The Influence of Debt on the Relations between Crown and Aristocracy in Seventeenth-Century Castile

Abstract

T HE growth of aristocratic indebtedness in Western Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries has been singled out by historians as one of the most important symptoms of the progressive decline of the traditional feudal nobility. Pierre Goubert has recently emphasized the significance of the topic by observing that in seventeenth-century Beauvais no fact concerning the social order is more outstanding and more general than this indebtedness of the and the resulting passage of noble properties into the hands of bourgeois creditors.2 Similar conclusions have been reached from studies of the English nobility, but in this case the tendency to equate noble indebtedness with the decline of the nobility in general has been challenged. As some historians have shown, the existence of debts did not necessarily denote impoverishment and could even be indicative of financial strength.3 Indeed, the eighteenth-century peerage, while more indebted than its seventeenth-century counterpart, was also financially more secure.4 Although the importance of aristocratic indebtedness as a historical topic stems primarily from the interpretative mould into which it has been cast, the debate over the Elizabethan peerage illustrates how difficult it is to determine the exact relationship between high levels of debt and the supposed decadence of the nobility. It would appear that the outcome of indebtedness varied according to regional and chronological circumstances. Among the variables producing a multiplicity of different situations were the types of credit instruments available, the laws affecting interest rates and property ownership, the attitudes adopted by