{ "id": "integridad-del-tesoro-remitido-de-las-indias", "type": "entity", "name": "Serial numbers on the king's silver: the 1609 law that stamped every bar with year, number, fineness and foundry, the rule that no private property might travel inside the royal consignment, and the one province ordered to keep its money", "summary": "Leyes viiij to xiij of libro VIII, título XXX of the Recopilación govern what may be in a royal consignment and who may touch it. Bars are numbered from one each year and stamped with year, number, fineness, a crown, an R for Rey and the foundry; none may weigh under thirty marcos. No private property may travel inside the king's. Havana and Tierrafirme may take nothing in transit — and Chile is ordered to keep its revenue instead of sending it. Folios 610-611.", "locale": "en", "tags": [ "colonial-law", "law-of-the-indies", "legislation", "legal-history", "recopilacion", "governance", "public-administration", "real-hacienda", "public-finance", "royal-treasury", "accountability", "record-keeping", "silver", "money", "mining", "assaying", "chile", "cuba", "panama", "peru", "military", "spanish-empire", "americas", "sixteenth-century", "seventeenth-century" ], "relations": [ { "rel": "related", "target": "recopilacion-de-leyes-de-indias" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "remision-anual-de-la-real-hacienda-de-las-indias" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "rutas-provinciales-del-envio-de-la-real-hacienda" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "paso-del-istmo-de-panama-y-el-avio-de-la-plata" }, { "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": "ingenios-y-lagunas-de-potosi" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "bienes-de-difuntos-de-las-indias" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "juzgado-de-bienes-de-difuntos" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "novenos-y-vacantes-de-obispados" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "situados-de-nueva-espana" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "situaciones-de-la-real-hacienda-de-las-indias" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "flotas-y-galeones-de-la-carrera-de-indias" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "escalona-gazophilacium-regium-perubicum" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "consejo-de-indias" } ], "questions": [ "How were silver bars from Spanish America marked and identified?", "Why did Spanish colonial silver bars carry a year and a serial number?", "Could private silver be shipped together with the king's treasure?", "Why was the royal revenue of Chile not sent to Lima?", "What stopped colonial governors taking money from the treasure fleets?" ], "claims": [ { "id": "c1", "text": "The middle of libro VIII título XXX of the Recopilación is about the integrity of a consignment rather than its despatch. In the Madrid impression of 1791, leyes viiij to xiij run from the lower right-hand column of folio 610 to the right-hand column of folio 611, and between them they say what a bar of the king's silver must look like, what may not travel inside the king's shipment, and who along the route may not take anything out of it. This entry reads those five laws and nothing else; the eight before them and the seven after them are carried separately by this corpus. The margins run 1565, 1588, 1603, 1604, 1609, 1612 and 1633.", "sources": [ "recopilacion-1791-libro-viii-titulo-xxx-integridad-del-tesoro" ], "confidence": 0.9 }, { "id": "c2", "text": "Ley viiij (Philip III, 11 February 1609) is a specification for a physical object. The bars belonging to the crown are to be numbered where they are worked and smelted, \"comenzando desde el número uno, hasta el que alcanzaren las de aquel año\" — a serial sequence restarting annually — and the mark is to be struck \"luego, acabada de hacer la barra, encima de ella\", carrying \"el año, número, y ley, y una Corona, con una R. á la parte inferior, que dice Rey, y la parte donde se fundió, todo á un tiempo\". Year, serial number, assayed fineness, crown, the letter R standing for Rey, and the place of smelting, all applied in a single operation on the freshly finished bar.", "sources": [ "recopilacion-1791-libro-viii-titulo-xxx-integridad-del-tesoro" ], "confidence": 0.9 }, { "id": "c3", "text": "The same law sets a minimum unit and extends the marking to the small stuff. No barretoncillos are to be worked \"tan pequeños, que tengan ménos de treinta marcos\", and fine silver in numbered pieces is to carry the same mark on each piece and be shipped \"en Caxones\". Read against the batching rule of ley iiij, which falls outside this entry's scope and is carried by this corpus in a separate registry entry for the same leaves, the effect is a closed inventory: every unit above a stated minimum weight is individually identified at the foundry, grouped into marked batches at the port, and listed with its weight and fineness in the document that crosses with it. That synthesis is this corpus's and rests on two entries, not on anything ley viiij says of ley iiij.", "sources": [ "recopilacion-1791-libro-viii-titulo-xxx-integridad-del-tesoro" ], "confidence": 0.85 }, { "id": "c4", "text": "Ley x, whose margin carries four dates between 1588 and 1612, separates public money from private absolutely. The officers are forbidden to remit \"ninguna hacienda de personas particulares, junta, é inclusa con la nuestra\". What the crown has granted, assigned by warrant or conceded as rent must be handed over \"á los que la debieren recibir, ó á sus mandatarios, para que la traygan por su cuenta\" — the beneficiary ships it himself, at his own risk and cost. The law then forecloses the obvious exceptions by naming them: the rule holds \"aunque sea procedida de condenaciones hechas por el Consejo, salarios, bienes de difuntos, Redencion de Cautivos, ú otra, de qualquier calidad que sea\", and division and separation are to be made in the cartascuentas.", "sources": [ "recopilacion-1791-libro-viii-titulo-xxx-integridad-del-tesoro" ], "confidence": 0.9 }, { "id": "c5", "text": "The list in ley x is worth reading for what it concedes. Salaries owed to royal servants, the estates of the dead held by the juzgado de bienes de difuntos, and alms collected for the Redención de Cautivos are all money the treasury was in fact holding and shipping, and the law's response is not to refuse the duty but to refuse the carriage: the categories are listed precisely because they were the cases in which mixing had been happening. The stated remedy is accounting — \"hagan division, y separacion en las Cartascuentas, como se contiene en la ley 52. tít. 32. lib. 2. y otras de este libro\". That cross-reference out of libro VIII was not opened by this corpus and nothing is asserted here about what it says.", "sources": [ "recopilacion-1791-libro-viii-titulo-xxx-integridad-del-tesoro" ], "confidence": 0.85 }, { "id": "c6", "text": "Ley xj (Philip IV, 15 November 1633) is the one law of the título that orders American revenue to stay in America, and it gives its reasons. The treasury officers of the provinces of Chile are to retain, for the pay of the troops serving there, the proceeds of \"licencias, y arrendamientos de las pulperías, y otras qualesquier rentas que á Nos pertenezcan\", and the ground stated is practical rather than military: \"porque se excuse la costa, y riesgo de traerlo á Lima cada año\". Shipping it to Lima cost money and risked loss, so the crown let the frontier keep the tavern licences.", "sources": [ "recopilacion-1791-libro-viii-titulo-xxx-integridad-del-tesoro" ], "confidence": 0.9 }, { "id": "c7", "text": "The arithmetic of that concession is printed with it, and it shows the retention was not a gift. The Chilean officers must notify \"los Contadores de Cuentas, y Oficiales Reales de Lima, para que tanto ménos remitan de la situacion de los doscientos y doce mil ducados consignados para la paga de la gente de guerra\". Chile keeps the local revenue and Lima deducts exactly that much from the 212,000-ducat situado it owed for the same troops. The crown is netting a transfer against a local receipt, and the figure of the situado is stated in the law itself.", "sources": [ "recopilacion-1791-libro-viii-titulo-xxx-integridad-del-tesoro" ], "confidence": 0.9 }, { "id": "c8", "text": "Leyes xij and xiij close two places on the route where officials had evidently been helping themselves. Ley xij (Philip III at Barajas, 10 March 1604) commands the governors of Havana \"que en ninguna forma tomen de la hacienda nuestra, ó de particulares, que se traxere en reales en Armadas, y Flotas ninguna partida, con apercibimiento, que se procederá contra ellos\" — the private cargo is protected in the same clause as the king's. Ley xiij (Philip II at El Pardo, 10 October 1565) forbids the officials of Tierrafirme to take or pay anything out of the treasure remitted from Peru \"no obstante qualquier órden que tengan en contrario\", and tells them instead to meet their libranzas and consignments out of the almojarifazgos they collect locally and other revenue in their own charge.", "sources": [ "recopilacion-1791-libro-viii-titulo-xxx-integridad-del-tesoro" ], "confidence": 0.9 }, { "id": "c9", "text": "The clause \"no obstante qualquier órden que tengan en contrario\" in ley xiij is an admission as well as a command. It presupposes that officials of Tierrafirme held orders authorising them to draw on Peruvian silver passing through their hands, and overrides those orders rather than denying they existed. Read with ley xij, which has to threaten prosecution of governors by name, the pair shows the crown legislating against its own officers in the two places these five laws single out — the isthmus the treasure crossed and the port where the fleets assembled.", "sources": [ "recopilacion-1791-libro-viii-titulo-xxx-integridad-del-tesoro" ], "confidence": 0.85 }, { "id": "c10", "text": "What the five laws protect is uneven, and the entry says so. Ley x and ley xij do protect private property — the beneficiary's money is to be given to him rather than carried for him, and the governors of Havana are forbidden to touch private reales as well as royal ones. But the protection of ley x is given by sending the owner away to arrange his own shipping at his own risk, which was the expensive option, and none of the five laws gives any remedy to a person whose money was taken: the sanction in ley xij runs to the crown's own prosecution of its governor. The marking system of ley viiij, exact as it is, exists to tell the crown whether its own property arrived. This is this corpus's reading of five laws that state no principle, and it is advanced as a reading.", "sources": [ "recopilacion-1791-libro-viii-titulo-xxx-integridad-del-tesoro" ], "confidence": 0.85 }, { "id": "c11", "text": "What this entry does not establish should be stated plainly. It reads five printed laws of a 1791 impression and nothing else: no surviving bar bearing the marks of ley viiij was examined, no cartacuenta showing the separation required by ley x was opened, no year's accounts of the Chilean retention under ley xj or of the 212,000-ducat situado were traced, and no prosecution of a governor of Havana under ley xij was found. The text was not collated against the 1681 first impression, which this corpus also holds, nor against any archival original of the cédulas the margins cite, and the cross-reference in ley x to libro II título XXXII ley 52 was not followed. The entry shows what the law required and gives no evidence about compliance.", "sources": [ "recopilacion-1791-libro-viii-titulo-xxx-integridad-del-tesoro" ], "confidence": 0.9 } ], "takeaways": [], "faqs": [], "evidence_tier": "primary", "evidence": { "level": "industry_observation", "source_types": [ "paper" ] }, "moat_flag": true, "winning_edge": "Colonial silver bars survive in wrecks and museums and their stamps are read by numismatists, but the statute that prescribed the stamp is quoted nowhere this corpus has been able to check, and the English-language account of the marks is reconstructed from the objects rather than from the law. Ley viiij prints the specification: numbered from one each year, with the year, number and assayed fineness, a crown, an R below it that the law itself glosses as standing for Rey, and the place of smelting, all struck at once on the freshly finished bar, with a thirty-marco floor so no piece falls below the inventory. Beside it, ley x's flat ban on carrying private property inside the royal consignment names the very categories that were being mixed in — salaries, bienes de difuntos, the alms of the Redención de Cautivos — which is an admission as much as a rule. And ley xj is the counterpoint to the whole título: the one place where the crown ordered American money kept in America, for the reason that shipping it to Lima cost too much, with the saving netted off the 212,000-ducat situado to the pound. This entry prints all five with their dates, says that the protection given to private owners is the right to pay their own freight, and says exactly what it could not check.", "confidence": 0.85, "last_verified": "2026-10-16", "media": [], "x": {}, "canonical_url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/integridad-del-tesoro-remitido-de-las-indias", "api_url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/api/k/integridad-del-tesoro-remitido-de-las-indias.json", "jsonld": { "@context": "https://schema.org", "name": "Serial numbers on the king's silver: the 1609 law that stamped every bar with year, number, fineness and foundry, the rule that no private property might travel inside the royal consignment, and the one province ordered to keep its money", "description": "Leyes viiij to xiij of libro VIII, título XXX of the Recopilación govern what may be in a royal consignment and who may touch it. Bars are numbered from one each year and stamped with year, number, fineness, a crown, an R for Rey and the foundry; none may weigh under thirty marcos. No private property may travel inside the king's. Havana and Tierrafirme may take nothing in transit — and Chile is ordered to keep its revenue instead of sending it. Folios 610-611.", "url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/integridad-del-tesoro-remitido-de-las-indias", "license": "https://spdx.org/licenses/CC-BY-4.0.html", "dateModified": "2026-10-16", "citation": [ { "@type": "CreativeWork", "name": "Recopilación de leyes de los reynos de las Indias, libro VIII título XXX 'DEL ENVÍO DE LA REAL HACIENDA' — leyes viiij to xiij alone, from the heading of ley viiij in the lower half of the right-hand column of the printed folio 610 to the end of ley xiij in the right-hand column of folio 611: ley viiij 'Que las barras de plata del Rey se envien en la forma que se ordena' (margin 'El mismo allí á 11 de Febrero de 1609'), whose whole text reads 'LAS barras, que á Nos pertenecen, es nuestra voluntad, y mandamos que donde se labraren, y fundieren, se numeren, comenzando desde el número uno, hasta el que alcanzaren las de aquel año, poniendo luego, acabada de hacer la barra, encima de ella, el año, número, y ley, y una Corona, con una R. á la parte inferior, que dice Rey, y la parte donde se fundió, todo á un tiempo, y que no se labren barretoncillos tan pequeños, que tengan ménos de treinta marcos: y asimismo que la plata menuda de piezas numeradas, habiendo puesto á cada una la misma marca, se trayga en Caxones'; ley x 'Que con la hacienda Real no venga inclusa otra ninguna' (margin 'D. Felipe II allí á 16 de Noviembre de 1588. D. Felipe III en Valladolid á 4 de Agosto de 1603. En Balsain á 5 de Septiembre de 1609. En Madrid á 1 de Abril de 1612'), whose whole text reads 'MAndamos á nuestros Oficiales, que no remitan á estos Reynos ninguna hacienda de personas particulares, junta, é inclusa con la nuestra: y la que hubiéremos hecho merced, librado, ó concedido en renta, dén, y entreguen á los que la debieren recibir, ó á sus mandatarios, para que la traygan por su cuenta, y que así se guarde, aunque sea procedida de condenaciones hechas por el Consejo, salarios, bienes de difuntos, Redencion de Cautivos, ú otra, de qualquier calidad que sea, y hagan division, y separacion en las Cartascuentas, como se contiene en la ley 52. tít. 32. lib. 2. y otras de este libro'; ley xj 'Que los Oficiales Reales de Chile retengan lo procedido de pulperías, y otras rentas, y no lo remitan á Lima' (margin 'D. Felipe IIII allí á 15 de Noviembre de 1633'), whose whole text reads 'ORdenamos á los Oficiales de nuestra Real hacienda de las Provincias de Chile, que retengan para la paga de la gente de Guerra, que allí nos sirviere, lo que procediere de licencias, y arrendamientos de las pulperías, y otras qualesquier rentas que á Nos pertenezcan, porque se excuse la costa, y riesgo de traerlo á Lima cada año, y que avisen á los Contadores de Cuentas, y Oficiales Reales de Lima, para que tanto ménos remitan de la situacion de los doscientos y doce mil ducados consignados para la paga de la gente de guerra, en que pondrán particular cuidado'; ley xij 'Que los Gobernadores de la Habana no tomen ningun dinero del que viniere en las Armadas, y Flotas' (margin 'D. Felipe III en Barajas á 10 de Marzo de 1604'), whose whole text reads 'MAndamos á nuestros Gobernadores de la Habana, que en ninguna forma tomen de la hacienda nuestra, ó de particulares, que se traxere en reales en Armadas, y Flotas ninguna partida, con apercibimiento, que se procederá contra ellos'; and ley xiij 'Que los Oficiales de Tierrafirme no tomen cosa alguna de la hacienda, que se les remite del Perú' (margin 'D. Felipe II en el Pardo á 10 de Octubre de 1565'), whose whole text reads 'NUestros Oficiales de Tierrafirme no tomen, ni paguen ninguna cantidad, ni otra cosa de nuestra Real hacienda, que se les remite de las Provincias del Perú, no obstante qualquier órden que tengan en contrario, y paguen las libranzas, y consignaciones de los almojarifazgos, que allí cobraren, y de la demas hacienda nuestra, que fuere á su cargo, y no se enviare del Perú, y así se guarde'", "url": "https://books.google.com/books?id=Lt41mzCz8zEC&pg=PA611" } ], "@type": "Article", "headline": "Serial numbers on the king's silver: the 1609 law that stamped every bar with year, number, fineness and foundry, the rule that no private property might travel inside the royal consignment, and the one province ordered to keep its money" } }