Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. I.djvu/106

Ixxxviii INTRODUCTION. INTROD. Their immu- nities. source of disquietude.^ No baron could be divested of his fief, unless by public sentence of the Justipe and the cortes. The proprietor, however, was re- quired, as usual, to attend the king in council, and to perform military service, when summoned, during two months in the year, at his own charge.^" The privileges, both honorary and substantial, enjoyed by the ricos hombreSy were very consider- able. They filled the highest posts in the state. They originally appointed judges in their domains for the cognizance of certain civil causes, and over a class of their vassals exercised an unlimited crimi- nal jurisdiction. They were excused from taxation except in specified cases ; were exempted from all corporal and capital punishment ; nor could they be imprisoned, although their estates might be seques- trated, for debt. A lower class of nobility styled infanzones, equivalent to the Castilian hidalgos, to- gether with the cabaUeros, or knights, were also possessed of important though inferior immunities.'^ The king distributed among the great barons the territory reconquered from the Moors, in proportions 9 Asso y Manuel, Instituciones, pp. 39, 40. — Blancas, Commen- tarii, pp. 333, 334, 340. — Fueros y Observancias del Reyno de Ara- gon, (Zaragoza, 1667,) torn. i. fol. 130. — The ricos hojyibrcs, thus created by the monarch, were styled de mesnada, eignifyinjr "of the household." It was lawful for a rico homhre to bequeath his hon- ors towliichsoever of his legitimate children he might prefer, and, in default of issue, to his nearest of kin. He was bound to distribute the bulk of his estates in fiefs among his knights, so that a com- plete system of sub-infeudation was estaldished. The knights, on re- storing their fiefs, might change their suzerains at pleasure. '0 Asso y Manuel, Instituciones, p. 41. —Blancas, Commentarii, pp. 307, 322, 331. 11 Fueros y Observancias, torn, i. fol. 130. — Martel, Forma de Celebrar Cortes en Aragon, (Zara- goza, 1641,) p. 98. — Blancas, Commentarii, pp. 306, 312-317, 323, 360. — Asso y Manuel, Insti- tuciones, pp. 40-43.