The Limits of Royal Authority
Resistance and Obedience in Seventeenth-Century Castile
- ISBN: 9780521643436
- Editorial: Cambridge University Press
- Fecha de la edición: 1999
- Lugar de la edición: Cambridge. Reino Unido
- Encuadernación: Rústica
- Medidas: 24 cm
- Nº Pág.: 193
- Idiomas: Inglés
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.
