In Castile, from the end of the thir teenth century, the popular estamento made rapid strides towards increasing its influence, being favoured in this by some kings or pretenders to the crown, such as Sancho IV. and Enrique II., or taking advantage of disputed successions and stormy minorities, to obtain from one of the contending parties an extension of their privileges. In 1295 the deputies of thirty-two towns and boroughs of Castile and Leon assembled at Valladolid, and entered into a confederacy to defend their mutual rights against both the crown and the nobles. Among many other resolutions, one was, that each of the thirty-two constituencies should send two deputies every two years to meet about Pentecost at or some other place, in order to enforce the observance of their agreement. In 1315, during the fright ful confusion which attended the minority of Alonso XI., we find another con federacy between the nobles and the pro curadores of 100 communities, with a similar clause as to deputies meeting once or twice every year. These meetings of deputies for special purposes ought not to be confounded with the general cortes of the kingdom, which were always con- , yoked by the king, though at no fixed times. Enrique IL, having revolted against his brother Pedro the Cruel, courted the support of the municipal towns, which at the cortes of 1367 de manded the admission de jure of twelve deputies into the royal council, which had till then consisted of hereditary nobles and prelates, with occasionally some civilian called in by the king. Enrique promised to comply with their request ; but his brother's death having ensured his seat on the throne, he evaded the fulfilment of his promise by creating an Audiencia Real, or high court of appeal, consisting of prelates and civilians, and a criminal court of eight alcaldes chosen from different provinces of the kingdom. Juan I., who succeeded him, after the loss of the battle of Aljubarrota, created a new council in 1385, consisting of four bishops, four nobles, and four citizens, with extensive executive powers. The towns next solicited the dismissal of the bishops and nobles from the council, in order that it should consist entirely of citizens ; but Juan rejected the demand. They also contrived at times to exclude the privileged orders from the cortes. Marina says that the privileged orders themselves, having lost much of their influence, abstained from attending the cortes; yet it is certain that although money might be voted without them, for the simple reason that they were exempt from taxation, the third estate alone pay ing all direct taxes, yet nothing else of importance could be decided without their concurrence. Although members of the privileged orders should not attend, they might be represented by proxy, as was the case in Aragon. Besides, the cortes were not all of one sort; there were general or solemn cortes, and especial cortes, for some particular purpose. Juan appointed by his testament six prelates and nobles as guardians of his infant son Enrique III., who were not, however, to decide in any important affair without the concurrence of six deputies, one from each of the cities of Burgos, Toledo, Leon, Seville, Cordova, and Murcia. The fourteenth century seems to have been the brightest period of popular or more properly municipal representation in Spam. The cortes were frequent, and the subject of their deliberations of the most important nature. But Spain had never a definite representation ; to no meeting of this period did all or half the great towns send deputies; and those which did return them appear to have observed little proportion in the numbers. There can be no doubt that two ought to have been returned from each ; yet in the cortes of Madrid, in 1390, we find that Burgos and Salamanca sent eight each, while the more important cities of Seville and Cordova sent only three ; Cadiz only two ; Oviedo and Badajos one ; Santiago, Orense, Mondonedo, and other great cities of Galicia sent none at all. In fact, only forty-eight places returned deputies to these cortes, and the number, at the most, was inconsiderable. Incidentally we learn that in the assemblies of this period the archbishop of Toledo spoke for the eccle siastical state, and the chief of the house of Lars for the nobles. Some of thJ deputies contended for the precedence in voting, as well as for that of seats. This rivalry was more conspicuous between Burgos and Toledo, until Alonso XL found the means of settling it. "The deputies of Toledo," said the king in the midst of the assembly, " will do what ever I order them, and in their name, I say, let those of Burgos speak." The municipal corporations could boast of something more than the honour of re turning deputies, an honour to which many of them were perfectly indifferent. Their condition was far superior to that of the seignorial towns, which for the most part groaned under the oppressions of the nobles. (Dunham, History of Spain and Portugal, b. iii. sect. 3, ch. ii.) The remonstrances or petitions of the general tortes to the king generally be gan as follows :—" The prelates, lords, and caballeros of the kingdoms of Castile and Leon, in the name of the three estates of the kingdom," &c. Remonstrances from the deputies of the towns began :— " Most high and powerful prince ! your very humble vassals, subjects, and ser vants, the deputies of the towns and bo roughs of your kingdoms, who are as sembled in your presence by your order," &c. (Cortes of Valladolid, June, 1420.) In the cortes of 1402, Enrique III. demanded for his wars with the Moors a supply of 60,000,000 maravedis, but the deputies granted only 45,000,000. The king then proposed that if the money should be found insufficient, he might be alloived to raise the deficiency by a loan without convoking the cortes afresh for the purpose. To this the majority of the deputies assented. By his testament En rique excluded the citizens from the Council of Regency during the minority, of his son Juan H., and after this they were no longer admitted into the royal council. Thus the municipal towns lost a great advantage which they had gained thirty years before under Juan I. Th soon after sacrificed, of their own accord, their elective franchises. The expenses of the deputies to the cortes had been till then defrayed by the towns, but now having lost their influence at court by their exclusion from the royal council, the towns began to complain of their burthen.
Juan II. listened attentively to their com plaints, and in the cortes of Ocana, 1422, he proposed that the future expenses of the deputies should be defrayed out of the royal treasury, a proposal which was willingly accepted. Accordingly, in the next cortes, 12 cities only, Burgos, Toledo, Leon, Zamora, Seville, Cordova, Murcia, Jaen, Segovia, Avila, Salamanca, and Cuenca, were summoned to send their deputation ; some other towns were in formed that they might entrust their powers to any deputy from the above. The privilege was subsequently extended to six more cities ; Valladolid, Toro, Soria, Madrid, Guadalaxara, and Gra nada. These eighteen places constituted henceforth the whole representation of the kingdoms of Castile, Leon, Galicia, and Andalusia. The other communities at last perceiving the advantage they had lost, petitioned to be restored to their right, but found themselves strenuously opposed by the eighteen privileged towns. The influence of the court was openly exercised in the elections of these towns, and although the cones of Valladolid in 1442, and those of Cordova in 1445, re quested the king to abstain from such interference, yet the practice became more barefaced than ever. In 1457 Enrique IV. wrote to the municipal council of Seville, pointing out two individuals fit to be deputies in the next session, and re questing they might be elected. The mu nicipal councils, which elected their own officers as well as the deputies to the cortes, were composed of all the heads of families, but by degrees the crown in terfered in the appointment of the mu nicipal officers. [AYUNTAMIENTO.] Thus long before Charles I. (the em peror Charles V.), who has been generally accused of having destroyed the liberties of Spain, the popular branch of the repro. sentation was already reduced to a sha dow, for the deputies of the eighteen cities, elected by court influence, were mere registrars of the royal decrees, and ready voters of the supplies demanded of them. Under Ferdinand. and Isabella the royal authority became more extended and firmly established by the subjection of the privileged orders ; the turbulent no. bles were attacked in their castles, which were razed by hundreds, and the Santa Hermandad hunted the proprietors throughout the country. Many of the grants by former kings were revoked, and the proud feudatories were tamed into submissive courtiers.
Charles only finished the work by ex cluding the privileged orders from the cortes altogether, he and his successors contenting themselves with convoking the deputies of the eighteen royal cities of the crown of Castile on certain solemn occasions, to register their decrees, to ao knowledge the prince of Asturias as heir apparent to the throne, to swear allegiance to a new prince. The policy of abso lutism has been the same in all countries of Europe : it has used the popular power against the aristocracy, in order to re duce and destroy both in the end.
In Aragon, Valencia, and Catalonia, which formed the dominions of the crown of' Aragon, the cortes of each of these three states continued to assemble under Charles I. and his successors of the Aus trian dynasty, who convoked them in their accustomed manner by brazos or orders, and they maintained some show of independence, although in reality much reduced in importance after Philip II. had abolished the office of the Justiza. But after the War of the Succession, Philip V. of Bourbon formally abolished the cortes of these states by right of con quest, as he expressed it, because they had taken part with his rival the Arch duke Charles.
In 1808, when the Spanish people rose in every province against the invasion of Napoleon, the king was a prisoner in France, after having been obliged by threats to abdicate the crown, and the na tion was without a government. Muni cipal juntas were formed in•everypro vine, consisting of deputies taken from the various orders or classes of society, nobles, clergymen, proprietors, merchants, &c. These juntas sent deputies to form a central junta, with executive powers for the Feneral affairs of the country, but a legislature was still wanting. The central junta was called upon to assemble the cortes for all Spain. They at first thought of reviving the ancient cortes by estamentos or brazos, but many diffi culties presented themselves. The dif ference of formation between the old cortes of Aragon and those of Castile ; the difficulty of applying those forms to the American possessions of Spain, which were now, for the first time, admitted to equal rights with the mother country, but where the same elements of society did not exist. at least not in the same propor tion; the difficulty even in Spain of col lecting a legitimate representation of the various orders, while most of the pro vinces were occupied or overrun by French armies, and while many of the nobility and the higher clergy had ac knowledged the intrusive king Joseph Napoleon ; all these, added to the altered state of public opinion, the long dis continuance of the old cortes by orders or estates, the diminished influence of the old nobility, and the creation of a new nobility during the latter reigns merely through court favour, made the original plan appear impracticable. The situation of the country was in fact without a paral lel in hrstory. The central junta con sulted the consejo (reunido) or commis sion of magistrates, from the old higher courts of the kingdom, who proposed to assemble deputies of the various brazos or estamentos, all to form one house, a pro posal extremely vague and apparently impracticable, which looks as if made to elude the question. Jovellanos and others then proposed two houses, consti tutPd as in England; but this would also have been a new creation without pre cedent in Spain, and surrounded by many difficulties, the state of society being greatly different in the two countries. Meantime the central junta being driven away by the French, first from Madrid, and afterwards from Seville, in January, 1810, took refuge at Cadiz, which became the capital of the Spanish patriots, whither a number of persons from the various provinces and classes had flocked. Before leaving Seville, the central junta issued regulations addressed to the pro vincial juntas about the manner of elect ing the deputies to the cortes, stating at the end that "similar letters of convoca tion would be addressed to the repre sentatives of the ecclesiastical brazo and of the nobility." 'rids, however, was never done.