The Limits of Royal Authority: Resistance and Obedience in Seventeenth-Century Castile

by Ruth MacKay

• ISBN13: 9780521643436
• ISBN10: 0521643430
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-05-13
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

In what is sometimes called the age of absolutism, Castilian nobles and commoners, tribunes and towns, were to a considerable degree able to resist and shape royal commands. Whereas there was little open conflict, there was sometimes a surprising degree of autonomy, rights and reciprocity on the part of the king's vassals. This is a study of one such form of resistance: the opposition to military levies. This opposition took place during a period of crisis, during the 1630s and 1640s, when the Crown's need to raise an army came into conflict with a notion of kingship that was far from absolute. From the king's advisory councils to parliament, from city councils and seigneurial estates, to the most humble villages, Castilians had recourse to a wide range of political and juridictional means with which to dispute the king's claims and avoid conscription.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	xi
Introduction	1	(20)
Recruitment and royal authority	21	(40)
Making soldiers of townsmen	61	(38)
War, lords, and vassals	99	(33)
Common claims	132	(41)
Conclusion	173	(5)
Glossary	178	(3)
Bibliography	181	(10)
Index	191