{ "id": "cuenta-y-valor-de-los-quintos-de-oro-y-plata", "type": "entity", "name": "The arithmetic of the royal fifth: seven laws that take the assayers' one and a half per cent before the king's share, price gold at twenty-four maravedís the carat, and fix a marco of silver of unknown fineness at 2,050", "summary": "Leyes xviiij to xxv of libro VIII, título X of the Recopilación set out how the quinto was computed. The fees of the Fundidor, Ensayador and Marcador mayor come off first, then the fifth of the remainder, paid in the same metal; gold is counted at 24 maravedís the carat and 556 the castellano; silver by its assayed fineness, or at 2,050 maravedís the marco where there is no assay. Folios 484-485.", "locale": "en", "tags": [ "colonial-law", "law-of-the-indies", "legislation", "legal-history", "recopilacion", "governance", "taxation", "fiscal-history", "real-hacienda", "royal-treasury", "public-finance", "mining", "silver", "metallurgy", "assaying", "metrology", "standards", "measurement", "currency", "money", "record-keeping", "spanish-empire", "americas", "sixteenth-century", "seventeenth-century" ], "relations": [ { "rel": "related", "target": "recopilacion-de-leyes-de-indias" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "quinto-real-de-minas-batallas-y-rescates" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "manifestacion-del-oro-y-plata-en-las-indias" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "fundicion-y-peso-de-las-barras-de-las-indias" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "prohibicion-de-sacar-metales-sin-quintar" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "tenencia-y-labor-de-metales-sin-quintar" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "ensaye-y-marca-del-oro-y-plata-de-las-indias" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "casas-de-moneda-de-las-indias" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "spanish-real-global-currency" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "integridad-del-tesoro-remitido-de-las-indias" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "remision-anual-de-la-real-hacienda-de-las-indias" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "administracion-de-minas-y-alcrevite-en-la-recopilacion" } ], "questions": [ "How was the Spanish royal fifth actually calculated on a bar of silver or gold?", "Who was paid before the king out of American gold and silver?", "What was a castellano of gold worth in maravedís under the laws of the Indies?", "How was silver of unknown fineness taxed in the Spanish Indies?", "Was the royal fifth paid in metal or in money?" ], "claims": [ { "id": "c1", "text": "A rate of one fifth tells you almost nothing until you know what it is a fifth of, in what order the deductions fall, and at what price the metal is counted. Seven consecutive laws of the código answer those questions. In the fourth impression, printed at Madrid in 1791 by the widow of Joaquín Ibarra for the Royal and Supreme Council of the Indies, leyes xviiij to xxv of libro VIII título X run from ley xviiij's heading at the head of the right-hand column of the printed folio 484 to the end of ley xxv in the right-hand column of folio 485, where ley xxvj's heading stands below it. Both boundaries were read on the leaves.", "sources": [ "recopilacion-1791-libro-viii-titulo-x-cuenta-y-valor" ], "confidence": 0.9 }, { "id": "c2", "text": "Ley xviiij, from Philip II's Ordinance 7 of 1579, fixes the order of deductions and puts the crown's own officers ahead of the crown. Of all gold, silver, copper, lead, tin, quicksilver, iron \"y otro qualquier metal\" drawn from mines, veins, mantos, pits, lavaderos, rivers and other mineral workings, the royal officials are to collect \"ante todas cosas uno y medio por ciento de Fundidor, Ensayador, y Marcador mayor\", and only \"despues inmediatamente el quinto de todo lo restante\". The three named offices are paid first, out of the gross; the royal fifth is a fifth of what is left. On a hundred marcos brought in, the fifth is therefore taken on ninety-eight and a half.", "sources": [ "recopilacion-1791-libro-viii-titulo-x-cuenta-y-valor" ], "confidence": 0.9 }, { "id": "c3", "text": "The same law settles the form of payment, and it is payment in kind. The fifth \"se ha de hacer en la misma especie de oro, y plata, cobre, ó metal, que así se sacare de las minas, y llevare á quintar, ó dezmar, conforme á lo que en cada Provincia está mandado\". The crown takes metal, not coin or credit, and the closing clause concedes in passing that the levy was not uniform: it is paid \"conforme á lo que en cada Provincia está mandado\", and the alternative verb — \"quintar, ó dezmar\" — admits inside the rate-fixing law itself that in some places the levy was a tenth and not a fifth.", "sources": [ "recopilacion-1791-libro-viii-titulo-x-cuenta-y-valor" ], "confidence": 0.85 }, { "id": "c4", "text": "Ley xx, Philip IV at Madrid on 27 May 1631, carries the payment-in-kind rule through to Spain for gold. Royal officials into whose hands gold comes from the quintos or by any other title are to send it \"en la misma especie\", and not to reduce it \"á plata, ni otro género de hacienda para ningun efecto, ni causa, por urgente que sea\", with an itemised statement of the quantity so that the crown has \"entera noticia\". The prohibition is absolute on its face and the law anticipates the obvious defence — that a local urgency justified converting the gold — and refuses it in advance, with a reference to ley 14 of título 6 of the same book for the penalties.", "sources": [ "recopilacion-1791-libro-viii-titulo-x-cuenta-y-valor" ], "confidence": 0.9 }, { "id": "c5", "text": "Ley xxj, Philip II and the Princess Governor at Valladolid on 29 October 1557, requires the fifth to be taken from the very metal brought in and not from other metal: if two or three planchas or more are presented, \"de cada una de ellas se pague el quinto, porque no haya fraudes.\" The stated purpose is to stop a taxpayer paying the fifth of a good bar with a poor one. The law then gives the officials a discretion that cuts the other way: if the owners would suffer \"mucha dilacion\", the officials may choose the fifth from whichever of the pieces presented \"mejor les pareciere\". The concession is framed as relief for the owner, and it is the officials who choose, with no standard given and no record required of why one piece was taken rather than another.", "sources": [ "recopilacion-1791-libro-viii-titulo-x-cuenta-y-valor" ], "confidence": 0.85 }, { "id": "c6", "text": "Leyes xxij and xxiij fix the two valuations on which the books were kept. Ley xxij, Philip II's Ordinance 18 of 1579, orders the account of gold made \"á razon de á veinte y quatro maravedís por cada quilate, y á quinientos y cincuenta y seis maravedís cada castellano de veinte y dos quilates y medio, que es su justo, y verdadero valor\", and the figures are to be charged in the royal books with an account rendered with payment in each province. Ley xxiij, the same king's Ordinance 19, requires the account of assayed silver for the fifth to be made \"respecto de la verdadera ley, que cada marco tuviere\". Gold is thus taxed at a declared statutory price per carat; silver is taxed on its measured fineness.", "sources": [ "recopilacion-1791-libro-viii-titulo-x-cuenta-y-valor" ], "confidence": 0.9 }, { "id": "c7", "text": "The phrase \"que es su justo, y verdadero valor\" in ley xxij is worth pausing on rather than passing over. The just and true value of gold is here declared by the same party that collects the duty computed on it, in an ordinance, for an indefinite future; the law provides no mechanism by which a miner could show that the market price of gold in his province differed from 556 maravedís the castellano, and no revision clause. Whether the figure was generous or harsh at any date is not something these laws say, and this entry makes no claim about it — the point is that the valuation is administrative rather than observed, and the código presents it as a finding of fact.", "sources": [ "recopilacion-1791-libro-viii-titulo-x-cuenta-y-valor" ], "confidence": 0.8 }, { "id": "c8", "text": "Ley xxiiij, Philip II's Ordinance 22, supplies the default where the machinery of the system is absent. If silver is found \"corriente, y sin ley conocida\", the rule of ley 2 of título 22 of libro 4 governs; and for collecting the dues and fifths \"donde no hubiere forma de ensaye, ni marca\", the account is to be made \"á razon de dos mil y cincuenta maravedís el marco de ocho onzas de cinco pesos\", charged at that value in the royal books. The law is an admission that there were places in the Indies with no assay office and no marking, and it taxes the silver there by a fixed presumption of value in place of a measurement. The eight-ounce marco of five pesos is the unit, and the figure does not vary by province.", "sources": [ "recopilacion-1791-libro-viii-titulo-x-cuenta-y-valor" ], "confidence": 0.85 }, { "id": "c9", "text": "Ley xxv, from Charles V and the Empress Governor at Medina del Campo on 2 December 1531, is the one law of the seven that spares the taxpayer's property rather than the treasury's interest. Coarse grains of gold brought in to be quinted, when they are of a size that can be marked \"sin fundir, ni perjudicar á nuestra Real hacienda\", may be marked by the officials on payment of the dues and the fifth, and are not to be melted — \"sin embargo de qualquier órden, que en contrario haya\", a phrase that concedes there were standing orders to melt them. The same treatment that the código gives to jewels under ley 3 of título 22 of libro 4 is extended to the natural nugget. The condition is that the treasury take no harm, so the exception holds only where the two interests do not collide.", "sources": [ "recopilacion-1791-libro-viii-titulo-x-cuenta-y-valor" ], "confidence": 0.85 }, { "id": "c10", "text": "Read together the seven laws describe a levy that is far less simple than the word \"fifth\" suggests, and the code is candid about every complication but one. It states the prior deduction, the payment in kind, the per-carat price of gold, the assayed fineness of silver, the fixed marco where there is no assay, and the alternative of a tenth in some provinces. What it nowhere provides is a way for the person paying to contest any of it: there is no appeal against the officials' choice of plancha under ley xxj, no procedure to challenge the statutory price of ley xxij, and no revision of the 2,050-maravedí marco of ley xxiiij. The arithmetic is published, which is itself a protection; the right to argue with it is not.", "sources": [ "recopilacion-1791-libro-viii-titulo-x-cuenta-y-valor" ], "confidence": 0.85 }, { "id": "c11", "text": "What this entry establishes is the text of seven printed laws in the 1791 fourth impression, read from two leaves, and not the practice under them. Nothing here shows what a marco of silver actually fetched in any province, whether the officers' one and a half per cent was in fact taken before the fifth in any caja, how often gold was converted in breach of ley xx, or where in the Indies there was no assay office in any given year. Four of the seven laws cross-refer to libro 4 título 22, the assay título printed in the first volume of this impression, which this corpus does not hold and which was not consulted; the ordinances of the ensayadores mayores are treated separately in this corpus from a different printing. Nothing here was collated against the 1681 first impression, which this corpus also holds.", "sources": [ "recopilacion-1791-libro-viii-titulo-x-cuenta-y-valor" ], "confidence": 0.9 } ], "takeaways": [], "faqs": [], "evidence_tier": "primary", "evidence": { "level": "industry_observation", "source_types": [ "paper" ] }, "moat_flag": true, "winning_edge": "The royal fifth is usually reported as a rate and a yield, which leaves the reader unable to compute a single real case; the statutory arithmetic — what is deducted first, in what substance the duty is paid, and at what declared price each metal is counted — is rarely quoted in the accounts this corpus has been able to check. Reading leyes xviiij to xxv from the leaf supplies it in the crown's own words: one and a half per cent to the Fundidor, Ensayador and Marcador mayor off the gross, before the fifth of the remainder; payment in the same metal and gold never to be reduced to silver \"por urgente que sea\"; the fifth taken from the actual pieces presented, with the officials choosing which; gold at 24 maravedís the carat and 556 the castellano, declared to be \"su justo, y verdadero valor\"; silver at its assayed fineness, or at 2,050 maravedís the eight-ounce marco where no assay office existed; and the coarse nugget marked without melting. It also records what the block concedes in passing — that the levy was a tenth in some provinces and that parts of the Indies had no assay at all.", "confidence": 0.85, "last_verified": "2026-10-19", "media": [], "x": {}, "canonical_url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/cuenta-y-valor-de-los-quintos-de-oro-y-plata", "api_url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/api/k/cuenta-y-valor-de-los-quintos-de-oro-y-plata.json", "jsonld": { "@context": "https://schema.org", "name": "The arithmetic of the royal fifth: seven laws that take the assayers' one and a half per cent before the king's share, price gold at twenty-four maravedís the carat, and fix a marco of silver of unknown fineness at 2,050", "description": "Leyes xviiij to xxv of libro VIII, título X of the Recopilación set out how the quinto was computed. The fees of the Fundidor, Ensayador and Marcador mayor come off first, then the fifth of the remainder, paid in the same metal; gold is counted at 24 maravedís the carat and 556 the castellano; silver by its assayed fineness, or at 2,050 maravedís the marco where there is no assay. Folios 484-485.", "url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/cuenta-y-valor-de-los-quintos-de-oro-y-plata", "license": "https://spdx.org/licenses/CC-BY-4.0.html", "dateModified": "2026-10-19", "citation": [ { "@type": "CreativeWork", "name": "Recopilación de leyes de los reynos de las Indias, libro VIII título X \"DE LOS QUINTOS REALES\" — leyes xviiij to xxv alone, from the heading \"Ley xviiij. Que se saquen primero los derechos de Fundidor, Ensayador, y Marcador, y luego el quinto en especie.\" at the head of the right-hand column of the printed folio 484 to the end of ley xxv in the right-hand column of folio 485, where the heading of ley xxvj stands below it. Ley xviiij, margin \"El mismo Ordenanza 7. de 1579\", whose text reads \"DE todo el oro, plata, cobre, plomo, estaño, azogue, hierro, y otro qualquier metal, que se sacare de las minas, vetas, mantos, pozos, lavaderos, rios, y los demas minerales, han de cobrar nuestros Oficiales ante todas cosas uno y medio por ciento de Fundidor, Ensayador, y Marcador mayor, como está ordenado por la ley 13. tít. 22. lib. 4. y despues inmediatamente el quinto de todo lo restante, con la distincion referida en las leyes de este título, y la paga se ha de hacer en la misma especie de oro, y plata, cobre, ó metal, que así se sacare de las minas, y llevare á quintar, ó dezmar, conforme á lo que en cada Provincia está mandado, que se nos pague.\" Ley xx, rubric \"Que todo el oro del Rey, procedido de quintos, ó por otra qualquier causa, se remita en especie\", margin \"D. Felipe IIII en Madrid á 27 de Mayo de 1631\", whose text reads \"NUestros Oficiales Reales de las Indias, é Islas, en cuyo poder entrare oro, procedido de los quintos, ó que por otra qualquier causa perteneciere á nuestra Real hacienda, nos lo envien, y remitan en la misma especie, y no lo reduzgan á plata, ni otro género de hacienda para ningun efecto, ni causa, por urgente que sea, con relacion por menor de la cantidad que enviaren, de forma que Nos tengamos entera noticia, y así lo cumplan, y executen precisamente, con apercibimiento de que se procederá contra ellos con todo rigor, y demostracion, como se contiene en la ley 14. tít. 6. de este libro.\" Ley xxj, rubric \"Que los quintos se cobren de los mismos metales, que se marcaren, y no de otros\", margin \"D. Felipe II y la Princesa Gobernadora en Valladolid á 29 de Octubre de 1557\", whose text reads \"DE la misma plata, que cada uno introduxere en la Casa de fundicion para quintar, y marcar, se cobre el quinto, y no de otra diferente, de suerte que si se llevaren dos planchas, ó tres, ó mas, de cada una de ellas se pague el quinto, porque no haya fraudes; y si á los dueños de la plata se les causare mucha dilacion, nuestros Oficiales escojan el quinto de la que se llevare á marcar, y mejor les pareciere, y lo mismo se observe en el oro, y otros metales.\" Ley xxij, rubric \"Que para cobrar el quinto del oro se haga la cuenta por su valor\", margin \"D. Felipe II Ordenanza 18. de 1579\", whose text reads \"PARA haber de cobrar los derechos, y quintos del oro, nuestros Oficiales hagan la cuenta á razon de á veinte y quatro maravedís por cada quilate, y á quinientos y cincuenta y seis maravedís cada castellano de veinte y dos quilates y medio, que es su justo, y verdadero valor, y conforme á él se han de cargar en nuestros libros Reales, y nos han de dar cuenta con pago de todo lo que nos perteneciere, y hubiéremos de haber en cada Provincia.\" Ley xxiij, rubric \"Que para la cobranza del quinto de plata se haga la cuenta por su verdadera ley\", margin \"El mismo Ordenanza 19. allí\", whose text reads \"NUestros Oficiales han de hacer la cuenta de la plata ensayada para la cobranza del quinto, respecto de la verdadera ley, que cada marco tuviere, y por ella se han de hacer cargo en nuestros libros, y dar cuenta con pago.\" Ley xxiiij, rubric \"Que para la cobranza de los quintos de plata corriente se haga la cuenta á razon de dos mil y cincuenta maravedís el marco\", margin \"El mismo Ordenanza 22.\", whose text reads \"SI se hallare alguna plata corriente, y sin ley conocida, guárdese lo resuelto por la ley 2. tít. 22. lib. 4. y para la cobranza de los derechos, y quintos, donde no hubiere forma de ensaye, ni marca, se haga la cuenta á razon de dos mil y cincuenta maravedís el marco de ocho onzas de cinco pesos, y por este valor en maravedís se cargue en nuestros libros Reales, y se nos dé cuenta con pago.\" And ley xxv, rubric \"Que los granos de oro grueso se puedan marcar, sin fundir\", margin \"El Emperador D. Cárlos y la Emperatriz Gobernadora en Medina del Campo á 2 de Diciembre de 1531\", whose text reads \"QUando se llevaren á quintar algunos granos gruesos de oro, siendo de cantidad, y tamaño, que se puedan buenamente marcar sin fundir, ni perjudicar á nuestra Real hacienda, pagando los derechos, y quinto, los podrán marcar nuestros Oficiales, y no los fundan, sin embargo de qualquier órden, que en contrario haya, y guarden lo mismo que en quanto á las joyas está ordenado por la ley 3. tít. 22. lib. 4.\"", "url": "https://books.google.com/books?id=Lt41mzCz8zEC&pg=PA484" } ], "@type": "Article", "headline": "The arithmetic of the royal fifth: seven laws that take the assayers' one and a half per cent before the king's share, price gold at twenty-four maravedís the carat, and fix a marco of silver of unknown fineness at 2,050" } }