{ "id": "administracion-y-arca-de-tres-llaves-de-la-averia", "type": "entity", "name": "A chest with three keys and a book inside it: the code puts every maravedí of the convoy levy behind three locks held by three different officers, counts it every Saturday, makes all three sign each entry and withdrawal, and will not let Cádiz collect it or judge it without Seville — libro VIIII título VIIII, leyes xxiiij to xxviiij", "summary": "Six laws of the Recopilación de Leyes de Indias settle who administered the avería, the levy that paid for the convoys of the Indies trade, and where its money was kept. They give a vacant administratorship back to the guild that lost it, bar the royal judge-official of Cádiz from its suits and from its collection without Seville's approval, and lock the whole fund in a chest of three keys with a book inside, a Saturday reckoning and three signatures on every movement.", "locale": "en", "tags": [ "colonial-institutions", "colonial-law", "law-of-the-indies", "legislation", "legal-history", "recopilacion", "casa-de-contratacion", "public-finance", "taxation", "fiscal-history", "accountability", "record-keeping", "jurisdiction", "trade", "carrera-de-indias", "seville", "spanish-empire", "americas", "institutions", "seventeenth-century" ], "relations": [ { "rel": "related", "target": "recopilacion-de-leyes-de-indias" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "casa-de-contratacion" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "contribucion-y-tanteo-del-derecho-de-averia" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "receptor-y-arca-del-derecho-de-averia" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "jurisdiccion-y-comiso-del-derecho-de-averia" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "exenciones-y-privilegios-del-derecho-de-averia" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "libranzas-y-gasto-del-caudal-de-averia" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "indultos-y-aumentos-del-caudal-de-averia" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "contaduria-de-averias-de-la-casa-de-la-contratacion" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "cargo-y-cuenta-del-receptor-de-la-averia" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "consulados-de-lima-y-mexico" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "flotas-y-galeones-de-la-carrera-de-indias" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "veitia-norte-de-la-contratacion-1672" } ], "questions": [ "How was the money of the Spanish convoy levy kept and guarded?", "What was the arca de tres llaves of the Casa de Contratación?", "Could Cádiz collect or judge the avería independently of Seville?", "Who administered the avería when it was farmed out to the merchant guilds?", "What controls did the Laws of the Indies place on a public treasurer's cash?" ], "claims": [ { "id": "c1", "text": "These six laws stand in the Recopilación's título on the contribution and collection of the avería and together they settle its administration and the custody of its money. In the fourth impression printed at Madrid in 1791 by the widow of Joaquín Ibarra for the Royal and Supreme Council of the Indies, they run from the rubric of ley xxiiij in the right-hand column of the printed folio 114 to the close of ley xxviiij at the head of the right-hand column of folio 115, where the rubric of ley xxx follows. The running head of folio 114 reads \"Libro VIIII. Título VIIII.\" and that of folio 115 \"De la Contribucion de Averías.\"", "sources": [ "recopilacion-1791-libro-ix-titulo-ix-administracion-y-arca" ], "confidence": 0.9 }, { "id": "c2", "text": "The levy could be run by contract with the merchants' own corporations, and one law of the block exists only because of that. Ley xxiiij, from Philip IV at Madrid on 30 June 1621, provides that if one of the administrators of an asiento of the avería taken \"con diferentes Gremios\" should die, \"pertenece la eleccion al Gremio donde sucediere la falta\". The place is not in the Crown's gift: it reverts to the guild that held it, which is a declaration that the several guilds party to a single revenue contract each kept their own seat on its management.", "sources": [ "recopilacion-1791-libro-ix-titulo-ix-administracion-y-arca" ], "confidence": 0.85 }, { "id": "c3", "text": "Two laws keep the second port of the Carrera from acquiring a jurisdiction of its own. Ley xxv, from Philip II at Toledo on 10 May 1561, orders that the judge-official of Cádiz, \"si le hubiere\", take no cognisance of any suit over averías, and remit them to the President and judges of the Casa de Contratación of Seville \"donde toca su conocimiento\". The exclusion reaches a second class of case named in the same breath: the jettison claims that masters of the Indies ships make after a storm, \"especialmente de lo que toca á la artillería, xarcia, y municiones, que fingen haber echado al Mar\" — the law says in its own text that the guns, rigging and munitions reported thrown overboard were sometimes not thrown overboard at all.", "sources": [ "recopilacion-1791-libro-ix-titulo-ix-administracion-y-arca" ], "confidence": 0.85 }, { "id": "c4", "text": "Ley xxvj controls the collection at Cádiz by controlling the collector. From Philip II at Guadalupe on 6 February 1569, it forbids the judge of Cádiz to admit anyone who comes to that city to collect the avería under a power from the Casa's receiver until the President and judges-official have approved the person, taken satisfaction of the sureties and had the Contadores Diputados record them, all of which must appear \"por testimonio de los Jueces Oficiales\". The receiver is then to take record of the sureties himself, \"para que despues se le pueda hacer cargo de lo que se cobrare en Cádiz por los registros de Navíos enteramente, y quede obligado á la paga, y saneamiento\". A delegated collection a hundred kilometres down the river is made to end in a charge against the principal in Seville.", "sources": [ "recopilacion-1791-libro-ix-titulo-ix-administracion-y-arca" ], "confidence": 0.9 }, { "id": "c5", "text": "The central law of the block builds a strongbox and divides its keys. Ley xxvij, gathered from Philip II and the governing Princess at Madrid on 14 March 1558, ordinance 11 of 1573, orders of 1574 and 1580, an ordinance of the avería of 1607 and orders of Philip IV of 1644 and 1646, requires that in the Casa de Contratación of Seville there be for the custody of the avería's funds an \"Arca de tres llaves, una de las quales tenga el Juez de la dicha Avería, otra el Contador Diputado, y otra el Receptor de ella\". No one of the three officers of the levy — its judge, its deputed accountant, its receiver — can open it alone.", "sources": [ "recopilacion-1791-libro-ix-titulo-ix-administracion-y-arca" ], "confidence": 0.9 }, { "id": "c6", "text": "The same law makes the chest the only lawful place for the money and fixes a weekly rhythm for getting it there. All money arising from the levy is to enter the chest \"luego que se fuere cobrando; y por lo ménos sea el Sábado de cada semana\", written and entered in a book that is itself kept inside the chest, and \"ninguna cantidad esté fuera, ni en poder del Receptor, ni de otra persona\". A receiver who fails to put in what he has collected in the week pays it fourfold to the Crown's Cámara, \"y si hubiere Denunciador, se le dé la tercia parte\". Two accountants keep separate books of what goes into the chest and what is drawn on the receiver, and the keyholders \"se junten los Llaveros los Sábados de cada semana\".", "sources": [ "recopilacion-1791-libro-ix-titulo-ix-administracion-y-arca" ], "confidence": 0.9 }, { "id": "c7", "text": "Two short laws finish the control by making the chest's book answer to a second book and to a notary. Ley xxviij, from an ordinance of the avería of 1607, requires one of the accountants of the avería to take account every Saturday of the money collected and paid by the receiver, \"confiriéndose los libros con el que ha de estar dentro del Arca\" — a weekly reconciliation of the officer's own ledger against the ledger locked in the chest. Ley xxviiij, from ordinance 13 of 1573, requires every sum entering or leaving the chest to be signed in that book \"por los tres que tuvieren las llaves\", with the clerk countersigning each one \"expresando que pasan ante él\".", "sources": [ "recopilacion-1791-libro-ix-titulo-ix-administracion-y-arca" ], "confidence": 0.9 }, { "id": "c8", "text": "Read together, the three chest laws describe a cash control that separates custody, record and attestation and reconciles them on a fixed day. Three keyholders drawn from three different offices; a register that cannot be taken out of the box it records; an independent accountant reconciling against it weekly; a notarial countersignature on each movement; a prohibition on any balance resting in the receiver's hands; and a penalty of four times the sum with a third to the informer for breaking the weekly deposit. What the código prescribes here is recognisable as segregation of duties, enforced by physical custody rather than by audit after the fact.", "sources": [ "recopilacion-1791-libro-ix-titulo-ix-administracion-y-arca" ], "confidence": 0.8 }, { "id": "c9", "text": "What a flattering reading of these six laws would leave out, and the leaves do not. Every control in the block is written because the conduct existed: the fourfold penalty on the receiver presumes money resting outside the chest, the weekly reconciliation presumes divergent books, and ley xxv says in terms that masters faked jettisons of artillery and rigging. Ley xxvij's margin gathers orders of 1558, 1573, 1574, 1580, 1607, 1644 and 1646 into one law, so the chest had to be commanded seven times in ninety years. The informer's third rewards denunciation inside a small office. The exclusion of Cádiz protects the Seville tribunal's monopoly as much as the fund, and the approval it requires is Seville's, not the payer's. And the guild administration of ley xxiiij puts the levy in the hands of the corporations of the men who paid it, which is a conflict as well as a check.", "sources": [ "recopilacion-1791-libro-ix-titulo-ix-administracion-y-arca" ], "confidence": 0.8 }, { "id": "c10", "text": "What this entry does not establish. It reads six laws of one título in one impression. It says nothing about which guilds held the asiento in any year, whether any administratorship fell vacant and was filled as ley xxiiij directs, whether the judge-official of Cádiz obeyed the exclusion or any Cádiz collector was refused, whether the chest existed and was kept as ordered, whether the keyholders met on any Saturday, or whether the fourfold penalty was ever exacted from a receiver. The ordinances of the Casa and of the avería of 1573, 1607 and the orders of 1574 and 1580 cited in the margin of ley xxvij are not in this código and were not read. The remaining laws of this título are read in sibling entries of this corpus, not here.", "sources": [ "recopilacion-1791-libro-ix-titulo-ix-administracion-y-arca" ], "confidence": 0.9 } ], "takeaways": [], "faqs": [], "evidence_tier": "primary", "evidence": { "level": "industry_observation", "source_types": [ "paper" ] }, "moat_flag": true, "winning_edge": "This entry reads the six laws of the Recopilación that settle who administered the convoy levy of the Indies trade and where its money slept, and what it adds is below the resolution of a summary of the código: a chest of three keys held by the levy's judge, its deputed accountant and its receiver, with its own ledger locked inside it; a rule that no balance may rest in the receiver's hands and that everything collected must be in the box by Saturday, on pain of fourfold with a third to the informer; a second accountant reconciling his books against the book in the chest every Saturday; three signatures and a notarial countersignature on every entry and every withdrawal; a judge-official of Cádiz shut out of avería suits and of the faked jettisons of artillery and rigging alike; and a collector at Cádiz who cannot be admitted until Seville has approved him and recorded his sureties. It prints beside them what the same laws concede: that each control answers a practice, that the chest had to be commanded in seven separate orders between 1558 and 1646, and that handing a vacant administratorship back to the merchant guild that lost it put the levy in the hands of the corporations that paid it.", "confidence": 0.85, "last_verified": "2026-11-01", "media": [], "x": {}, "canonical_url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/administracion-y-arca-de-tres-llaves-de-la-averia", "api_url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/api/k/administracion-y-arca-de-tres-llaves-de-la-averia.json", "jsonld": { "@context": "https://schema.org", "name": "A chest with three keys and a book inside it: the code puts every maravedí of the convoy levy behind three locks held by three different officers, counts it every Saturday, makes all three sign each entry and withdrawal, and will not let Cádiz collect it or judge it without Seville — libro VIIII título VIIII, leyes xxiiij to xxviiij", "description": "Six laws of the Recopilación de Leyes de Indias settle who administered the avería, the levy that paid for the convoys of the Indies trade, and where its money was kept. They give a vacant administratorship back to the guild that lost it, bar the royal judge-official of Cádiz from its suits and from its collection without Seville's approval, and lock the whole fund in a chest of three keys with a book inside, a Saturday reckoning and three signatures on every movement.", "url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/administracion-y-arca-de-tres-llaves-de-la-averia", "license": "https://spdx.org/licenses/CC-BY-4.0.html", "dateModified": "2026-11-01", "citation": [ { "@type": "CreativeWork", "name": "Recopilación de leyes de los reynos de las Indias, libro VIIII título VIIII \"DE LA CONTRIBUCION, ADMINISTRACION, y cobranza del derecho de Avería\" — leyes xxiiij, xxv, xxvj, xxvij, xxviij and xxviiij, the six laws that settle who administered the convoy levy when it ran by contract with the merchant guilds, strip the royal judge-official of Cádiz of any cognisance of its suits and of the jettison claims of masters, forbid him to admit any collector sent to Cádiz under the Seville receiver's power until Seville has approved the person and taken record of the sureties, and put the whole fund into a chest of three keys in the Casa de Contratación with a book inside it, a weekly reckoning every Saturday and the signature of all three keyholders and the clerk on every entry and every withdrawal. The laws read here run from the rubric of ley xxiiij in the right-hand column of the printed folio 114 to the close of ley xxviiij at the head of the right-hand column of folio 115, where the rubric of ley xxx follows; the running head of folio 114 reads \"Libro VIIII. Título VIIII.\" and that of folio 115 \"De la Contribucion de Averías.\" Ley xxiiij, rubric \"Que la eleccion de Administrador del Asiento, que faltare, toque al Gremio de donde fuere.\", margin \"D. Felipe IIII en Madrid á 30 de Junio de 1621.\", whose text reads \"SI muriere alguno de los Administradores de Asiento de Avería, que se haya tomado con diferentes Gremios: Declaramos que pertenece la eleccion al Gremio donde sucediere la falta.\" Ley xxv, rubric \"Que el Juez Oficial de Cádiz no conozca de pleytos de Avería.\", margin \"D. Felipe II en Toledo á 10 de Mayo de 1561.\", whose text reads \"EL Juez Oficial de Cádiz, si le hubiere, no conozca, ni se introduzga en el conocimiento de ningunos pleytos, ni causas, que ante él ocurrieren sobre Averías, ni sobre echazones, que los Maestres de las Naos de ida, y vuelta de las Indias, hacen en tormenta, especialmente de lo que toca á la artillería, xarcia, y municiones, que fingen haber echado al Mar; y remitan los dichos pleytos, y causas al Presidente, y Jueces de la Casa de Contratacion de Sevilla, donde toca su conocimiento.\" Ley xxvj, rubric \"Que el Juez Oficial de Cádiz no admita persona para la cobranza de Avería sin aprobacion de la Casa de Sevilla.\", margin \"El mismo en Guadalupe á 6 de Febrero de 1569.\", whose text reads \"EL Juez de Cádiz no admita á ninguna persona, que fuere á aquella Ciudad á cobrar la Avería con poder del Receptor de la Casa, sin aprobacion del Presidente, y Jueces Oficiales, y satisfaccion de las fianzas, y tomada la razon de ellas por los Contadores Diputados, de que le ha de constar por testimonio de los Jueces Oficiales, á los quales mandamos, que reciban, y admitan las dichas fianzas, y recaudos necesarios para aprobacion de las personas que fueren nombradas por el Receptor; y si las dieren por bastantes, tome el Receptor tambien la razon de ellas, para que despues se le pueda hacer cargo de lo que se cobrare en Cádiz por los registros de Navíos enteramente, y quede obligado á la paga, y saneamiento.\" Ley xxvij, rubric \"Que haya Arca de tres llaves en que se introduzga el dinero de la Avería.\", margin \"D. Felipe II y la Princesa Gobernadora en Madrid á 14 de Marzo de 1558. El mismo Ordenanza 11. de 1573. En Madrid á 14 de Julio de 1574. En Aranjuez á 9 de Marzo de 1580. D. Felipe III Ordenanza 3. de la Averia de 1607. D. Felipe IIII en Madrid á 30 de Diciembre de 1644. En Pamplona á 8 de Mayo de 1646.\", whose text reads \"EN la Casa de Contratacion de Sevilla haya para guarda del caudal de Avería Arca de tres llaves, una de las quales tenga el Juez de la dicha Avería, otra el Contador Diputado, y otra el Receptor de ella, y en esta Arca entre precisamente todo el dinero que procediere de esta contribucion, así de créditos, como de compradores de plata, y de otras personas abonadas, como de contado, luego que se fuere cobrando; y por lo ménos sea el Sábado de cada semana, escribiendo, y asentándolo en el libro que ha de estar dentro de ella; y ninguna cantidad esté fuera, ni en poder del Receptor, ni de otra persona, pena de que si el dicho Receptor no introduxere en el Arca lo que se cobrare cada semana, lo pague con el quatro tanto, aplicado para nuestra Cámara; y si hubiere Denunciador, se le dé la tercia parte, y el Contador de la Casa de Contratacion, y el otro Contador Diputado tengan cuenta, y razon de lo que entrare en el Arca, y se librare en el Receptor en libros separados, que para esto han de tener, y se junten los Llaveros los Sábados de cada semana.\" Ley xxviij, rubric \"Que un Contador de Avería tome cada Sábado razon de lo que hubiere entrado, y salido del Arca, confiriendo los libros.\", margin \"D. Felipe III Ordenanza 5. de Avería de 1607.\", whose text reads \"UNO de los Contadores de Avería tomará todos los Sábados razon del dinero que se hubiere cobrado, y pagado por el Receptor de ella, confiriéndose los libros con el que ha de estar dentro del Arca.\" Ley xxviiij, rubric \"Que las partidas que entraren en el Arca de Avería, y se sacaren de ella, se firmen, y refrenden por el Escribano.\", margin \"D. Felipe II Ordenanza 13. de 1573.\", whose text reads \"TOdas las partidas que entraren, y salieren del Arca del Avería, se firmen en el libro que en ella ha de haber, por los tres que tuvieren las llaves, y refrende cada una el Escribano, expresando que pasan ante él.\"", "url": "https://books.google.com/books?id=t5EbF6Y1EM4C&pg=PA115" } ], "@type": "Article", "headline": "A chest with three keys and a book inside it: the code puts every maravedí of the convoy levy behind three locks held by three different officers, counts it every Saturday, makes all three sign each entry and withdrawal, and will not let Cádiz collect it or judge it without Seville — libro VIIII título VIIII, leyes xxiiij to xxviiij" } }