In answer to a series of petitions such as this, the archbishop tardily gave orders for the payment to Domingo of a lump sum of fifteen thousand maravedis and a pension for the rest of his life of two silver reales of Castilian money, “to aid him to support himself.” This was in a.d. 1563. By 1565 death had ended the miseries of the master-craftsman, and again we find his widow and children knocking at the archbishop's door, pleading that “extreme is our necessity,” and declaring that Domingo had succumbed overburdened with debt, affirming on his deathbed that the cathedral owed him three thousand ducats, being half the value of a reja he had made.
In answer to this terrible appeal, the thrifty prelate ordered that since it was found to be true that Master Domingo had lost his maravedis in making the rejas of the choir, his widow and children should receive a daily pension of one real, and that a suit of clothes should be given to each of his sons and his two daughters.
[76] So rarely, that Salazar de Mendoza affirms in his book upon Castilian Dignities that this “high prenomen” (alto prenombre Don) might properly be used by none but kings, infantes, prelates, and the ricos-homes of the realm.
In a.d. 1626, Fernández de Navarrete complained of the tendency prevailing among the Spaniards generally to usurp the title Don. “Nowadays in Castile,” he wrote (Conservación de Monarquías, p. 71, etc.), “exists a horde of turbulent and idle fellows that so style themselves, since you will hardly find the son of a craftsman (oficial mecánico) that does not endeavour by this trick to filch the honour that is owed to true nobility alone; and so, impeded and weighed down by the false appearance of caballeros, they are unsuited to follow any occupation that is incompatible with the empty authority of a Don.”
Some of the reasons why these rogues or pseudonobles (as Fernández de Navarrete called them), attempted to pass for hidalgos or “sons of somebody,” are disclosed by Townsend, writing a century and a half later. “Numerous privileges and immunities enjoyed by the hidalgos or knights, sometimes called hijos dalgo, have contributed very much to confirm hereditary prejudices to the detriment of trade. Their depositions are taken in their own houses. They are seated in the courts of justice, and are placed near the judge. Till the year 1784, their persons, arms, and horses were free from arrest. They are not sent to the common jails, but are either confined in castles or in their own houses on their parole of honour. They are not hanged, but strangled, and this operation is called garrotar, from garrote, the little stick used by carriers to twist the cord and bind hard their loading. They cannot be examined on the rack. They are, moreover, exempted from the various taxes called fechos, pedidos, monedas, martiniegas, and contribuciones reales and civiles: that is, from subsidies, benevolence, and poll tax, or taille paid by the common people, at the rate of two per cent., in this province, but in others at the rate of four. They are free from personal service, except where the sovereign is, and even then they cannot be compelled to follow him. None but the royal family can be quartered on them. To conclude, the noble female conveys all these privileges to her husband and her children, just in the same manner as the eldest daughter of the titular nobility transmits the titles of her progenitors.
“The proportion of hidalgos in the kingdom of Granada is not considerable; for out of six hundred and fifty-two thousand nine hundred and ninety inhabitants, only one thousand nine hundred and seventy-nine are noble; whereas, in the province of León, upon little more than one-third that population, the knights are twenty-two thousand. In the province of Burgos, on four hundred and sixty thousand three hundred and ninety-five inhabitants, one hundred and thirty-four thousand and fifty-six are entitled to all the privileges of nobility; and in Asturias, of three hundred and forty-five thousand eight hundred and thirty-three, nearly one-third enjoy the same distinction.”—(Journey through Spain in the years 1786 and 1787: Vol. III., pp. 79, 80.)
[77] Licentiate Gaspar Gutierrez de los Ríos, Noticia general para la estimación de las Artes y la manera en que se conocen las liberales de las que son mecánicas y serviles. Madrid, 1600. I again have occasion to mention this curious work in my chapter on Spanish tapestries.
[78] It is stated in the Fuero of Nájera (a.d. 1076) that the price of the blood of a Moorish slave was twelve sueldos and a half, while the Fuero Viejo of Castile (Book II., Tit. III., Ley IV.) contains the significantly contemptuous phrase, “If a man demand of another a beast or a Moor” (si algún ome demanda á otro bestia ó moro). The Countess d'Aulnoy wrote in 1679;—“There are here (at Madrid) a large number of Turkish and Moorish slaves, who are bought and sold at heavy prices, some of them costing four hundred and five hundred escudos. Until some time ago the owners of these slaves possessed the right to kill them at their pleasure, as though they had been so many dogs; but since it was remarked that this usage tallied but poorly with the maxims of our Christian faith, so scandalous a license was prohibited. Nowadays the owner of a slave may often break his bones without incurring censure. Not many, however, resort to so extreme a chastisement.”
[79] To further show the extravagant way of thinking and behaving of the Spaniard of the seventeenth century, the same author sets aside the sneering objection justly made by foreign writers to the river Manzanares at Madrid—namely, that it has no water—by remarking with exquisite complacency, that here precisely lies the crowning merit and advantage of the Manzanares over rival streams; in that it amuses people without endangering their lives. In the reigns of Philip the Fourth and Charles the Second, a favourite promenade of the Madrid aristocracy was the waterless channel of this river, in which, according to this work, “coaches and carriages do duty for a gondola, and form a pleasant imitation of the boats and palaces of Venice.”
[80] The object avowedly pursued by Campomanes was not, however, the absolute suppression of the Spanish trade-guilds, but merely their reconstruction upon a sounder basis. He still believed that admission to a guild should be preceded by a formal period of apprenticeship, as well as that the title and the privileges of the master of a trade should be hereditary. An instance of the grossly fraudulent methods employed by the gremios in order to retain the privilege of manufacture in a certain family, is quoted by Larruga (Memorias, Vol. II., p. 201), who states that the silk-cord makers of Madrid conferred the title of master-craftsman on a babe only twenty-two months old.