Introduction

Abstract

This is a study about resistance and obedience in mid-seventeenth-century Castile and the nature of the state that people were either resisting or obeying. Usually they were doing both, and that, in large part, is the point: Resistance was framed by the language of obedience; indeed, few of the figures in this study would have admitted they were resisting authority. Much of the study concerns institutions, for it was the tools of litigation, jurisdiction, and legal precedent that enabled individuals and corporations successfully to resist the Crown. The very structures of old-regime Castile provided them with the means for challenging royal orders.