁾

determine with great diligence the residencias and visitations to the royal audiencias, corregimientos, and other offices of justice . . . since this is the proper sphere of the council along with the governance of the kingdom itself; it should not spend its time over ordinary lawsuits because Your Majesty has his audiencias in which lawsuits are decided according to law and reason; bringing these cases to the council results only in delays, expenses, and other problems. Furthermore, since the councillors occupy themselves in business that is not really theirs and waste time on it, they cannot undertake the governance of the kingdom. ⁽¹¹⁵⁾

Did the council obey? The answer is unclear because only a few of its cases dating from this epoch have been preserved, and the registers listing the lawsuits that came before it apparently have been lost. ⁽¹¹⁹⁾ But even in the absence of documentary evidence, it seems likely that the council's judicial responsibilities were increasing along with those of the king's other courts.⁽¹²⁰⁾ On the other hand, it would be wrong to think that the council wasted its time on trivial and inconsequential disputes . During the seventeenth century, the cases dispatched by the council's sala de mil y quinientos mostly involved important mayorazgos, towns competing for the control of valuable public lands, officials contesting the prerogatives of their offices, and a variety of jurisdictional disputes. ⁽¹²¹⁾ In the sala de justicia suits over debt collection, commercial agreements, and other kinds of [126] contrataciones were limited except in the sala de provincia, which acted as a court of review for cases beginning in Madrid and its outlying villages. In the sixteenth century, the distribution of cases was probably much the same, suggesting in turn that the litigants who appealed to the council were ordinarily important noblemen, government officials, town councils, and other corporate entities. Artisans, peasants, merchants, and other ordinary litigants terminated their cases in lesser courts. The council’s clientele, therefore, was probably even more privileged than that of the chancillería, and its docket, though undoubtedly smaller than that of the chancillería, probably centered upon cases of major legal and political 1importance. In the end, it was left to the council to decide who was to inherit Castile’s great landed estates, to fix boundaries and jurisdictions, and to determine the limits of Castile’s seigneurial regime. A report on the government of Philip II, written in 1577, put it more succinctly: “This council deals with and provides for the good governance of all Spain [sic] and decides the lawsuits of noblemen over their estates and undoes the errors committed by the other tribunals.”

Although the history of litigation in Europe is known only in its barest outline, it seems likely that the litigious spirit of Western society first came into its own in the republics and city states of northen Italy in the course of the later Middle Ages. The spread of Roman law and the rise of a complex market economy gradually fostered litigation and, with it, the rise of a large and sophisticated legal class. By the late fifteenth century, evidence of these developments was also apparent in Castile, and by the mid-sixteenth century the “cloth of legal judgment,” as one scribe depicted litigation, was woven into the fabric of daily life. It was what one might call a truly popular phenomenon, embracing participants from all walks of life: peasants, artisans, merchants, officials, and important churchmen, nobles, even the king himself. So pervasive was litigation that no institution in this society could remain aloof; lawyers had to be hired, agreements and testaments carefully drafted and prepared, and archives reorganized to store documents that might one day have to be presented in court. It is no accident that Castile’s archives are especially rich in documentation [127] from the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries whereas that of the immediately preceding epoch is sparse and incomplete. Litigation was the catalyst; record keeping, formerly haphazard business, was now essential because justice could be obtained only upon the basis of written documents and proofs. It is precisely the prevalence of this kind of justice that gives Miguel de Cervantes’s greatest novel, Don Quixote, such an ironic twist. By the time Cervantes wrote about a pathetic knight setting out to preserve justice by means of chivalric valor and courageous derring-do, most of his readers would have equated justice with the world of lawyers, judges, and other “men of law.” In this legalistic world, the figure of Don Quixote was not so much a joke as an anachronism. He represented a mythical age in which justicia was possible without the help of lawyers and a bevy of legal briefs, but there was no room for an aging knight errant in the labyrinth of Castile’s courts.

1. A few such papers survive in the Archivo de Duque de Alburquerque: Estado de Cuellar. They date from the 1540s.

2. The criminal records proceeding from this court have been examined in Michael R. Weisser, "Crime and Subsistence: The Peasants of the Tierra of Toledo, 1550-1700" (Ph.D. dissertation, Northwestern University, 1972).

3. Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Phillip II (New York, 1972), 1:34.

4.See Michael R. Weisser, The Peasants of the Montes (Chicago, 1976). On this region in general, see Noël Salomon, La campagne de Nouvelle Castille à la fin du XVIe siècle d'après les relaciones topográficas (Paris, 1964).

5.Weisser, Peasants, p. 24.

6.For more on judicial administration in this city, see Felix Benitez de Lugo y Guillen, "Los alarifes en las ordenanzas. Para el buen regímen y gobierno de la muy noble, muy leal e imperial ciudad de Toledo (1590)," in Anales Toledanos 1 (1969):154.

7.Pedro de Alcocer, Historia o descripción de la imperial ciudad de Toledo (Toledo, 1554), fol. cxviii.

8.As of 1978, the following villages had been cataloged: Ventas con Peña Aguilera, Navahermosa, Yebenes, Los Navalucillos, Molinillo, Marjaliza, and Arroba. See AMT: Pleitos.

9.Peasants in eighteenth-century France also used courts "as a kind of last resort, a terminal stage in long-standing private feuds." See T. J. A. Le Goff and D. M. G. Sutherland, "The Revolution in Eighteenth-Century Brittany," Past and Present 62 (Feb.1974):103.

10.AMT: Pleitos, Ventas (1580); ibid.(1584).

11. Ibid., Yebenes (1567).

12. AMT: Pleitos, Navahermosa (1577).

13.AMT: Pleitos, Ventas (1577).

14.For a definition of casos de corte, see below, at note 69.

15. AMT: Pleitos, Yebenes (1558).

16.For the treatment of women in the Montes, see Weisser, Peasants, pp. 79-80.

17.AMT: Pleitos, Ventas (1583).

18.Ibid., Navahermosa (1593).

19.Ibid., Ventas (1584). He was asking the fiel for a remate against Miguel Diaz Calderon, who was claimed to owe him 26,000 mrs.

20.Ibid., Ventas (16o4). His case was against Francisco García, a trader from Toledo, and involved the sale of a donkey worth a little over 5,000 mrs.

21.Ibid., Navahermosa (1572). The stonecutter was Juan de Acurzo, and his case was against the heirs of Juan Alonso, mayordomo of the local parish church, for 70,000 mrs.

22. Ibid., Ventas (1587). This suit involved a remate of his property.

23.Marc Galanter, "Why the Haves Come Out Ahead: Speculations on the Limits of Legal Change," Law and Society Review 9(1974):95-160.

24.AMT: Pleitos, Ventas (1575).

25.For more on these litigants and their cases, see AMT: Pleitos, Ventas (1570-88) and Navahermosa (1577, 1585).

26.AMT Pleitos, Ventas (1571).

27.Court costs in Francisco de Urbina v. Diego Cabello, for example, amounted to 798 mrs., a sum that included 272 mrs. for the asesor, 204 for the scribe, and 102 for the attorney (ibid. [1613]).

28.Ibid., Yebenes (1549).

29.For some examples, see Weisser, "Crime and Subsistence," pp 124-25.

30.Pleitos, Yebenes (1533).

31.The archives of the chancillería of Granada are extant, but their internal order has been so disrupted that a chronological sampling of cases is practically impossible. See Appendix.

32.Cases in this collection are cataloged according to the stage in the proceeding they eventually reached. Thus lawsuits abandoned before a decision was reached are labeled either pleitos depositados or pleitos olvidados (deposited or forgotten lawsuits), whereas those that received a sentencia or judgment are classified as pleitos fenecidos (completed lawsuits). In each category, the original inventories kept by the chancillena's scribes are available, but the lawsuits listed in these registers are not dated or arranged in precise chronological order.

33.The case history provided by the carta ejecutoria is only an approximation of the original lawsuit. Frequently, intermediary procedural steps are omitted and subsidiary cases to which the lawsuit may have given rise are not mentioned. Otherwise, there is little reason to believe that carta ejecutoria distorts or falsely represents the character and content of the original case.

34.BNP: 261, fol. 7.

35.The early history of this tribunal is examined in Miguel Angel Pérez de la Canal, "La justicia de la corte en Castilla durante los siglos XIII al XV," Historia instituciones documentos 2 (Seville, 1975):420-30. See also Marcelino Asenjo Espinosa, Funciónamiento y organización de la real chancillería de Valladolid (Madrid, 1961), and Francisco Mendizábal, "Investigaciones acerca del orígen, historia, y organización de la real chancillería de Valladolid. Su jurisdicción y competencia," Revista de archivos, museos, y bibliotecas 31 (1914):61-72, 243-64, 437-52; 32 (1914):95-112, 445-67. See also Juan Sempere y Guarinos, Historia del derecho español (Lima, 1847), pp. 415-16, and Luís G. de Valdeavellano, Curso de historia de las instituciones españolas. De los origenes al final de la edad media (Madrid, 1970).

36.For a history of this court between 1601 and 1606, see chapter 6.

37.CLC, 3:11.

38. See Tomás de Santander, Recopilación de las ordenanzas de la real audiencia y chancillena . . . de Valladolid (Valladolid, 1765). See also Pérez de la Canal, pp. 443-81.

39. CLC, vol. 3: Cortes de 1425, pet. 1, p. 82; de 1432, pet. 1, p. 117; de 1438, pet. 1, p.312; de 1440, pet. 7, p.383.

40. Such appeals, however, were limited to cases worth 50,000 mrs. or more. Charles V raised the figure to 80,000 mrs. to relieve the chancellería's judicial burden.

41. See Ordenanzas de la real audiencia y chancillería de Granada (Granada, 1601).

42. In practice the jurisdiction of the chancillería of Valladolid crosses the Tagus because a number of villages attached to the city of Toledo won the right to appeal their cases to Valladolid despite the fact that they were located on the river's south bank.

43. For more on the tribunal in the Canaries, see Leopoldo de la Rosa Olivera, "La real audiencia de Canarias: Notas para su historia," Anuario de estudios alánticos 3 (1957): 91-161. For Charles's refusals to establish a new audencia in Toledo, see CLC, vol. 5: Cortes de 1544, pet. 7, p. 307; de 1548, pet. 79, p. 402; de 1551, pet. 4, p. 499. Phillip II rejected similar requests.

44.The history of this tribunal is outlined in Nicolás Tenorio, Noticia histórica de la real audiencia de Sevilla (Seville, 1924).

45.AGS: CC, leg. 2763, Visita to the audiencia of Seville, letter dated Seville, 14 Dec.1586, and signed by seven advocates.

46.This estimate is based on a sample of 345 ejecutorias, or 25 percent of the total number of ejecutorias issued that year. The sample was selected randomly and includes every fourth ejecutoria issued by the chancillería in 1580. See ARCV: RE, cajas 1405-32.

47. Ibid., caja 1408, Mar. 1580.

48. See above, chapter 2, n. 71.

49. In the opinion of the Castilian Cortes, these "pleitos de menor cuantía" were a nuisance and a primary cause of the long delays in the administration of justice at the chancillería. See CLC, vol. 4: Cortes de 1534, pet. 128, p. 623; vol. 5: Cortes de 1538, pet. 13, p. 112; de 1542, pet. 37, p. 239; de 1548, pet. 210, p. 469; de 1555, pet. 5, p. 631.

50. BNP: 261, fol. 7v. The "visitor" thought that this new sala de menor cuantía could be staffed by the chancillería's alcaldes de hidalguía, who, in his opinion, "are idle most of the time since they have nothing to do more than one day a week."

51. AGS: CC, leg. 2763, "Summaria relacion de los abusos que ay en los governadores, corregidores, y sus oficiales y otros ministros de justica."

52. AMT:CV, año 1596.

53. Members of the titled nobility enjoyed a special reputation in this regard. The visitor to the chancillería of Granada in 1570, for example, singled out the marquis of Tarifa as a "fierce negotiator." See AGS: CC, leg. 2733, fol. 1118. Other noblemen known to have attempted to buy justice in royal tribunals included the duke of Arcos, the marquis of Monterrey, the marquis of Mondéjar, and the count of Puñonrostro. The attempt of the latter to bribe one of the judges presiding in his lawsuit with Lorenzo de Castilla backfired. Castilla won the case and then, in apparent reference to Puñonrostro, said, "señores negotiate like fools." See ibid., leg. 2719, Visita to the chancillería of Valladolid (1589).

54.This rate of reversal is comparable to that of state supreme courts in the United States. See Robert A. Kagan, Bliss Cartwright, Lawrence M. Friedman, and Stanton Wheeler, "The Business of State Supreme Courts, 1870-1970," Stanford Law Review 30 (Nov. 1977):121-56.

55.AGS: CC, leg. 2713, "Memorial del Sr. Almirante de Castilla."

56.ARCV: RE, caja 537, Oct. 1540.

57.Ibid., caja 540, Dec. 1540.

58.AGS: CC, leg. 2715, Visita to the chancillería of Valladolid (1543).

59.Ibid.

60.See chapter 4.

61.See chapter 1 at note 37.

62. See Pérez de la Canal, p. 398.

63. ARCV: RE, caja 529, Feb. 1540. Juan de Uzelaya's (carpenter) v. Maria Ochoa (this case involved an inheritance left by Uzelaya's first wife) and Alonso de Castellanos (carter) v. Pedro González (this suit involved a certain guardsmanship). See also caja 531, Mar. 1540, for San Juan de Condazara (knifemaker) v Juan de Barraya, and caja 540, Dec. 1540, for Jerónimo de Avino (shoemaker) v. Juan López del Vanco.

64. Ibid., caja 532, April 1540, Leonardo de Castilnovo (shopkeeper) v. Alonso Jufre.

65. See ibid., caja 529, Feb. 1540, Antonio de Guadalupe v. Juam de la Torre and Matin de Baena (merchants); caja 530, Mar. 1540, Francisco de Bibar (merchant) v. Nicolás de Victoria; caja 535, April 1540, Diego López de Pérez (merchant) v. Francisco López (merchant); caja 537,Oct. 1540, Pedro González de Artaliche and San Juan de Herquingo (merchants) v. Pablo de Cartagena; caja 539, Nov. 1540, Juan Sánchez (merchant v. Diego Calderon.

66.Ibid., caja 532, April, Hernando Enríquez, admiral of Castile v. Isabel Velázquez; caja 535, Aug., Francisco de Zúñiga, duke of Béjar, and Teresa de Zúñiga, his wife, v. Hernando de Gibraleón (scribe); caja 535, Aug., Juan Arias de Avila, count of Puñonrostro and the concejo of the villa of Alconvendas v. concejo of the villa of Madrid and lugar of San Sebastián de los Reyes; caja 539, Nov., Pedro Vélez de Guzmán, count of Oñate v. Martin López de Hernuy and the concejo of Oñate; and caja 537, Oct., Beatriz Osorio de Castro, countess of Lemos v. Capitan Martín de Rueda.

67.Ibid., caja 532, May 1540, Diego Pizarro and doña Maria de Carvajal v. concejo of Plasencia.

68.See ibid., caja 1415, Sept. 1580, Antonio de Salas v. Pedro de Toro.

69.ARCV: Libros Civil, caja 32, case dated 31 Aug. 1560.

70.Cases in this partido amounted to as many as 2,500 a year by 1595. See above, chapter 1, note 12.

71. AGS: CC, leg. 2763, letter dated Seville, 14 Dec. 1586.

72. A list of these partidos is provided in chapter 1, note 10.

73.See ARCV: Libros Civiles. Similar registers exist for the chancilleria of Granada. See ARCG: libros 547-58.

74.AGS: CC, leg. 2763.

75.These reports are scattered among several archives; the largest collection can be found in the AGS: CR. Residencia reports for the seventeenth century are located in the AHN: Cons. See the Appendix.

76.BL: Add. 28, 352, fols. 181-83.

77.AGS: CR, leg. 329.

78. His father was Lic. Juan Cristóbal de Guardiola, royal councillor of Castile from 1580 until 1602.

79.AGS: CC, 2767, Capítulos de Almirante, Condestable.

80.Corregidores earned court fees equivalent to one-tenth of the money or property involved in each case. See Fernando Albi, El corregidor en el municipio español bajo la monarquía absoluta (Madrid, 1943), pp. 117-18. For more on the history of this important official, see Benjamín González Alonso, El corregídor castellano (1348--1808) (Madrid, 1970).

81.A few such reports are housed in the ADF. See leg. 37 for a residencia of Lic. Tobar, alcalde of Arnedo, in which this official was described as "negligent in matters of governance," and leg. 78, no. 16, in which the alcaldes of the town of Briviesca were said to "have forged alliances with some people in the town and failed to administer justice equally." Leg. 82, no. 1, notes that the alcalde of Briviesca in 1575 was accused of not holding court. Each of the towns in question belonged to the Condestable de Castilla.

82.Política para corregidores (Madrid, 1597), Libro II, título 21, cap. 15. Perhaps Bobadilla had heard of Alonso López de Mendoza, alcalde mayor of Villada, a village that belonged to the count of Alba de Liste, who was known to dispatch legal cases "without listening to them." See ARCV: RE, caja 538 (Sept. 1540), Alonso López de Mendoza v. Juan Duminyere.

83.Jose Martínez Cardos, Gregorio López, consejero de Indias, glosador del las partidas, 1496-1560 (Madrid, 1960), p. 60.

84.ADF: leg. 190, no. 11, "Instrucción del Condestable para el gobierno de sus estados," 18 Aug. 1592.

85.ARCV: RE, caja 529, Feb. 1540.

86.Ibid., caja 977, May 1560, Pedro Rostro v. Francisco Niño.

87.Most of the Mesta's cases involved disputes over the use of certain pastures, grazing lands, and rights of way. Contrary to accepted historical opinion, the crown's judges did not always rule in favor of privileged organization. In 1580, for example, the Mesta lost its case with the village of Población, which had appealed an earlier decision involving the use of certain pastures to the chancillería. See ARCV: RE, caja 1408. In three other cases, however, the Mesta obtained favorable hearings from this court. On the other hand, in 1600, my sample of carta ejecutorias shows that the Mesta lost at least three cases and won only four. Thus, the royal judges at the chancillería did not provide the Mesta unequivocal support.

88.Cases involving ships and shipping in the Bay of Biscay were not uncommon. See ARCV: RE, caja 979, July 1560, Ibáñez de Luza v. Porra de Arregoitia, a case involving ships bound for Flanders; caja 1407, Mar. 1580, Hernan Ruíz, mercader tratante, v. Hernando de Escona, and caja 1407, Jan. 1580, Hernan Ruíz v. Diego de Sesma, both of which involved trade with Flanders. Competition among port cities for a share of this valuable trade is reflected in a lawsuit between San Vicente de Barguera and Santill