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

By Ruth MacKay

Book Overview

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.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0521033632
• ISBN13: 9780521033633
• Release Date: February 2007
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Length: 212 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.0" x 9.0"