{
  "id": "correo-mayor-de-la-casa-de-la-contratacion",
  "type": "entity",
  "name": "The chief courier of the Indies at Seville: an office tied to a city, four named relay stages, and a mastership of the posts its holder was forbidden to farm out — libro VIIII título VII, leyes j, ij, iij, xiiij and xxij",
  "summary": "Five laws of the Recopilación de Leyes de Indias set up the office through which the correspondence of the Spanish Atlantic passed. The chief courier of the Indies must live in Seville and take in every despatch touching the Indies; keep relay horses at four named places on the roads to Castile and Sanlúcar; run the mastership of those posts through a servant of his own, who may charge no more than a horse's assessed price; and employ only couriers who are solvent and trusted.",
  "locale": "en",
  "tags": [
    "colonial-institutions",
    "colonial-law",
    "law-of-the-indies",
    "legislation",
    "legal-history",
    "recopilacion",
    "casa-de-contratacion",
    "communications",
    "record-keeping",
    "transport",
    "seville",
    "carrera-de-indias",
    "spanish-empire",
    "americas",
    "institutions",
    "sixteenth-century",
    "seventeenth-century"
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "recopilacion-de-leyes-de-indias"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "casa-de-contratacion"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "correos-de-las-indias"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "despacho-y-derechos-de-los-correos-de-la-casa-de-la-contratacion"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "aviso-y-registro-de-los-correos-de-la-casa-de-la-contratacion"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "portes-y-arancel-de-las-cartas-de-indias"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "consejo-de-indias"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "flotas-y-galeones-de-la-carrera-de-indias"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "oficios-vendibles-de-las-indias"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "alguaciles-y-porteros-de-la-casa-de-la-contratacion"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "escribanos-de-camara-de-la-casa-de-la-contratacion"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "veitia-norte-de-la-contratacion-1672"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "tambos-de-las-indias"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "caminos-reales-de-la-nueva-espana"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "mulas-y-arrieria-de-las-indias"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "contaduria-de-averias-de-la-casa-de-la-contratacion"
    }
  ],
  "questions": [
    "Who handled the mail between Spain and its American territories, and where did he sit?",
    "What was the Correo mayor de las Indias, and what was he obliged to do?",
    "Where were the relay posts between Seville and the Spanish court?",
    "Could a Spanish postmaster rent out his post stations to a contractor?",
    "Who was allowed to work as a royal courier in sixteenth-century Spain?"
  ],
  "claims": [
    {
      "id": "c1",
      "text": "A whole título of the Recopilación de Leyes de Indias is given to one postal office. Libro VIIII título VII, in the fourth impression printed at Madrid in 1791 by the widow of Joaquín Ibarra for the Royal and Supreme Council of the Indies, is headed \"DEL CORREO MAYOR DE LA CASA DE Contratacion\". It opens with that heading standing across both columns at the middle of the printed folio 82 and closes with ley xxviij on folio 88; título VIII, on the accounting office of the average, opens at the head of folio 89. Twenty-eight numbered laws and one unnumbered cross-reference make up the título, and the five read here are leyes j, ij, iij, xiiij and xxij.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-1791-libro-ix-titulo-vii-correo-mayor"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c2",
      "text": "The first law fixes the office to a city and to a person. Ley j, from Philip II at Aranjuez on 9 March 1580 and carried in the margin to the visita of the licenciado Gamboa, says that \"NUestro Correo mayor de las Indias, que reside en la Ciudad de Sevilla, ha de asistir en ella por su persona, ó la de sus Tenientes\" — residence is not incidental but the substance of the duty, because the office exists where the fleets come in.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-1791-libro-ix-titulo-vii-correo-mayor"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c3",
      "text": "What he takes in is defined by who hands it to him, and the list is the whole commercial apparatus of the Carrera. Ley j makes him receive every despatch and letter touching the Indies brought to his house \"por parte del Presidente, y Jueces, ó los demas Ministros de la Casa de Contratacion, ó por el Prior, y Cónsules de la Universidad de Cargadores, ó á las demas personas tratantes en las Indias\" — the royal tribunal, the merchants' guild, and private traders, named in that order and served by the same office.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-1791-libro-ix-titulo-vii-correo-mayor"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c4",
      "text": "The duty runs in both directions and ends in a standard for the inbound post. Ley j requires the same care for what the couriers bring back, \"las Cartas, Pliegos, y Despachos, que á su casa llevaren los Correos de ida, y vuelta de la Corte, y las demas partes, para que las personas á quien fueren dirigidos, y sobreescritos, los reciban luego que lleguen, y tengan ciertos, seguros y de manifiesto\". The three words at the end are the test the law sets: the addressee's letters are to be certain, safe, and open to view — held in a form in which their owner can see that they are there.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-1791-libro-ix-titulo-vii-correo-mayor"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c5",
      "text": "The second law names the relay stages, and they are four places on two roads. Ley ij requires that \"EN Sevilla, Tocina, camino para Castilla, y los Palacios, y Lebrija, que es el viage para Sanlúcar, ha de tener el Correo mayor postas muy proveidas de muy buenos caballos, bien tratados, y con buenos aderezos, de forma que se pueda correr, y hacer el viage sin ningun impedimento\". Tocina lies up the Guadalquivir on the road inland to Castile and the Court; los Palacios and Lebrija lie down it on the road to the bar of Sanlúcar, where the fleets lay. The law states the condition of the horses as part of the obligation — well kept and well harnessed, not merely present.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-1791-libro-ix-titulo-vii-correo-mayor"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c6",
      "text": "The third law forbids the commonest way of turning such an office into a rent. Ley iij orders that \"EL Correo mayor no ha de arrendar el Maestrazgo de las postas, y las ha de tener á su cuenta, y cargo con persona particular, que sea criado suyo\". The posts must be run at the officeholder's own account and risk through a servant of his household, not leased to a contractor who would recover the lease from the travellers. The reason given is service: \"para que pueda dar mejor recaudo, y servir á los Gentiles-Hombres, y asistir á los Correos, que llegaren á los lugares, y posadas, á tomar las postas\".",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-1791-libro-ix-titulo-vii-correo-mayor"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c7",
      "text": "The same law closes the obvious evasion, by pricing the service instead of the lease. Ley iij adds that the servant \"ú otro qualquiera que las tuviere á su cargo, no ha de llevar derechos, ni aprovechamientos ningunos á los Gentiles-Hombres, Correos, ni á los demas que se sirvieren de las postas, si no fuere el precio que estuviere tasado cada caballo\". Nothing may be taken from anyone who uses a post horse beyond the assessed price of the horse — the assessment is assumed to exist elsewhere, and this law does not state it.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-1791-libro-ix-titulo-vii-correo-mayor"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c8",
      "text": "Who may ride as a courier is restricted, and the law prints its reason. Ley xiiij requires that the foot and mounted couriers the chief courier employs \"han de ser, naturales de estos Reynos, abonados, y de confianza, porque ordinariamente se les fian pliegos, y despachos de mucha importancia\". The three qualifications are nationality, solvency and trust, and the ground stated is the value of what is entrusted rather than any quality of the man — a security rule for the carriage of state papers, written as such.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-1791-libro-ix-titulo-vii-correo-mayor"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c9",
      "text": "The last of the five extends the office beyond Seville and attaches it to an older one. Ley xxij, from Philip IV at San Lorenzo on 1 November 1628, lets the chief courier of the Indies name a lieutenant at Court \"como le tiene en la Casa de Contratacion de Sevilla\", requires that every courier the Council of the Indies sends to any port or place of Spain be despatched from Seville, and that couriers on Indies business be despatched by his lieutenants in the ports; and it gives him power to name particular couriers \"con las preeminencias, que puede nuestro Correo mayor de Castilla\". The Indies post is thereby defined against the Castilian one, by borrowing its privileges rather than by inventing new ones.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-1791-libro-ix-titulo-vii-correo-mayor"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c10",
      "text": "What a flattering reading of these five laws would leave out, and the leaves do not. The office is a private monopoly in royal hands: ley xxij requires that all Indies couriers \"hayan de ser, y sean despachados por los Tenientes, que el dicho Correo mayor tuviere en los Puertos\", which is an exclusive right to a traffic, and the preeminences it confers are borrowed from the chief courier of Castile, an office this corpus has not opened. Ley iij's prohibition on leasing the mastership of the posts and on charging beyond the assessed price is evidence that both were being done, since a code does not forbid what nobody attempts. Ley iij fixes no penalty at all. Ley xiiij's requirement that couriers be \"naturales de estos Reynos\" is an exclusion as well as a security rule, and the título does not say who assessed the price of a post horse, what the office was worth to its holder, or who held it. And none of these five laws touches the ocean: they regulate the road between Seville, the Court and the bar of Sanlúcar, not the crossing.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-1791-libro-ix-titulo-vii-correo-mayor"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.8
    },
    {
      "id": "c11",
      "text": "What this entry does not establish. It reads five laws of one título in one impression. It says nothing about who held the office at any date, what it sold for, whether the posts at Tocina, los Palacios and Lebrija were in fact kept, or whether the prohibition on farming the mastership was obeyed. The margins of leyes ij, iij and xiiij print \"D. Felipe II allí.\" and \"El mismo allí.\" and carry no date of their own, so no date is asserted for those three laws; the nearest dated margin above them that this entry's source carries is ley j's, of 1580. The twenty-three other laws of this título are read in three sibling entries of this corpus. The preeminences of the \"Correo mayor de Castilla\" invoked by ley xxij were not looked up and nothing is asserted about them. The dates are as this impression prints them and were not collated against the 1681 first impression, which this corpus also holds.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-1791-libro-ix-titulo-vii-correo-mayor"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    }
  ],
  "takeaways": [],
  "faqs": [],
  "evidence_tier": "primary",
  "evidence": {
    "level": "industry_observation",
    "source_types": [
      "paper"
    ]
  },
  "moat_flag": true,
  "winning_edge": "The office through which every letter about the fleets and the silver passed has a whole título of the Recopilación de Leyes de Indias to itself, and this entry is the first in this corpus to read it. What it adds is below the resolution of any summary of the código: the four named relay stages on the two roads out of Seville, the requirement that the post horses be well kept and well harnessed rather than merely present, the prohibition on leasing the mastership of the posts to a contractor, the ceiling of the assessed price of a horse on anything that may be charged for one, and the three-word standard the inbound letters had to meet — certain, safe and open to view. It prints beside them what the laws concede: an exclusive right to a traffic, a borrowed set of privileges, a prohibition with no penalty, and a silence about who held the office and what it was worth.",
  "confidence": 0.85,
  "last_verified": "2026-10-27",
  "media": [],
  "x": {},
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  "jsonld": {
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    "name": "The chief courier of the Indies at Seville: an office tied to a city, four named relay stages, and a mastership of the posts its holder was forbidden to farm out — libro VIIII título VII, leyes j, ij, iij, xiiij and xxij",
    "description": "Five laws of the Recopilación de Leyes de Indias set up the office through which the correspondence of the Spanish Atlantic passed. The chief courier of the Indies must live in Seville and take in every despatch touching the Indies; keep relay horses at four named places on the roads to Castile and Sanlúcar; run the mastership of those posts through a servant of his own, who may charge no more than a horse's assessed price; and employ only couriers who are solvent and trusted.",
    "url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/correo-mayor-de-la-casa-de-la-contratacion",
    "license": "https://spdx.org/licenses/CC-BY-4.0.html",
    "dateModified": "2026-10-27",
    "citation": [
      {
        "@type": "CreativeWork",
        "name": "Recopilación de leyes de los reynos de las Indias, libro VIIII título VII \"DEL CORREO MAYOR DE LA CASA DE Contratacion\" — leyes j, ij, iij, xiiij and xxij, on the residence and duty of the office, the relay posts it had to keep, the prohibition on farming out the mastership of the posts, who might be employed as a courier, and the lieutenants the chief courier of the Indies might name. The título opens with its heading standing across both columns at the middle of the printed folio 82 and runs to the close of ley xxviij on folio 88; \"TÍTULO OCHO. DE LA CONTADURÍA DE AVERÍAS, Y CONTADORES Diputados.\" stands across both columns at the head of folio 89. The running head of folios 83, 85 and 87 reads \"Del Correo mayor de la Casa.\" and that of folios 84, 86 and 88 \"LIBRO VIIII. Título VII.\" Ley j, rubric \"Que el Correo mayor de la Casa de Sevilla resida en aquella Ciudad, y reciba los Despachos de Indias.\", margin \"D. Felipe II en Aranjuez á 9 de Marzo de 1580. En la visita del Licenciado Gamboa.\", whose text reads \"NUestro Correo mayor de las Indias, que reside en la Ciudad de Sevilla, ha de asistir en ella por su persona, ó la de sus Tenientes, para recibir todos los Despachos, y Cartas, que tocaren á aquellos Reynos, y Provincias, y le llevaren á su Casa por parte del Presidente, y Jueces, ó los demas Ministros de la Casa de Contratacion, ó por el Prior, y Cónsules de la Universidad de Cargadores, ó á las demas personas tratantes en las Indias, y tenerlos á recaudo, y entregarlos con fidelidad, y cuidado á los Correos que se despacharen á nuestra Corte, y otras partes; y tambien ha de tener cuidado en las Cartas, Pliegos, y Despachos, que á su casa llevaren los Correos de ida, y vuelta de la Corte, y las demas partes, para que las personas á quien fueren dirigidos, y sobreescritos, los reciban luego que lleguen, y tengan ciertos, seguros y de manifiesto.\" Ley ij, rubric \"Que el Correo mayor tenga en los Lugares de la Carrera provision de buenos caballos.\", margin \"D. Felipe II allí.\", whose text reads \"EN Sevilla, Tocina, camino para Castilla, y los Palacios, y Lebrija, que es el viage para Sanlúcar, ha de tener el Correo mayor postas muy proveidas de muy buenos caballos, bien tratados, y con buenos aderezos, de forma que se pueda correr, y hacer el viage sin ningun impedimento.\" Ley iij, rubric \"Que el Correo mayor no arriende el Maestrazgo de las postas, y tenga persona á cuyo cargo sean.\", margin \"El mismo allí.\", whose text reads \"EL Correo mayor no ha de arrendar el Maestrazgo de las postas, y las ha de tener á su cuenta, y cargo con persona particular, que sea criado suyo, para que pueda dar mejor recaudo, y servir á los Gentiles-Hombres, y asistir á los Correos, que llegaren á los lugares, y posadas, á tomar las postas; y este criado, ú otro qualquiera que las tuviere á su cargo, no ha de llevar derechos, ni aprovechamientos ningunos á los Gentiles-Hombres, Correos, ni á los demas que se sirvieren de las postas, si no fuere el precio que estuviere tasado cada caballo.\" Ley xiiij, rubric \"Que los Correos sean naturales de estos Reynos, y abonados.\", margin \"El mismo allí.\", whose text reads \"LOS Correos de á pie, y de á caballo, que el Correo mayor tuviere para hacer los viages, han de ser, naturales de estos Reynos, abonados, y de confianza, porque ordinariamente se les fian pliegos, y despachos de mucha importancia.\" Ley xxij, rubric \"Que el Correo mayor de las Indias pueda nombrar Tenientes en esta Corte, y otras partes, y Correos particulares.\", margin \"D. Felipe IIII en S. Lorenzo á 1 de Noviembre de 1628.\", whose text reads \"EL Correo mayor de las Indias pueda nombrar Teniente en esta nuestra Corte, como le tiene en la Casa de Contratacion de Sevilla, de donde es nuestra voluntad, que se despachen todos los Correos, que nuestro Consejo de las Indias enviare á qualesquier Puertos, y Lugares de España: y todos los que despachare la Casa de Contratacion, ú otra qualquier persona para negocios tocantes, y pertenecientes á las Indias, hayan de ser, y sean despachados por los Tenientes, que el dicho Correo mayor tuviere en los Puertos, con que hayan de venir á apearse donde está en costumbre, así en esta Corte, como en las demas partes donde hubiere los dichos Tenientes: y asimismo pueda nombrar Correos particulares para este efecto, con las preeminencias, que puede nuestro Correo mayor de Castilla.\"",
        "url": "https://books.google.com/books?id=t5EbF6Y1EM4C&pg=PA82"
      }
    ],
    "@type": "Article",
    "headline": "The chief courier of the Indies at Seville: an office tied to a city, four named relay stages, and a mastership of the posts its holder was forbidden to farm out — libro VIIII título VII, leyes j, ij, iij, xiiij and xxij"
  }
}