Which province, and who was excused: the residence duty of the encomendero closes with an exemption for the King's own councillors
The chapter that makes residence a condition of holding an encomienda ends with two awkward questions. Where does a man with encomiendas in distant provinces live? And what of the councillors of the Council of the Indies, who were sometimes given encomiendas for their services and could not leave Madrid? The answer is that the grant itself dispenses them, because the prince who made it knew their occupation — the enforcers of the rule exempted by the act of being rewarded.
Why this wins its question: Accounts of the encomienda in English reach the residence duty as a rule and stop there: the encomendero had to live in the province, marry and build, on pain of losing the grant. The closing paragraphs of the chapter that states that rule are not in circulation at all, and they are where it is qualified. This object prints them. One half answers a question any careful reader of the rule will ask and no summary answers — where a man lives when his grants are in distant provinces — and answers it with a standard of the place's need rather than the holder's convenience. The other half is the passage a triumphalist account would cut and a hostile one would quote without its reasoning: the councillors of the Council of the Indies, the body that enforced the duty, were dispensed from it by the very act of being given an encomienda, and the argument for that is set out here in full, from the canon law of canons attending their bishop, so that a reader can judge it rather than be told about it. Between the two sits the sentence that makes the object honest in both directions: the author's own admission that the cédula of 1619 on pensioners "en todas partes se guarda mal", written by a man who sat on the Council, with his reason for not pressing it. The object is also explicit that it names no councillor, no encomienda and no sum, because the page names none.
Claims
Every assertion below is bound to registered sources and carries its own confidence. Weight them; do not treat the page as uniformly authoritative.
The fourth and last question of the chapter is a practical one, and the way it is posed shows two distinct causes of the problem. At §38 of libro III, capítulo XXVII of Juan de Solórzano Pereira's Política Indiana, "Lo quarto, y último, se puede, y suele dudar en esta materia, en qué Provincia ha de residir el Encomendero, que como muchas veces acontece, ò yà por dispensacion Real, ó yà por ser cortas las Encomiendas, tiene dos, ò mas, en partes distantes?" Scattered holdings arose either because the crown had expressly allowed them or because a single grant was too small to live on, and the second reason is the more revealing of the two.
The answer is taken from the law of benefices and it is a standard of purpose rather than a mechanical rule. The same paragraph continues that, using the example of benefices even where parochial and united, "digo que debe residir, y hacer su vecindad, en la que fuere mas pingue, y estimable, ò en la que à él le pareciere, atendiendo à mirar por el cumplimiento de sus obligaciones en todas, lo mejor que pudiere, y à no desamparar, la que viere, que necesita mas de su asistencia, cuidado, y buen govierno, de que tenemos muchas declaraciones de Cardenales, que refieren à la letra Nicolas Garcia, y otros, y son dignos de verse los lugares, que para otro semejante intento junta, y pondera nuestro Politico Bobadilla." He may choose the richest, or whichever he prefers, but he may not abandon the one that most needs him — the duty is owed to the place, and the criterion named is the place's need rather than the holder's convenience.
A separate class of beneficiary is then dealt with, and the common law answer is that they owe no residence at all. At §39 "Y en quanto à los que no tienen Encomiendas, sino Pensiones, repito lo que déxo dicho en el Cap. IV. de este Libro: conviene à saber, que de Derecho Comun, si los querémos nivelar por la regla de los Pensionarios de los Beneficios, no están obligados à residir." A pension was an assignment of income out of an encomienda to someone who was not the encomendero, and on the analogy of the pensioners of benefices it carried no duty to live anywhere.
The crown overrode that, and the author then says in plain words that the override was not obeyed. The same paragraph: "Pero por una Cedula particular de el año de 1619, de que alli hice mencion, se les manda, que residan, como si fueran Encomenderos por las razones, que en ella se contienen. Lo qual en todas partes se guarda mal, y Yo entiendo, que no ay que insistir mucho en ello, como se gasten, y destribuyan los frutos, ò rentas, que de estas Pensiones se cobraren, en las mismas Provincias, en que se ganan." A senior officer of the Council of the Indies writes that a royal order is everywhere badly kept, that he does not think it worth pressing, and states the interest he thinks is really at stake: that the money be spent in the province that produced it. The admission is the most quotable sentence in the passage and it cuts against the treatise's own subject.
The compiled law took the stricter line, and the 1736 editor records it in an asterisked note that closes §39. "En la ley 30. tit. 9. lib. 6. de la Recop. se manda, que el Pensionario haga vecindad, y saque confirmacion como el Encomendero. Veanse las leyes 28. y siguientes, tit. 8. lib. 6. Recop." The pensioner was to settle and to obtain confirmation exactly as the encomendero did. What the treatise says was badly kept is what the Recopilación nonetheless enacted, and the two statements sit on the same page.
The chapter then closes with the exemption that a defensive account of this material would leave out, and it is stated by the author himself as the remate of the chapter. At §40 "Y para remate de este Capitulo, añado, que los Consejeros del Real, y Supremo Consejo de las Indias, à quienes algunas veces con particular dispensacion Real, y por remuneracion de sus buenos, y loables servicios, se dán Encomiendas por el mismo hecho de dárselas el Principe, que sabe su ocupacion, es visto dispensarles en la carga de esta residencia de que tratamos, como en un caso semejante lo dixo un texto tan vulgar como célebre." The councillors who sat in Madrid over the government of the Indies could be given American encomiendas as a reward, and the very act of granting one dispensed the holder from the duty of living on it, because the prince who granted it knew he could not.
The reasoning is then widened into a general doctrine about royal service, and its reach is explicitly limited in Spain. At §41 "A que añado, que siempre los Consejeros, por lo que sirven, y asisten à su Rey, son tenidos, y reputados por presentes en todo, lo que les puede ser util, como lo dicen, y prueban Boerio, Paponio, Copino, Bleyniano, y otros, que aun lo estiende à que como tales ganen las Prebendas, y Beneficios Eclesiasticos, que tuvieren, aunque requieran residencia personal, y lo que es mas, aun lo estiendan à las distribuciones quotidianas, y para esto traen muchos Arrestos, y Parlamentos de Francia. Pero en España, solo se les concede este Privilegio à los Consejeros de la Suprema, y General Inquisicion, como lo toca D. Vicente Turtureto." A man serving the king is deemed present wherever presence would profit him; the French parlements extended the fiction as far as the daily distributions, and in Spain, the author says, only the councillors of the Suprema enjoyed it in that form.
The justification is finally drawn from canon law, and the analogy chosen is an exact one. At §42 "Y no se debe estrañar, que Consejeros, que asisten al Rey, gocen de esta dispensacion, de que voy tratando, pues vemos, que el Derecho Canonico permite, que los Canonigos, que asistieren al servicio, y ministerio de su Obispo, y Prelado, por lo menos dos, gocen enteramente los frutos de sus Prebendas, y sean tenidos por presentes, y residentes. Y aun Nicolás Garcia añade, que tambien por esta misma causa pueden ganar las distribuciones quotidianas, haviendo costumbre de ello, porque es muy justa." Two canons attending their bishop draw the fruits of their prebends as though resident; by the same reasoning a councillor attending his king draws the fruits of his encomienda. The exemption is not presented as a privilege of power but as an ordinary rule of service law, and that is precisely what makes it worth recording.
What this entry establishes and what it does not. It establishes that the standard treatise on the government of Spanish America resolved the case of an encomendero holding scattered grants by requiring residence in the richest or in one of his choosing, subject to not abandoning the one most in need of him; that holders of pensions rather than encomiendas owed no residence at common law, that a particular cédula of 1619 ordered them to reside as if they were encomenderos, that the author states this order was everywhere badly kept and says he does not think it worth pressing so long as the income is spent in the province, and that ley 30 of título 9, libro 6 of the Recopilación nonetheless required the pensioner to settle and take out confirmation; and that councillors of the Real y Supremo Consejo de las Indias who were granted encomiendas in remuneration of their services were held to be dispensed from residence by the act of the grant itself, on the canon-law analogy of canons attending their bishop. It establishes nothing about how many councillors held encomiendas, where, or what they were worth: not one holder is named and not one figure appears. The cédula of 1619 is referred back to libro III capítulo IV of the same work, which was not read for this entry, and neither it nor any law of the Recopilación was opened in its own printing. Whether the dispensation was in fact used, and by whom, is not on these pages, and this entry does not assert it either way.