abadengo: under ecclesiastical jurisdiction.

Actas: minutes of the Castilian Cortes.

alcaide: governor, warden.

alcalde: municipal official with certain administrative duties, but primarily functioning as a judge with civil and criminal jurisdiction.

almud: unit of area equal to half a fanega.

año y vez: biennial cropping.

aranzada: unit of area equal to 400 square estadales, or slightly over an acre.

arbitrista: reform writer of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

arroba: unit of measure equal to 3.32 gallons of oil, or 4.26 gallons of wine.

asiento: written contract with the crown.

Audiencia: see Chancillería, below.

averiguación: inquiry, or report, for official purposes.

baldío: common, or crown property.

barbecho: fallow.

caballería: unit of area, originally the amount of land the crown usually granted a caballero (knight), normally 60 fanegas in Castile.

caballero: knight, member of the lesser nobility.

cadauieras, or tierras cadañeras: common lands requiring annual cultivation for continued possession.

cahiz: dry measure equal to 12 fanegas.

cañada: especially designated trail for transhumant herds and flocks.

carga: unit of area equal to 4 fanegas; dry measure equal to 3 or 4 fanegas.

carta de población: charter for the founding of a municipality.

cédula: royal order, or decree.

celemín: unit of area the twelfth part of a fanega, and equal to 48 square estaclales; dry measure equal to one-twelfth of a fanega.

censo al quitar: redeemable mortgage.

censo enfitéutico: lease contract.

censo perpetuo: debt conversion, with a principal that could not be paid off.

Cháncilleria: Supreme Legal Tribunal. After 1505 there were two in Castile: one in Valladolid, and the other in Granada. Their jurisdictions were separated by the boundary line of the Tajo River.

comisión: commission, mandate, or charge.

complant: medieval contract conferring upon a peasant the ownership of half of a vineyard after he had planted and tended it for the proprietor for a certain number of years.

concejo: municipal council.

conversos: Jewish converts to Christianity, and their descendants.

corregidor: official of the crown placed at the head of a municipality, being president of the municipal council, and having extensive judicial, administrative, and financial powers.

Cortes: National Assembly of Castile, composed during the time of Philip II of delegates from eighteen major cities.

corijo: farmstead.

coto: enclosed plot.

dehesa: enclosed plot (at least in theory), usually destined for pasture.

deheses boyal: enclosed pasture reserved exclusively for draft animals, especially oxen.

derrota de mieses: custom of common stubble grazing.

ducado: unit of account, equal to 375 mrs.

ejido: multi-purpose common plot.

encomienda: grant of jurisdiction made by the crown to individuals and military orders, of lands conquered from the Moslems.

escribano: scrivener.

escudo: gold coin worth 350 mrs until 1566, and 400 mrs from then until the beginning of the seventeenth century.

estadal: unit of length equal to four varas (a vara varied in length, but was normally about 2.8 feet).

executoria: official dispatch; or sentence.

fanega: unit of dry measure equal to about an English bushel, or about a hundredweight of grain; unit of area originally equal to as much tilled ground as was necessary to sow a fanega of wheat, but usually standardized as 12 celemines or 576 square estadales, equal to about 1.59 acres.

fuero: law code; privilege or exemption granted to a certain province. hidalgo: member of the lesser nobility.

huerta: land for garden or orchard crops; or irrigated land regardless of the crop.

jornalero: day laborer.

juez: magistrate.

labrador: independent peasant farmer.

maravedí (mr): unit of account, of depreciating value, used for calculating prices in sixteenth-century Castile.

marjal: unit of area equal to 100 square estadales, or 0.47 tahullas.

mayorazgo: entailed estate, or trust, a device used by the nobility to pass their property intact to succeeding generations of heirs.

mayordomo: chief steward, or majordomo.

Mesta: stock owners' association, notorious for the privileges it had obtained for its migratory flocks and herds.

millones, or servicio de millones: tax for rebuilding the Armada after the debacle of 1588.

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monte: forest woodland.

Moriscos: Spaniards of Moorish ancestry.

Novísima recopilación: published Castilian law code.

obrada: as much ground as a pair of mules or oxen can plow in a day, usually standardized to an area of about 1.3 acres.

pago: well-defined, possibly even fenced, planting district.

peonada: unit of area equal to 0.65 fanegas.

pobre: poor.

pósito: public granary.

prado: meadow.

presura: squatter's right to use unoccupied land.

privilegio: royal grant, or privilege.

rastrojo: stubble remaining after grain harvest.

real: silver coin equal in value to 34 mrs.

realengo: under the direct authority of the crown.

regidor: municipal administrative official, or councilman.

Relaciones: answers to questionnaires sent by the royal government to all towns in Castile in the late 1570s.

repartimiento: apportionment of lands among settlers; or an assessment of taxes.

Repoblación: resettlement of Christian settlers on land conquered from the Moslems.

roza: fire clearing for slash-and-burn agriculture.

señorío: under seigneurial jurisdiction.

servicio: subsidy for the crown voted by the Cortes.

Siete partidas, or Código de las partidas: codification of law under the late thirteenth-century king Alfonso X.

solariego: village where the seigneur was also the landowner.

sorteo periódico: periodic allotment of common lands.

tahulla: unit of area equal to 1,600 square varas, or about 0.1 73 fanegas.

tasa: legal maximum price for grain.

término: territory under the jurisdiction of a municipality.

terrazgo: tribute of one-twelfth of the grain harvest paid by peasants to the seigneur, in recognition of his authority.

Tierra: territory of an intermunicipal union; also called a comunidad de villa [or ciudad] y Tierra, but usually referred to as a mancomunidad by modern historians.

tierras baldías: common lands, or crown lands.

tierras realengas: crown lands.

venta: sale, or bill of sale.

villa: municipality possessing juridical independence.

villazgo: attainment of villa status for a subject town or village.

yugada: as much ground as a yoke of oxen can plow in a day, the same as an obrada; in some places, the amount of land one could conveniently work with a yoke of oxen, usually standardized to 50 fanegas, or about 79.5 acres.

yunta: meaning yoke; as a standard of measurement, it was the same as a yugada.