Queen Isabella of Castile & the Cortes of Madrigal: 1476

Castile was the most populous Spanish realm when Isabella and Ferdinand came to power. After the War of Succession in 1476, they immediately held a great council, the Cortes of Madrigal, that very year in April. For decades Greater Spain and Castile in particular had suffered internal civil wars and constant waves of anarchy and corruption. With this new arrangement and those reorganizations that followed later, Isabella formed at first a solid grasp on the region that grew in time to a tight control over the breadth of Castilian lands. The formation of a workable system had to be established first and order needed to be restored. This took time, but within just a few years and, by a number of careful selections, a broad framework for order could flourish.

The cities and towns of Castile all had different histories. They all had their own memory of who had taken whom and whose allegiance was due, or not. The monarchy wanted greater royal supremacy and stronger, more effective control over Castile as a whole. 

"... the walled cities and towns which dotted the Castilian landscape had many of the characteristics of city states and enjoyed a high degree of independence of the Crown. Established one after another during the southward march of the Reconquista, they had been given their own fueros or charters of liberties by generous kings, and had been liberally endowed with vast areas of communal land, which extended their jurisdiction far into the surrounding countryside and served to meet the bulk of their expenses. Their charters gave them the right to form a general assembly or concejo, which was ordinarily composed of the heads of families (vecinos), and which chose each year the various municipal officials." [p. 93]

Judicial officials were called alcaldes, and below them were large numbers of regidores, local police officers. There were also escribano, who kept the municipal registers. These were the long-standing traditional arrangements baked in to the broader culture over centuries. But even these, and often too, in many places, these local officials werethen  replaced with the Santa Hermandad and corregidor by Isabella and Ferdinand. Established during the Cortes of Madrigal in 1476, these were the reestablishment of a particular order of men used for 'security'.

"The Hermandad combined in itself the functions of a police force and of a judicial tribunal. As a police force, its task was to suppress brigandage and to patrol the roads and countryside. Every town and village was expected to provide its quota of troops, at the rate of one horseman to every hundred householders."

...

"If the malefactor was caught by the Hermandad he was also likely to be tried by it, for the tribunals of the Hermandad enjoyed complete jurisdiction over certain carefully specified classes of crimes -- robbery, murder, and arson... together with rape, housebreaking and acts of rebellion ...". [p. 87]

These often inflicted terrible punishments to offenders. The desired effect achieved was an overall suppression of disruptive crime and disorder. There was widespread revolt at thier tactics, but they remained useful through the recapture of Granada in 1492 and weren't entirely disbanded until 1498.

There is the sure certainty of 20-20 hindsight here in the ripe summation that Elliott offers us in taking leave of one topic and turning to another. There was much violence and tumult to quell and other old institutions needed reworking, as well. No single way forward was assured success.

"The organization of the Hermandad was therefore essentially a temporary expedient devised to deal with an acute national emergency. The year... saw another move by the Crown to reassert its authority over the magnates...  the mastership of the powerful Order of Santiago." [p. 88]

The Orders were traditional medieval institutions. As groups of (at least nominally) ordained soldiers with their own traditions, offices, and hierarchies, they served both Church and Crown. In Castile, certain members of the prominent Orders - Elliott lists those of Santiago, Calatrava and Alcantara - held vast tracts of land and could count on thousands of vassals serving them. Similar in practice to so many princes in German lands and beyond, they fought with each other over principle and prestige, the confiscation of goods or revenue streams.  Some kind of control over the leaders, at least, of these 'states within states' by the Crown could certainly help unify central Spain.

When news arrived (also in 1476) that the Grand Master of the Order of Santiago had died, Isabella raced on horseback to Udes where the Council of the Order had gathered to choose a successor. Once there she insisted on a suspension of the hearing, and for her husband King Ferdinand to be named the new Grand Master. Later, Elliott tells us Ferdinand demurred, but the precedent was set. When in 1487 and 1494 the same office of the other Orders fell vacant, they sent representatives asking for royal permission.

In this same time, the Crown drew more and more of these gigantic revenue streams for their own use. Between the three Orders they controlled 183 different encomienda, or 'commanderies',  with combined annual rents of 145,000 ducats. In addition, with the numerous offices and officers (some 1500 and more) in these Orders, a rich store of potential dignitaries therein could be individually encouraged and, in time, selected from. This would go a long way toward ensuring regal control in all the districts. [p. 89]

Another form of controlling the many magnates came in the decisions ironed out during the 1480 Council of Toledo. As sovereign entities they also felt they needed a stronger hand in the operation of governmental activities. The Consejo Real, the old royal Council of Castile also needed refashioning, and for more than just money streams.

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J.H. Elliott: Imperial Spain 1469-1716 : Penguin, NY, 2002