Portugal in a European context: essays

on taxation and fiscal policies in late

medieval and early modern Western
Europe, 1100-1700 Rodrigo Da Costa
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PALGRAVE STUDIES IN
THE HISTORY OF FINANCE

Portugal in a
European Context
Essays on Taxation
and Fiscal Policies
in Late Medieval
and Early Modern
Western Europe,
1100–1700

edited by
Rodrigo da Costa Dominguez
Amélia Aguiar Andrade
 Palgrave Studies in the History of Finance

Series Editors
D’Maris Coffman, Bartlett Faculty of Built Environment, University
College London, London, UK
Tony K. Moore, ICMA Centre, Henley Business School, University of
Reading, Reading, UK
Martin Allen, Department of Coins and Medals, Fitzwilliam Museum,
University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
Sophus Reinert, Harvard Business School, Cambridge, MA, USA
The study of the history of financial institutions, markets, instruments and
concepts is vital if we are to understand the role played by finance today.
At the same time, the methodologies developed by finance academics can
provide a new perspective for historical studies. Palgrave Studies in the
History of Finance is a multi-disciplinary effort to emphasise the role
played by finance in the past, and what lessons historical experiences have
for us. It presents original research, in both authored monographs and
edited collections, from historians, finance academics and economists, as
well as financial practitioners.
 Rodrigo da Costa Dominguez ·
Amélia Aguiar Andrade
Editors

Portugal
in a European Context
Essays on Taxation and Fiscal Policies in Late
Medieval and Early Modern Western Europe,
1100–1700
Editors
Rodrigo da Costa Dominguez Amélia Aguiar Andrade
Interdisciplinary Centre of Social Institute of Medieval
Sciences Studies—NOVA FCSH
University of Minho Nova University of Lisbon
Braga, Portugal Lisboa, Portugal

ISSN 2662-5164 ISSN 2662-5172 (electronic)

Palgrave Studies in the History of Finance
ISBN 978-3-031-06226-1 ISBN 978-3-031-06227-8 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-06227-8

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 Foreword

For millennia, states have been preoccupied with their own formation
in contexts of threats to security, internal conflicts with aristocratic and
urban, ecclesiastical hierarchies with rebellions, peasantries and a need to
integrate diverse populations into polities of compliant subjects. Histo-
ries of when, how and why between 1453 and 1815 hundreds of ruling
regime and elites from all parts of Europe were conquered by rivals
or merged by agreements (often cemented by dynastic marriages) into
empires, dominions, realms, princedoms, churches, republics and cities
fill university libraries.
Led by North’s restoration of insights first elaborated by the German
historical school, the dominant concern for the modern generation of
economic historians has been to investigate connexions between insti-
tutions and long-run economic development. As economists, they have
unfortunately remained under-informed about the origins and evaluation
of promotional, neural and malign states behind the constructions, main-
tenance and political destruction of the institutions selected by economic
theory as preconditions for the supply of three indispensable public goods
for private investment, the extension of markets and innovation—namely,
external security, internal order and protection from predation.
Nevertheless, the reorientation of economic history to accord a central
weight to institutions has implied a re-engagement with traditions of
political history concerned with state formation. Attempts by economists
to cut out or through that body of scholarship by resorting to analyses

v
vi FOREWORD

based on rational choice, rent-seeking behaviour by elites’ constitutions

for freedom exposés of the logical errors of mercantilism and the futility
of warfare could only be dismissed by historians as ontologically superfi-
cial and by econometricians (as the frontiers of that enticing discipline) as
theoretically naïve.
Economic historians have anticipated that a middle range of grounded
generations about paths and patterns of state formation could emerge
(as Schumpeter suggested) from comparative investigations into path-
dependent variations in the relative fiscal and financial capacities of
European states to fund the provision of external securities, internal order
and political stability required for the formation and operation of an
interrelated set of institutions required to promote and sustain economic
growth over long spans of time.
To date, such comparisons have been limited to a small sample of states
that happen to have preserved records of amounts of taxes, loans and
credits that some central governments assessed and borrowed as funds
available to spend for purposes that can be retrospectively recognised as
promotional for the growth of economies. Furthermore, most publica-
tions on the “rise of Europe’s fiscal and financial states” not only exclude
important countries such as Portugal and major provinces of modern-
day Italy, but work with a chronology that virtually ignores the medieval
foundations of European states.
The editors of this volume are to be thanked and congratulated by
those of us who have explored the tax revenues, loans, credits and fiscal
institutions for later centuries, that possess both data we have fortunate
enough to access, and primary sources for the study of institutions. Their
evidence reveals that their origins can be traced back to the Middle Ages.
Narratives comparing the rise, decline and disappearance of European
states that neglect influences, developments and divergences that origi-
nated in this period are seriously under-specified. All the essays in this
book go a long way towards repairing the intellectual myopias of trun-
cated chronologies and expertly qualify our views on the formation of
European states and Portugal’s insertion in this context.

London, UK Patrick K. O’Brien, FBA

Professor Emeritus
of the University of London
 FOREWORD vii

Patrick K. O’Brien is Centennial Professor of Global Economic History at the

London School of Economics (retired). He was Director from 1990–1998 of
the Institute of Historical Research and before that Reader in Economic History
and Professorial Fellow of St. Antony’s College, Oxford. His research interests
include world trade, technology and historiographical traditions; historiographical
traditions in the construction of global economic history; the evolution of inter-
continental trade from Roman Empire to 1846; macro inventions and macro
inventors in English cotton textiles from Kay to Cartwright; the economics
of European expansion overseas from the conquest of Ceuta to the Impe-
rian Meridian; the formation and efficiency of fiscal states in Europe and Asia
1500–1914.
 Contents

Introduction 1
Amélia Aguiar Andrade and Rodrigo da Costa Dominguez

Medieval and Early Modern Portuguese State Finances:

Sources and Evidence
The Study of Medieval Fiscal History in Portugal: Results
and Problems (1951–2020) 17
Amélia Aguiar Andrade
The Collection of Annates in Portugal During the Papacy
of Avignon, c. 1316–1377: Just Another Case of Apostolic
Tax-Collecting in a Realm at the Back of Beyond? 45
Mário Farelo
Is the Economy an Issue? Kings and Economic Legislation
in Medieval Portugal 67
Hermínia Vasconcelos Vilar
A Difficult Transition: Portuguese State Finances Between
Later Medieval and Early Modern Times, c. 1415–1530 91
Rodrigo da Costa Dominguez

ix
x CONTENTS

Taxes and Fiscal Institutions in a Maritime Empire,

15th–16th Centuries: A Comparative View of Overseas’
Territories Under the Portuguese Crown 115
Susana Münch Miranda
Portugal in a Broader Perspective: The Later Middle Ages
and Some Remarks for a Transition Towards the Early
Modern Period 139
Amélia Aguiar Andrade and Rodrigo da Costa Dominguez

The Development of State Finance: Portugal in European

Context
Introduction—Constructing the Modern Fiscal States:
Ruptures, Changes, and Permanencies 151
Rodrigo da Costa Dominguez and Tony K. Moore
The ‘Resource Curse’ of Mediaeval English State Finance,
C.1155–1453 159
Tony K. Moore
A History of Taxation in the Kingdom of France (Twelfth
to Fifteenth Centuries): Policies, Rules and Practices 177
Florent Garnier
Fiscal Tradition and Innovation in Italy, 1350–1650 201
Luciano Pezzolo
A Treasury in Transition: Changes and Continuity
in the Management of Castilian State Finances During
the Reign of Isabella I (1474–1504) 219
Pablo Ortego Rico
Public Debt in Late Medieval Crown of Aragon: A(Nother)
Financial Revolution? 247
Albert Reixach Sala and Pere Verdés Pijuan
Why Holland Had a Financial Revolution, but Flanders
and Brabant Did not 279
Marjolein ’t Hart
 CONTENTS xi

Public Finance and Fiscal Policy. The Papal States in Early

Modern Age 299
Fausto Piola Caselli
Portugal and the Europe: Similarities, Bridges
and Potential Avenues to Explore in Future Works
on Comparative Fiscal History 325
Rodrigo da Costa Dominguez and Amélia Aguiar Andrade
 Notes on Contributors

Andrade Amélia Aguiar is Full Professor in Medieval History at the

Faculty of Social and Human Sciences, New University of Lisbon (NOVA
FCSH). She has held numerous scientific and university positions, in
Portugal and abroad, being recently accepted in the College of Expert
Reviewers of the European Science Foundation (ESF). Since 2011, she
has been Director of the Mario Sottomayor Cardia library and the NOVA
FCSH Documentation Centers and, since 2016, the National coordinator
of DARIAH—Description the Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts
and Humanities and the ROSSIO’s Infrastructure Representative. She is
also a member of the Scientific Council of NOVA FCSH, including the
vice-presidency from 2006 to 2008. From 2009 to 2012, she was Vice-
Dean of the Faculty of Social and Human Sciences at the Universidade
Nova de Lisboa (NOVA FCSH), for which she received a public praise
[DR nº 7599/2012]. She was the coordinator of the doctoral course in
history of NOVA FCSH (2011–2013), as well as the coordinator of the
doctoral course in medieval studies within the framework of a partnership
between NOVA FCSH and Universidade Aberta (2016–2018). Amélia
Aguiar Andrade also headed the Institute of Medieval Studies of the same
faculty between 2011 and 2016. Among her international curriculum, it’s
to highlight that she chaired Scientific Committee of the European Asso-
ciation for Urban History (2012–2014). During her career, she received
4 awards and honours. Her research areas are related to medieval urban
history, the study of spaces and powers in the Middle Ages and their forms

xiii
xiv NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

of articulation, as well as to the exploration of medieval royal inquiries as

a privileged source of treatment for these themes.
Caselli Fausto Piola is Professor of Economic History at the University
of Cassino and Meridional Lazio, in Italy. He has researched the papal
financial network in the late Middle Ages, with particular attention to
state balance sheets and to the development of public accounting. He has
also dealt with public finances in the early modern period, focusing on
the creation of national public debts and the development of tax systems
in a comparative perspective. He edited Government Debts and Financial
Markets in Europe (2008).
Dominguez Rodrigo da Costa was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Grad-
uated in History from the University Center of Belo Horizonte, Minas
Gerais (2001), MA in Medieval and Renaissance Studies (2006) and
PhD in History (2013) both from the Faculty of Arts of the Univer-
sity of Porto. He is currently Junior Research Associate and Director
of the Interdisciplinary Center of Social Sciences (CICS.NOVA) at the
University of Minho, in Braga, Portugal. He is also a member of interna-
tional economic, fiscal and social history associations in Portugal, Spain,
Brazil, Latin America and the United States, being also President of the
Economic and Business History Society (EBHS—USA) for the mandate
2022–2023.
His main areas of study have been: Economic and Fiscal History of
Portugal in the long run (15th–19th centuries); Portugal’s trade and
shipping in the modern times; the impact of modern European conflicts,
as the War of the Spanish Succession and Napoleonic Wars, on the
Portuguese economic diplomacy between the seventeenth and nineteenth
centuries, as well as the building and consolidation of economic and fiscal
institutions in Portugal.
He was Visiting Scholar at Appalachian State University (North
Carolina, USA) during the Fall Semester 2016, and is referee of Medieval
and Early Modern History Journals and Economic History Journals in
Portugal, Brazil and the United States.
Farelo Mário is Postdoctoral Research Fellow on the ERC-funded
project VINCULUM: Entailing Perpetuity: Family, Power, Identity.
The Social Agency of a Corporate Body (Southern Europe, 14th–
17th Centuries) [agreement ID 819734]. He also developed between
2009 and 2014 a Postdoctoral Project at the Institute for Medieval
 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xv

Studies (NOVA FCSH), Centre of Religious History Studies (Portuguese

Catholic University) and LAMOP (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne
and CNRS) concerning the kingdom of Portugal and the interventionism
of the Papacy of Avignon (1305–1377). His research relies on the insti-
tutional study of the entailment information system in Portugal (14th to
17th centuries), along with the history of the relations between the realm
of Portugal and the Papacy of Avignon; the history of Medieval Lisbon;
ecclesiastical, urban and cultural history of medieval Portugal.
Garnier Florent is Professor of the History of Law and Institutions
at Toulouse 1 at the Faculty of Law, member of the Center Toulou-
sain d’Histoire du Droit et des Idées Politiques (CTHDIP) laboratory
(2018). Aggregate in economics and administrative management. Aggre-
gate in Law. He was also Professor of legal history at the University of
Auvergne-Clermont 1 (2006). His current research focuses on medieval
urban institutions, taxation in the Middle Ages (learned rights and prac-
tice), commercial doctrine (19th–20th centuries), norms, cultural heritage
law.
Miranda Susana Münch is Assistant Professor in the History Depart-
ment at Nova University of Lisbon. Her current research interests
comprise Colonial Governance (Iberian Empires), Fiscal History and
Business History. With Leonor Freire Costa and Pedro Lains, she is
the author of An Economic History of Portugal, 1143–2010 (Cambridge,
Cambridge University Press, 2016).
Moore Tony K. is Lecturer in Finance at the ICMA Centre. He is
Programme Director of the MSc in Financial Regulation, a part-time
degree for practising regulators offered in collaboration with the Financial
Conduct Authority. He is currently the programme director of the MA by
Research in Economic History in the Centre for Economic History and
has taught for the Graduate Centre for Medieval Studies and the Depart-
ment of History. His chief research areas are the history of finance and
medieval history—and especially the history of finance during the Middle
Ages. Other interests include contemporary perceptions of finance, the
social utility of finance and the history of regulation.
Ortego Rico Pablo is Assistant Professor in the Medieval History Area
at the University of Málaga, Spain. Graduated in History from the
Complutense University of Madrid in 2007, with a specialisation in
Medieval History, he obtained the Extraordinary Degree Award and the
xvi NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Third National Degree Award for the 2006/2007 academic year. Univer-
sity Specialist in Archives from the UNED, between 2013 and 2015 he
carries out his professional activity as Archives Technician at the Library
of the Spanish Royal Academy of History. He has carried out research
stays at the “Simancas History Institute” of the University of Valladolid,
the CIHAM-UMRS 5648 Laboratory of the University of Lyon II (ENS
/ LSH—CNRS—University of Lyon II), and the “Istituto Internazionale
di Storia Economica Francesco di Marco Datini” from Prato (Italy).
Pezzolo Luciano is Associate Professor of Modern History at the Depart-
ment of Humanities of Ca’ Foscari University, in Venice. He has his
PhD in Economic History from Milan—Bocconi, 1989. Researcher in
Economic History at the Faculty of Economics of Ca’ Foscari (1993–
2006), he has been Visiting Scholar at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes
en Sciences Sociales in Paris and the Department of Economics of
the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (USA). He was also
Fernand Braudel Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence.
He is a member of the editorial board of Acta Histriae. His main
fields of interest are military institutions and financial structures in
medieval and early modern Europe; the economic and social history
of the Republic of Venice; relations between institutions (formal and
informal) and economic dynamics in pre-industrial times. He is currently
completing a monograph entitled Mars and Pluto. War and Finance in
Italy, 1350–1700, under contract to Oxford University Press.
Reixach Sala Albert has a PhD in History at the University of Girona
(2015) with international mention and extraordinary award of the
doctoral programme on Human and Cultural Sciences, after being trained
as predoctoral researcher at the Institució Milà i Fontanals of the Spanish
National Research Council. From April 2021, he is Juan de la Cierva—
Incorporación Researcher at the Department of History of the University
of Lleida. He has been Lecturer and Postdoctoral Researcher at the
University of Girona. He has been visiting scholar at Ghent Univer-
sity and University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. His area of expertise
combines studies on several aspects of the society and economy of Late
Medieval Crown of Aragon, with a special attention to finances and local
institutions.
‘t Hart Marjolein is Head of the History Research Department of the
Huygens Institute for the History of the Netherlands in The Hague and
 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xvii

Professor of the History of State Formation in Global Perspective at VU

University Amsterdam. In 1989, she obtained her PhD degree in History
at the University of Leiden with a thesis on the rise of the fiscal-military
state of the Netherlands in the seventeenth century, supervised by Prof.
Charles Tilly (New York) and Prof. Wim Blockmans (Leiden). She was
Visiting Scholar at Trinity College Dublin, Fellow of the New School
for Social Research at New York, Fellow of the Netherlands Institute for
Advanced Studies in Wassenaar and Visiting Professor (Queen Wilhelmina
Chair) at Columbia University. She was also a member of the editorial
board of a number of periodicals, among others of the International
Review of Social History, which she chaired. Her research topics privi-
leges social and economic history, with focus on State formation, warfare
and bureaucratisation, Revolts and revolutions, Environmental history,
Institutional economic history, in particular the role of finance.
Verdés Pijuan Pere has been a tenured scientist at the CSIC’s Institución
Milà i Fontanals since 2005. PhD in Geography and History (Medieval
History) from the University of Barcelona (2004), he is currently in
charge of the line of research “Taxation and Public Finances in the Crown
of Aragon (13th–15th Centuries)”. With regard to his research subjects,
to date he has concentrated fundamentally on the study of the origins,
the structure and the evolution of the municipal tax office in Catalonia
during the Middle Ages. In relation to this subject, he has also studied
the origin of public debt, the making of the fiscal discourse and the
construction of political identity in Catalan cities from the thirteenth to
fifteenth centuries. Mention should be made of his particular interest in
the processes of urban fortification. He also directs the Critical Glossary
of Medieval Taxation, together with D. Menjot, and he belongs to the
management committee of the thematic research network “Arca Comu-
nis”, dedicated to the study of taxation in the Hispanic kingdoms since
the thirteenth century.
Vilar Hermínia Vasconcelos is Assistant Professor with Aggregation at
the University of Évora. She has published 20 articles in specialised maga-
zines and 13 works in proceedings of events, has 27 book chapters and
9 published books. Her works privilege the Humanities area with an
emphasis on History and Archaeology. In her professional activities, he
interacted with 15 collaborators in co-authorship of scientific works, priv-
ileging topics as the Portuguese Medieval elites, medieval urban history,
economic and social practices and Religiosity.
 List of Figures

The ‘Resource Curse’ of Mediaeval English State Finance,

C.1155–1453
Fig. 1 Payments made to Burgundian knights (Source Calendar
of Liberate Rolls, vol. III–V) 169

Public Finance and Fiscal Policy. The Papal States in Early

Modern Age
Fig. 1 Papal debt in the long run. Interests paid (left)
and Chamber’s incomes (right). Papal scudi. (Sources check
footnote 24) 309
Fig. 2 Yearly Chamber’ surplus and losses, 1729–1793. Papal scudi
(Sources check footnote 24) 315
Fig. 3 Financial contribution to Chamber accounts from Rome
(left) and periphery (right). Papal scudi (Sources check
footnote 24) 319

xix
 List of Tables

The Collection of Annates in Portugal During the Papacy

of Avignon, c. 1316–1377: Just Another Case of Apostolic
Tax-Collecting in a Realm at the Back of Beyond?
Table 1 Volumes of AAV, Collectoriae, with accounts of papal
collectors related to Portugal (1309–1377) 49

Taxes and Fiscal Institutions in a Maritime Empire,

15th–16th Centuries: A Comparative View of Overseas’
Territories Under the Portuguese Crown
Table 1 Madeira’s revenue (in millions réis ) 126

The ‘Resource Curse’ of Mediaeval English State Finance,

C.1155–1453
Table 1 Number of surviving membranes in the principal series
of enrolled royal records 163

Fiscal Tradition and Innovation in Italy, 1350–1650

Table 1 Graduated taxes at Florence, 1442–1481 208
Table 2 A graduated tax proposal at Florence in the 1490s 210

xxi
xxii LIST OF TABLES

A Treasury in Transition: Changes and Continuity in the

Management of Castilian State Finances During the Reign
of Isabella I (1474–1504)
Table 1 Ordinary and extraordinary income of the Castile Royal
Treasury in maravedis (1479–1504) 222
 Introduction

Amélia Aguiar Andrade

and Rodrigo da Costa Dominguez

During the second half of the twentieth century, European historiography

developed a vast and diversified set of studies of late medieval and early
modern economic history, in which those of fiscal themes were one of the
most innovative ones, engaging breakthrough aspects.1 No wonder that,
in the final decades of that century, it was possible to produce important
syntheses or comparative approaches, in which, however, Portugal was
not included.2 This is not surprising given the current state of knowl-
edge on Portuguese medieval and early modern taxation, which led to

1 Strayer (1970), Brewer (1989), Tilly (1990), Blockmans and Tilly (1994), Hoffman
and Norberg (1994), Parker (1996), Epstein (2000), Bordo and Cortés-Conde (2001),
Glete (2000, 2002) and Winch and O’Brien (2002).
2 Bonney (1995), Bonney (1999) and Ormrod et al. (1999).

A. A. Andrade (B)
Institute of Medieval Studies—NOVA FCSH, Nova University of Lisbon,
Lisbon, Portugal
e-mail: amelia.andrade@fcsh.unl.pt
R. da C. Dominguez
Interdisciplinary Centre of Social Sciences, University of Minho,
Braga, Portugal
e-mail: rcdominguez@ics.uminho.pt

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2023
R. da C. Dominguez and A. A. Andrade (eds.), Portugal
in a European Context, Palgrave Studies in the History of Finance,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-06227-8_1
2 A. A. ANDRADE AND R. DA C. DOMINGUEZ

a reading, still persistent in many other themes, that the Portuguese

medieval kingdom follows models and practices from the kingdom of
Castile, something that, however, more recent investigations have been
contradicting.
With no wish to advance a more detailed explanation of the past
situation regarding research on Portuguese medieval taxation that will
be presented in a specific chapter—put the title?—we believe that this
omission was fully justified but can be explained by different but comple-
mentary causes that are important to know. On the one hand, a scarcity
and both chronological and thematic asymmetry of the primary tax
sources then known and/or published, made the study of certain thematic
lines unfeasible, since they were limited mainly to acquittance letters
(cartas de quitação) and scarce records regarding the imposition of
extraordinary contributions.3
On the other hand, the lack of interest in economic and fiscal history
particularly in Portugal can also be explained by the consequences
of a political and ideological dictatorship that prevailed in Portugal
between 1926 and 1974, which very clearly conditioned the guide-
lines of the Portuguese historiographical production, especially regarding
medievalism. Based on an apologetic vision of the past that favored
themes such as the political autonomy of the kingdom in the twelfth
century or the discoveries made from the fifteenth century onward, the
official historiography was especially refractory to economic issues that it
tended to associate with Marxist perspectives, then strongly repressed.
Furthermore, the political isolationism of the Portuguese dictatorship
within the European framework made it difficult for researchers to make
contact with their foreign peers, contributing to their association to
tendentially nationalist perspectives.4 However, in the 1960s, there were
perceptible signs of openness, led by figures such as Virgínia Rau5 or A.
H. de Oliveira Marques,6 responsible for introducing lines of research on
economic history, in line with the guidelines then followed by French
historiography, the one to which the Portuguese academy was culturally
more connected.

3 Dominguez (2015a) and Gonçalves (1964a, 1964b).

4 Torgal (1996, pp. 241–275).
5 Fernandes (2017).
6 Marques (1962) and Homem (2007).
 INTRODUCTION 3

However, the knowledge about medieval and early modern taxation

was still mostly based on studies produced in the context of the implan-
tation of positivist historiography in Portugal in the nineteenth century7
and on publications of primary sources in an unsystematic and sometimes
late manner. Only the preliminary studies by Virgínia Rau on tax insti-
tutions such as the Casa dos Contos 8 and the early works written by Iria
Gonçalves on extraordinary taxation,9 in line with the European histo-
riography of the time, as well as the entries she prepared on taxes for a
collective work,10 contradicted the desert that was the study of medieval
taxation. Yet, none of these authors published outside Portugal, so their
work had a very limited dissemination.
The post-1974 period meant an opening up of Portuguese histori-
ography and, consequently, of Medievalism, not only regarding contacts
with the outside world, but above all to a plurality of themes and prob-
lems to which it was not easy to respond with consistency and continuity,
given how much there was to investigate, the limited human resources
available and unstable funding for university research. In this renewal
of issues and methodologies that took place from then on, fiscal history
continued to be a merely marginal topic.11 However, fiscal studies bene-
fited from the development of research strands launched at that time and
present within Portuguese Medievalism. This growth provided the disci-
pline not only with a broadening of perspectives in relation to the primary
sources that could serve to support research on fiscal themes but, above
all, promoted a renewal, eliminating the history of institutions, moving
the topic away from the exclusive view of law historians, or those resulting
from the study of urban societies and their political role in the context of
the complex of powers in question.12 The reinterpretation of Portugal’s
formation process allowed, in turn, a new way of equating the dimensions
of royal power and its strategies of affirmation throughout the medieval

7 Barros (1945–1954), reprint of the 1885 edition.

8 Rau (1951).
9 Gonçalves (1964a, 1964b).
10 Iria Gonçalves wrote 40 entries on medieval taxes for the collective work Dicionário
de História de Portugal published between 1965 and 1971. Serrão (1963–1971).
11 Read more on the chapter “The study of Medieval Fiscal History in Portugal: results
and problems (1951-2020)”.
12 Mendes (1996, pp. 277–343).
4 A. A. ANDRADE AND R. DA C. DOMINGUEZ

period, in which taxation emerged as an important element of support

and, therefore, a constant concern.13
From the end of the twentieth century onward, the consolidation
and expansion of university education and the creation of financial
support systems for research made it easier for Portuguese researchers
to participate more frequently in scientific meetings and in national and
international projects. Moreover, it enabled their integration in European
research teams, which contributed to a revival of interest in economic
history and fiscal history, which allowed the presence of studies on
medieval and early modern taxation in works published abroad14 to
become more visible since 2012. A new generation of researchers inter-
ested in economic history is being able to combine a wider and more
diversified primary information with the economic, social and political
conjunctures of the Portuguese kingdom, major theoretical lines in the
meantime developed by European historiography, thus integrating the
Portuguese case with a vision wider and more systemic, in European
terms.
The recent situation that we have just mentioned has contributed
to nuance and even sometimes to lead to opposing interpretations of
Portuguese medieval taxation as an almost mimetic of Castilian taxation.
Undoubtedly, there are common heritages shared by these two kingdoms,
such as Roman, Visigoth and Islamic, the latter still insufficiently studied
for the Portuguese case.15 Portugal and Castile also shared a common
process of territorial gains—the reconquest (Reconquista)—which had as
a corollary social and economic specificities that were transformed in the
medieval diachrony, and both starred in moments of opening to the world
beyond the Pyrenees and to the influences that came from it, albeit with
different chronologies and degrees of depth.
However, these two political units also experienced significant discrep-
ancies, such as those resulting from different territorial and social scales,
from a non-coincidental form of articulation between the powers, since
in Portugal, a more intervening presence and assertiveness from the
monarchs was more evident during much of medieval chronology. All

13 Mattoso (1985–1986).
14 Mata (2012), Dominguez (2015b), Dominguez and Carrara (2018) and Henriques
(2014, 2015, 2017, 2021).
15 Fernandes (2011).
 INTRODUCTION 5

of this, as demonstrated by José Mattoso, underpinned the counties’

political support of which they were lords and which constituted the
overwhelming majority of the kingdom’s urban network.16
Divergences that justify that lexical similarities cannot be considered
without much prudence and critical spirit, as is the case, for example,
with Portuguese Alcavala and Castilian Alcabala, which despite being
almost identical in their spelling, however, do not correspond to iden-
tical scopes.17 In the same way, these peninsular kingdoms differ in the
role granted to extraordinary taxation or taxation on consumption—the
sisas —in the structuring of the tax systems they implemented.18
The study of Portuguese medieval taxation and its consequent inte-
gration into global and systemic approaches to the taxation of medieval
Christian Europe may have the potential to be an attractive contri-
bution to the analysis of the problems of the relationship/tension
between center and periphery. Indeed, the Portuguese kingdom appears
in this chronology as a clearly peripheral space, both in the penin-
sular and in the European context. Yet, peripheral but not isolated,
well-linked to other kingdoms, and favored by its pivotal position in
maritime contacts between the Mediterranean and Atlantic. Additionally,
throughout the medieval centuries, it was possible to establish political
and cultural contacts with other kingdoms, although not always in coin-
cident chronologies. Recollecting, for example, the stay of the future
King Alfonso III (1248–1279) between 1227 and 1246 at the court
of his cousin, Louis IX of France (1226–1270),19 the intense mercan-
tile contacts with the European Atlantic façade since the second half of
the thirteenth century,20 the political proximity to Aragon—its preferred
ally in the context of disputes between Iberian kingdoms21 —or the close
links with England were carried out by the Avis dynasty during the
fifteenth century.22 All moments were capable of generating significant

16 Mattoso (1985–1986).
17 Ladero Quesada (1992), Asenjo (2006), Barros (1945–1954, vol. IX, p. 400) and
Farelo (2015).
18 Rosa (2020, pp. 138–161) and Menjot (2017).
19 Ventura (2006, pp. 44–51).
20 Andrade and Miranda (2017).
21 Branco and Farelo (2011).
22 Vigil Montes (2019).
6 A. A. ANDRADE AND R. DA C. DOMINGUEZ

synergies and influences. Portugal can thus constitute a space for obser-
vation of the way in which a peripheral kingdom in the European and
peninsular contexts received, assimilated and transformed influences from
tax systems implemented in other European regions, economically and
politically more capable of constituting dominant poles and, as such, of
imposing models of taxation practices.
The beginning of Portuguese maritime expansion which started with
the conquest of Ceuta in 1415 provided a territorial expansion of
the kingdom. An extension very different from those experienced by
other European monarchies, which they would only undertake in later
chronologies. Marked by a clear territorial discontinuity, it reached all
known continents at the end of the fifteenth century, thus assuming itself
as what we can consider as a global reality, it implied a capacity to respond
to enormous challenges of military, political and economic deployment. It
is not up to us here to detail these processes, which historiography increas-
ingly elucidates in a more problematizing and detailed way.23 However,
we want to point out that the diversity of military solutions and of occupa-
tion and colonization that had to be applied demanded a higher financial
burden while the new products entered in the mercantile circuits proved
to be highly resilient, as was the case with gold, African slaves and spices,
as well as sugar from Madeira.24 All of them had repercussions on the
tax system then in operation in Early Modern Portugal, overlapping with
previous taxation practices, which had their roots back in the late middle
ages.
In some ways, the fifteenth century and the new territories will consti-
tute the time and space for testing, the success and failure of adapting
the tax system to the new needs generated by new products, by fragile
administrative frameworks in a permanent ongoing change, and for social
alterations that the expansive process had brought about. The imple-
mentation of new taxes, the management of the royal monopolies then
established, the creation of new institutions for the economic framework
of the new territories, such as the Casa de Ceuta or the Casa da Guiné,
attest to this adaptation effort. We therefore believe that the medieval
roots of Portuguese taxation and the adaptations put into practice in the

23 Pedreira (2007).
24 See the chapter “Taxes and fiscal institutions in a maritime empire, fifteenth-sixteenth
centuries: a comparative view of overseas’ territories under the Portuguese Crown”.
 INTRODUCTION 7

expansive beginnings, still in the fifteenth century, constitute an indis-

pensable element for understanding what will be, later, the tax framing
implemented in territories such as India or Brazil.
The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries brought to light the rise of
modern states and the necessity of a systematic organization of their
finances, in order to cope with the competition between them for the
domination in the first global age. Conquering, coand sustaining recently
subjugated territories and supporting demanding warfare needs became
the ultimate priority for Western European kingdoms. In this sense, the
field of Economic History of warfare and state formation has been key to
understand why economic policies—in which taxation was key to—were
fundamental for their prosperity and growth.25
In this sense, Portugal was not different from other European powers
in many structural ways. However, the Portuguese were different in the
sense that they were the pioneers of the oceanic expansion. For this
reason, much of their knowledge of fiscal and financial matters was built
tapping into new features and challenges, creating ad hoc solutions for
a worldwide empire in permanent change, developing new structures
and institutions and embedding them with the existing ones without
destroying them.26 Here, it is important to point out the intervention
of the Portuguese crown as a determinant of a policy that redirected all
the efforts toward the conquest, in search of an alternative for closing
trade with Asia via the Middle East. The expansion of the coloniza-
tion framework to Africa, Asia and South America was based on fiscal
and commercial privileges. With this relationship, the Portuguese crown
strengthened its links with colonizers, and expanded a patronage network
that gravitated closer to the royal orbit. Likewise, the system of donatary
captaincies made possible, at the same time, the occupation of the territo-
ries by the Portuguese, a fundamental fact to reinforce and justify before
the other maritime powers the question of Portuguese sovereignty in
these same spaces.27 However, this scenario of sovereignty and stability
was disrupted by the Iberian Union (1580–1640), when much of the
differences between Portugal’s and Castile’s fiscal practices would become

25 Hoffman and Rosenthal (1997), Dincecco (2011, 2017), Dincecco and Prado
(2012), Dincecco and Katz (2016), Dincecco and Onorato (2018), Hoffman (2011,
2012, 2015) and Eloranta et al. (2016).
26 Pedreira (1998, 2007), Newitt (2005) and Disney (2009).
27 Silva (2015).
8 A. A. ANDRADE AND R. DA C. DOMINGUEZ

evident, despite their political union and the maintenance of most of social
and economic practices.28
The organization of this volume intends to point out what seems to
us the most important of the set of situations mentioned above. The
first part, under the responsibility of Portuguese researchers, focuses on
the comprehension of Portugal’s medieval and early modern fiscal roots,
analyzing fundamental aspects of the Portuguese taxation practices by a
set of relevant case studies done in a comparative perspective to what was
happening in Western Europe.
In this sense, Amélia Andrade’s chapter on the study of Medieval Fiscal
History in Portugal, its results and problems provide a broader scenario
of what has been done in terms of research in terms of the study of taxa-
tion practices, financial institutions and economic-administrative practices
over the last seven decades. It is a complete and fundamental state of
the art regarding the construction of Portuguese fiscal historiography
for the later Middle Ages, a period that underpins the assembling of
further modern fiscal institutions within the Portuguese empire. Besides,
it discusses the long path gone by Portuguese scholars so far and debate
some of the blanks that are still to be filled in.
Next, Mario Farelo approaches one of the least known features
of Portugal’s fiscal history: the ecclesiastical taxation. His case study
regarding the Annates collection procedures in the Portuguese collec-
torate, gives us precious details about the interaction between the Crown
and the papacy of Avignon. Moreover, it addresses one of the bigger chal-
lenges of our historiography, which is to assess the big picture in terms of
a larger operability of apostolic taxation within the Portuguese kingdom
in a comparative way to what happened in other cases within the Western
Christendom.
Following the sequence, Hermínia Vilar engages the Portuguese fiscal
framework from the law’s perspective. Her view of the legal structures
provided the cornerstones to the first fiscal practices in Portugal. It
addresses the importance of political economy in the construction of
a body of legislation which will endure along the thirteenth and four-
teenth centuries, in a key period when the Reconquista was finished

28 Diffie and Winius (1977) and Yun-Casalilla (2019a, 2019b).

 INTRODUCTION 9

and the reconfiguration of fiscal institutions were fundamental to redi-

rect economic practices and separate the king’s treasury from the State’s
revenues.
Rodrigo da Costa Dominguez’s chapter engages the analysis of a
specific context of an “organic institutional development”, i.e., a key
period for the Portuguese fiscal constitution, regarding the transition
toward a tax state. Based on indirect taxation, the Portuguese Crown
put in practice a policy of permanent state of war and an active trade
with different European ports, in order to underpin the State’s finances.
However, those revenues served most to a redistribution process that
hampered some of the empire’s needs and the improvement of fiscal
institutions.
Last but not least, Susana Miranda enlightens in her chapter how the
Portuguese dealt with the challenges of exercising fiscal jurisdiction in
non-European territories and settlements in the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries. By using the cases of Madeira Island and the Estado da India,
it demonstrates how the Portuguese fiscal institutions served as a baseline
and were adapted to the local circumstances. Moreover, it elucidates how
those models served to Portugal’s ultimate goal, which was raising fiscal
revenues to sustain imperial desires.
In the end, the editors provide an afterword with an overview of the
development of Portuguese state finances. Overall, this part aims to offer
the readers, above all, an unprecedented broader and detailed overview
of Portugal’s most significant features regarding its fiscal history. More-
over, it is intended to assemble studies that produce interaction between
Portugal and Western Europe, following many of the issues previously
discussed here. We are pleased to offer this volume which reflects a solid
tentative of putting Portugal in the map of Western European Fiscal
History.

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Medieval and Early Modern Portuguese
State Finances: Sources and Evidence
 The Study of Medieval Fiscal History
in Portugal: Results and Problems
(1951–2020)

Amélia Aguiar Andrade

1 Introduction
The essentials of the fiscal system in Portugal began to emerge in the
medieval period together with a regulatory framework and certain insti-
tutions and practices facilitating its operation, albeit with degrees of
effectiveness that are yet to be determined. Nevertheless, it was this fiscal
system—subsequently adapted and modified—that became the model
for the fiscal structure in the extra-European territories subsumed into
the kingdom of Portugal in the sequence of the early maritime expan-
sion initiated in the fifteenth century and which, as is well-known,
preceded the expansion of other European kingdoms, notably neigh-
bouring Castile. These processes justify the pressing need to study the
taxation system of medieval Portugal since, as in other medieval polities,

A. A. Andrade (B)
Institute of Medieval Studies - NOVA FCSH, Nova University of Lisbon,
Lisboa, Portugal
e-mail: amelia.andrade@fcsh.unl.pt

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 17

Switzerland AG 2023
R. da C. Dominguez and A. A. Andrade (eds.), Portugal
in a European Context, Palgrave Studies in the History of Finance,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-06227-8_2
18 A. A. ANDRADE

it was a fundamental element in the financial stability of the polity, espe-

cially concerning the administration of its political, military, and economic
institutions.1
A royalty that had won prestige through victory in the wars of the
Portuguese Reconqista, brought to a close with important territorial gains
in the mid-thirteenth century, put into practice a diverse set of strategies
with the principal aims of strengthening royal authority and the king-
dom’s political apparatus as a means of ensuring not only royal ascendency
domestically over competing powers among the clergy and the nobility,
but also in order to achieve external political consolidation in the face of
the ever-complicated chess-board of Iberian political units.2
At a conspicuously transitional juncture involving a complex transfor-
mation from an economy and a society organised for war to a progressive
market economy with its obvious social consequences, the Portuguese
monarchs found in the township communities, to whom they granted
charters of rights, important allies in the bringing under their authority
of communities that could simultaneously ensure settlement, promote
economic development, and serve the military defence of the kingdom.3
In the texts of these charters, which as José Mattoso has highlighted,4 set
out in writing the division of duties and rights as between the king that
grants them and the communities that receive them, the taxation system,
which is carefully expounded therein, reveals to be an important element
in the obtaining of revenue capable of ensuring the Crown’s financial
ability to develop the administrative institutions that it sought to estab-
lish, and to cover a cluster of different expenses the most important being
military affairs, the maintenance of the court, and further to achieve an
economic redistribution through donations and the granting of privileges,
especially to those receiving them, which avoided possible situations of
social and political conflict.5
Conditions during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries inevitably
meant that this fiscal framework had to be extended in terms of objec-
tives, people, and taxable income, and redistributive processes. Indeed,

1 Galán Sánchez and Carretero Zamora (2013).

2 Mattoso (1985–1986, vol. 2) and Mattoso (2001).
3 Andrade (1999: 164–167, 171–174).
4 Mattoso (1987).
5 Mattoso (1985–1986, vol. 2: 630–632).
 THE STUDY OF MEDIEVAL FISCAL HISTORY IN PORTUGAL … 19

besides the broader issues facing Portugal, for example, Iberian political
disputes, the Hundred Years War, the consequences of the Black Death,
and an imbalance between demographic growth and available agricultural
produce, there were internal situations which space forbids be detailed
herein, which nevertheless had important consequences.6
A question of succession led to a war that was decisive for the main-
tenance of Portuguese political independence between 1385 and the first
decade of the following century, which gave rise to a new dynasty whose
origins in bastardy bore significantly on the actions of the monarchs of the
1400 s, involving various practices of legitimation, including the resump-
tion of crusading warfare with the conquest of Ceuta in 1415 and the
need for a policy affirmative of royal authority.7 Further, a moment of
conflict at the end of the fourteenth century had led to a process of recon-
figuration of the nobility which subsequently increased their dependence
on royal favour for obtaining income and prestige, and which soon found
one of its principal scenarios in the war of conquest in the Maghreb.8
On the other hand, in the political relationship between cities and
towns under baronial governance and the monarch, there was also a
progressive change that was simultaneously marked by two distinct situ-
ations: firstly, a greater interventionism on the part of the monarchs
in township management through a prescriptive regulation of the func-
tioning of municipal government, especially in Lisbon, the most impor-
tant city of the kingdom and of average European size9 and, secondly, in
the latter half of the fifteenth century, in the lordship of royal cities and
towns on account of grants of seigniory to members of the royal family or,
to nobles engaged in military service in the fortresses of North Africa.10
The fifteenth century was also a time of new revenues favoured by the
institution of royal monopolies resulting from the Maritime Expansion,
from the trade in gold and African spices, in sugar from Madeira and in
slaves.11 However, it was also a time of novel and sizeable expenses such
as those occasioned by the maintenance of the Portuguese strongholds

6 Marques (1987: 204–220).

7 Coelho (2008: 40–45).
8 Sousa et al. (2009: 156–192).
9 Andrade (1999: 160–162).
10 Silva (2020: 137–149) and Gomes (2006: 119–139).
11 Pedreira (2007).
20 A. A. ANDRADE

in Morocco, by significant Portuguese activity in the South Atlantic in

the defence of navigation and trade monopolies, by the complexity of the
administrative institutions, now specialised and autonomous and entailing
voluminous corps of officials12 and further by the more ritualised court
life which thereby became more extravagant and expensive.13
The foregoing very brief and accordingly incomplete picture neverthe-
less bespeaks the importance of taxation. Indeed, many of the scenarios
enumerated can only be fully appreciated when their financial under-
pinnings are understood which, in large part, were supplied through
the levying of taxes.14 One would therefore expect Portuguese histori-
ography to have favoured the study of medieval taxation. Yet, this has
not been the case. Rather, for a considerable time, it remained a minor,
even marginal, topic in the more global context of Portuguese histori-
ography, making it difficult to include it in broader discourses around
medieval fiscal history and with only a diminished contribution where
more expansive interpretations were called for.15
Beginning from the above observations, the reflections in this paper
are woven around three basic questions for which it will be sought to
provide answers: Why has Portuguese historiography not concerned itself
with fiscal history? What are the main lines of research undertaken so far
and what place do they occupy within the broader global historiography
on the subject? To what extent can the sources available allow new inves-
tigations and can these investigations be inserted into the wider context
of the debate on the history of medieval taxation?
Reasons for the scant interest revealed in Portuguese historiography in
the study of medieval taxation are rooted in two distinct yet complemen-
tary factors: the availability of specific primary sources, and the thematic
pathways travelled by Portuguese medievalists, with a due appreciation of
the latter requiring the consideration of a lengthy time period and the
contemplation of several discrete factors. It is these two elements that
have been important obstacles in the thematic orientation of research
undertaken so far, while the availability of primary sources continues to
influence the possible lines of study of medieval taxation.

12 Homem (1980: 119–131, 171–172).

13 Pedreira (2007) and Gomes (2003).
14 Dominguez (2012).
15 Barata and Henriques (2011).
 THE STUDY OF MEDIEVAL FISCAL HISTORY IN PORTUGAL … 21

2 Primary Sources: Availability and Problems

The idea of the survival of fiscal primary sources in insufficient quan-
tity and quality to permit the study of medieval Portuguese taxation and
the concomitant addressing of themes that are, in other historiographies,
clearly present and intensely studied, is a notion resulting partially from a
vision inherited from the nineteenth-century positivist authors, including
Gama Barros who was responsible for a substantial corpus of work on
the history of administration.16 This impression of paucity of sources has
also been conditioned by the persistence, until only recently, of a view of
documentary survival predicated on old archival inventories such as those
promulgated by the Lisbon Academy of Sciences at the end of the eigh-
teenth century,17 a general picture that has been exacerbated over the
years by a somewhat unsystematic publication of medieval sources that
has occasionally lacked continuity.18 However, especially since the end of
the twentieth century, the landscape has been changing with the reorgan-
isation of national archives in accordance with international directives and
classification systems, a process that has been accompanied by an extensive
digitalisation programme, making many thousands of documents avail-
able to researchers on free and open access.19 Even so, these changes
have been slow in reaching some archives such as those of the municipal
authorities, or reserves under the stewardship of the Church, the latter
being repositories of important documental collections pertaining to the
religious institutions, especially the secular.20
Nevertheless, the lack of fiscal records is real and permanent, and
results from circumstances that are tangibly concrete, if not always
amenable to satisfactory justification. On the one hand, the earthquake
and tsunami that struck Lisbon in 1755 exacted a devastating toll on
the administrative institutions of the capital situated close to the River
Tagus.21 Buildings including those of the Casa dos Contos, the Casa da
Índia, and the Alfândega (customs house) were either severely damaged

16 Barros (1945–1954).
17 Ribeiro (1798).
18 Mattoso (1988: 70).
19 Gomes (2011: 25–44) and Mattoso (1988: 69–78).
20 Sousa et al. (2016).
21 França (1977) and Silva (2007: 103–106).
22 A. A. ANDRADE

or completely obliterated resulting in irreparable documentary loss. The

specialisation of these bodies had led to the keeping of economic and fiscal
documentation in places outside the royal archive of the Torre do Tombo
located inside the Castle of Lisbon, and it is clear from the invento-
rying process of the royal archive launched in the early sixteenth century,
that this situation was already subsisting at the time the inventory was
begun.22
On the other hand, almost all the medieval documentation produced
by intermediate fiscal institutions, such as the almoxarifados (revenue
offices), in existence since the thirteenth century, and the customs houses,
has not been preserved. In the present state of knowledge, it has not been
possible to determine the reasons for the disappearance of this consider-
able volume of documentation which we certainly know to have existed
through the numerous references to its production, made by specific corps
of scribes.
Mention should also be made of the near total loss of the royal
notaries’ books—the few copies we possess date from the end of the
fifteenth century. These were the ledgers that from the early thirteenth
century had assured the authentication and consequent validity of docu-
mental production, which hampered the survival of private documenta-
tion and of registers of copies of documents issued and authenticated by
them.23
A similar situation arises, although to a lesser extent, with documenta-
tion resulting from township management such as books of town-council
decisions, account books, and ledgers and/or books produced in the
course of collecting extraordinary taxes deriving from the need to cover
certain unexpected expenses of the community—the fintas —or at the
behest of the monarchs, such as the pedidos e serviços (requests and
services).24 If the non-preservation of this last type of documentation can
be justified by the fact that they are records subject to recurrent and indis-
pensable updating, both concerning the identity of the taxpayers and their
taxable income, and the amounts to be collected and/or in fact collected,
the same justification cannot serve for the rest of the council docu-
mentation. This circumstance stands in contrast (in varying degrees) to

22 Pessanha (1905: 287–303).

23 Sá-Nogueira (2008).
24 Coelho (2021: 25–29).
 THE STUDY OF MEDIEVAL FISCAL HISTORY IN PORTUGAL … 23

the continued existence of medieval urban administrative documentation

in other European and even Peninsular cities, which has been carefully
preserved in significant volume.25 This “specificity” in the preservation
of Portuguese council documentation was already evident in the late
eighteenth century, when a survey was carried out of the state of the
kingdom’s archives,26 and contrasts with the relatively frequent docu-
mental references to the concerns of council authorities when it came
to the preservation of their documental collections, which clearly formed
part of the symbolic heritage of the municipality.27
The above losses have as a corollary, a timely survival of specifi-
cally fiscal quantitative documentation, even though very recent archival
research has revealed the existence of previously unknown fiscal docu-
ments.28 In fact, there are document types known through single copies,
such as the livros de almoxarifado (local fiscal branch books), of which
the unique survival is that of a fifteenth-century exemplar for the city
of Silves.29 The most numerous documents are those resulting from the
application of extraordinary taxes—the aforementioned fintas, and pedidos
or serviços —predominantly in response to royal initiative. This is the case,
for example, with the records relating to the collection of fintas under-
taken by the city of Oporto—after obtaining the monarch’s approval—for
the meeting of large-scale expenses, such as those incurred in the opening
of a prestigious new street in 1438,30 or to pay the expenses of the cere-
monial entry of Manuel I (1495–1521) into the city when he passed
through on his pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela.31 At the same
time, such records can also shed light on large-scale royal requests to
cover military expenditure, such as the so-called pedido dos 60 milhões
(request for 60 million) granted by the Cortes in 1478, or the serviços that
the Crown obtained from the municipalities to pay certain expenses of the

25 Garnier (2008).
26 Ribeiro (1798).
27 Fonseca (1998: 109).
28 Rosa and Pinto (2021: 123–128).
29 Livro do Almoxarifado de Silves (século XV) (1984).
30 Amaral and Duarte (1985) and Ferramosca and Duarte (2001).
31 Cruz (1970).
24 A. A. ANDRADE

royal family, such as weddings, or the establishment of private households

for the royal children.32
Another type of tax documentation, letters of acquittance/discharge,
and receipts corresponding to the moment of the closing of the tax
collection process, are preserved in significant numbers, above all in the
so-called livros de registo (record books) produced in the Chancellery of
the fifteenth-century monarchs, although it is not possible to reconsti-
tute cohesive series that are geographically and chronologically extensive.
While the receipts are typically laconic in terms of information about
the amounts received or paid,33 the letters of discharge provide more
extensive details, revealing the names of the tax officials, the tenants,
the amounts collected, the types of taxes, and even the destination of
the revenues obtained, thus disclosing the use of the funds and also the
beneficiaries.34
Of the municipal accounting books, only a very small number have
survived in relation to the number that must have been produced, given
that municipal accounts had to be confirmed annually by royal officials.
To date, merely a few examples are known for small urban centres,35
and it is only the city of Oporto36 and the town of Loulé37 that have
kept, for the fifteenth century, more substantial sets of this type of docu-
mentation, although they are chronologically dispersed. The contents of
these books permit an assessment of the weight of taxation within the
total municipal revenue and an understanding of the pressure that the
demands of extraordinary taxation exerted on municipal management
and on communities. Where it is possible to merge this information with
records of council decisions, which happens rarely and again only for the
localities mentioned above, it becomes possible to get a more detailed
picture of these fiscal processes and the involvement of the urban elites in
their implementation.38

32 Gonçalves (1964: 205–210) and Faro (1965: 163–164, 165–167, 189–197, 234–
242).
33 Gonçalves and Rosa (2020).
34 Dominguez (2015).
35 Fonseca (1998: 109–111).
36 Gonçalves (1987).
37 Silva (2022).
38 Botão (2001–2002).
 THE STUDY OF MEDIEVAL FISCAL HISTORY IN PORTUGAL … 25

Any documentary survival capable of elucidating royal accounts or

budgets is hopelessly fragmented making it difficult to gauge the propor-
tion of taxation in the kingdom’s overall revenue and expenditure. Here,
the sources are sparse in time and diverse in content and, sadly for the
medieval period in Portugal, represent little more than casuistical and
singular pieces of information from which it is impossible to gain any
overall view of the balance or imbalance of the kingdom’s finances.39
More fruitful are the prospects for recovering the regulatory docu-
mentation relative to taxation, thanks to the production of careful
compilations recording the legislation enacted by Portuguese monarchs
since the thirteenth century. The Livro das Leis e Posturas,40 produced in
the fourteenth century, was followed in the fifteenth century by the Orde-
nações de D. Duarte 41 and the Ordenações Afonsinas 42 and thereafter, at
the dawn of the sixteenth century, the so-called Ordenações Manuelinas 43
was produced. The issue of more specific regulations on the functioning
of institutions and the activities of their officials, the so-called Regi-
mentos,44 still awaits a systematic charting for use as a tool for the analysis
of the processes and practices of the medieval fiscal system.
In summary, the availability of primary sources for the study of
medieval Portuguese taxation is marred by the absence of a series of quan-
titative nature, by a marked spatial dispersion, and by clear chronological
asymmetries, with the more substantive information being available only
for the fifteenth century. Favouring predominantly exceptional situations,
such as those associated with extraordinary taxation, the sources are insuf-
ficient to inform details of ordinary taxation and those of a manorial
nature. Largely focused on the relationship between the municipalities
and the monarchs, for the most part the sources reveal the urban reality
and the power relations between monarchs and municipal institutions. It
is therefore to be acknowledged that just as the availability of documental
information has conditioned the lines of research pursued by Portuguese
taxation researchers in the past, it looks set to continue to do so.

39 Pereira (2013b).
40 Livro das Leis e Posturas (1971).
41 Ordenações del-rei Dom Duarte (1988).
42 Ordenações Afonsinas (1984).
43 Ordenações Manuelinas (2002).
44 Rau (1951).
26 A. A. ANDRADE

3 Available Knowledge: Guidelines and Problems

At a time when Economic History and, along with it, tax-related themes
were undergoing profound changes in problematisation and methodology
under the rejuvenating impulse of the Annales School, Portugal was
experiencing a political and cultural environment that was hostile to inno-
vation due to the implementation of a totalitarian regime, the so-called
New State implemented by Salazar (1933–1974). In the two faculties
of Humanities in existence at that time, the History and Philosophical
Sciences course had a reduced number of students and a teaching staff
that was mostly unspecialised and very aligned with the prevailing polit-
ical ideology which valued an apologetic history of the great deeds of
the Portuguese that could justify the political choices of the regime and,
therefore, cut-off from the more global contexts of research in History
that was then being practised in Europe.45
During those leaden years, Economic History was mostly done outside
the universities and tended to focus on the modern era, given the greater
wealth and volume of available primary sources. Such was the case of
Armando Castro who, having been dismissed from his university career
due to his Marxist proclivities, continued his research to the point of
producing, despite not being a specialist in medieval history, a detailed
study of Portugal’s economic development between the twelfth and
fifteenth centuries, which in fact was only published in the 1960s.46
Meanwhile, the lack of facilities adequate to his work in the Lisbon
Faculty of Letters prompted Vitorino Magalhães Godinho to go to Paris
as a researcher of the CNRS where he embarked on a vast, pioneering
work of in-depth research into economic themes associated with the
period of the Expansion, subsumed within the propositions of French
historiography and under the direct influence of historians such as Marcel
Bataillon, Lucien Febvre, and Ferdinand Braudel.47
Outstanding as absolutely singular is the career of Virgínia Rau, the
first woman in Portugal to become a full professor of History, and who
can be considered the principal mover in the introduction of an economic
history into Portuguese academic medievalism. Having benefited from
an unusual educational path stemming from stays in countries such as

45 Andrade (2006: 59).

46 Castro (1964–1980).
47 Godinho (1962, 1970).
 THE STUDY OF MEDIEVAL FISCAL HISTORY IN PORTUGAL … 27

France and Germany from the late 1920s, she returned to Portugal at
the beginning of the Second World War. Thereafter, beginning with her
Bachelor’s degree in 1943, she pursued a scholarly career which carried
her to academic heights in the Faculty of Arts in Lisbon in 1952.
Financially self-sufficient and therefore to be consistently able to main-
tain a good deal of independence relative to the regime, Rau carried
out research that had Economic History as its main axis, but which was
not necessarily limited to a specific period, producing pioneering works
including an extensive study of medieval fairs48 and an analysis of the
Casa dos Contos.49 However, just as important, or even more so, than
her personal research was the plan of action she put into practice in her
institution, partly favoured by the separation in 1962 of History educa-
tion from Philosophy, which led to the formation of a generation of
historians, not exclusively medievalists, dedicated to Economic History.
Thus, in 1958, she was able to create a research centre in the Faculty
of Letters with an associated specialised library where she promoted the
association between research and teaching through teamwork with young
researchers that was built around a scholarly programme sustained by
rigorous archival research, a reading programme of foreign bibliography,
and the encouragement of contacts with foreign researchers.50
During this time, A. H. Oliveira Marques, a young lecturer hired in
1957, began research with the support of Virgínia Rau in Economic
History and, in 1960, he presented a doctoral thesis on economic rela-
tions between Portugal and the Hanseatic League in the Middle Ages,51
supervised by Hermann Kallenbenz in what can be seen as a sign of
the thematic openness of Portuguese medievalism and of the perception
of the need to integrate interpretations and analyses of the Portuguese
Middle Ages into wider and scientifically more up-to-date contexts.
Oliveira Marques subsequently went on to produce another major work
with a strong economic slant in which he analysed medieval agricul-
ture and, most especially, the problems arising from the cereal crises that
afflicted the Portuguese kingdom.52

48 Rau (1943).
49 Rau (1951).
50 Fernandes (2017: 27–29).
51 Marques (1959).
52 Marques (1968).
28 A. A. ANDRADE

In due course, Virgínia Rau’s profound knowledge of medieval archival

collections led her to steer one of her students towards themes of fiscal
history. In this way, Iria Gonçalves, based on solid archival research
complemented by a rigorous interpretation of the data obtained thereby,
produced the first study of extraordinary taxation surpassing the merely
positivist works of the nineteenth-century authors and the simple publi-
cation of primary sources of previous generations.53 At the same time,
she produced another, smaller work based on the collection of a loan by
Alfonso V (1438–1481) in a tax district in southern Portugal in 1475 and
1476.54 These works enabled an understanding of the process of levying
taxes, the justification used by the monarch, the negotiations that had to
be carried out with the municipalities, the different stages of the collec-
tion process, especially the valuation of the goods on which the tax was
levied, the human element involved, and the role played by the municipal-
ities in the entire process. We also owe to this researcher the first attempt,
still only in the 1960s, to define the scope and nature of more than 40
different duties, taxes, and fees, in as many entries that she produced
for the Dicionário de História de Portugal.55 In these short texts, she
dealt mainly with ordinary taxation of the manorial type, in what may
be considered a collateral result of the in-depth research she was then
carrying out for her doctoral thesis in rural history.
The post-revolution of April 25, 1974, introduced a new cultural
dynamic which, in the field of History, was characterised by an intel-
lectual effervescence revealed, for example, in polemics and discussions
around the ideological and methodological proposals of Marxist thought,
especially in Economic History, or in approaches that sought to estab-
lish connections between History and other social sciences such as
Anthropology and/or Geography. At the same time, contacts with other
historiographies were encouraged, but above all, notable was the open-
ness to new themes and methodologies, such as those proposed by the
Nouvelle Histoire, expressed in the interest in the History of Mentalities or
in the renewal of the problems of Cultural or Institutional History, intro-
duced in the new university education curricula in History. The return
of Portuguese historians who had been sojourning abroad for political

53 Barros (1945–1954) and Herculano (1985: 411–452).

54 Gonçalves (1964).
55 Gonçalves (1965).
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 “Because a man will be kinder to a girl in trouble than other girls
will—ordinarily, I mean.”
“Oh, Tavia!”
“Suppose it had been that Mrs. Halbridge who had really lost her
bag,” Tavia went on to say. “If this girl had tried to return it, she and
little Forty-seven both would have lost their jobs. Perhaps the police
would have been called in. Do you see? I expect the big girl read
kindness in Mr. Knapp’s face——”
Dorothy suddenly threw both arms about Tavia, and hugged her
tightly. “Oh, you dear!” she cried; but she would not explain what she
meant by this sudden burst of affection.
“Go on!” was her repeated demand.
“You are insatiable, my dear,” laughed Tavia. “Well, there isn’t
much more ‘go on’ to it. The girl spoke to him when he passed her
on the street and quickly told him all the story. Of course, he
promised that nothing should happen to either of them. They are
honest girls—the older one at least. And the temptation came so
suddenly to little Forty-seven, whose wages are so pitiably small.”
“I know,” said Dorothy, gently. “You remember, we learned
something about it when little Miette De Pleau told us how she
worked as cash-girl here years ago.”
“Of course I remember,” Tavia said. “Well, that’s all, I guess. Oh
no! I asked Mr. Knapp if he didn’t notice the big girl staring at us as
we got to the hotel door last night. And what do you suppose he
said?”
“I don’t know,” and Dorothy was still smiling happily.
“Why, he said he didn’t. ‘You see,’ he added, in that funny way of
his, ‘I expect my eyes were elsewhere’; and he wasn’t complimenting
me, either,” added Tavia, rolling her big eyes. “Whom do you
suppose he could have meant he was looking at, Doro?”
Her friend ignored the question, but hopped out of bed.
“What are you going to do?” asked Tavia, in wonder.
 “Dress.”
“But it is nine o’clock! Almost bedtime.”
“Bedtime?” demanded Dorothy. “And in the city? Why, Tavia! you
amaze me, child!”
“But you’re not going out?” cried her friend.
“Do you realize I haven’t had a bite of dinner?” demanded the bold
Dorothy. “I think you are very selfish.”
“Well, anyway,” snapped Tavia, suddenly showing her claws—and
who does not once in a while?—“he’s gone out for a long walk and
he expects to finish his business to-morrow and go home.”
“Oh!” gasped Dorothy.
She sat on the edge of her bed with her first stocking in her hand.
Tavia had gone back into her own room. Had she been present she
must have noticed all the delight fading out of Dorothy Dale’s
countenance. Finally, the latter tossed away the stocking, and crept
back into bed.
“I—I guess I’m too lazy to dress after all, dear,” she said, in a still
little voice. “And you are tired, too, Tavia. The telephone has been
fixed; just call down, will you, and ask them to send me up some tea
and toast?”
 CHAPTER IX
THEY SEE GARRY’S BACK

The following day Dorothy was her old cheerful self—or so Tavia
thought. They did not shop with such abandon, but took matters
more easily. And they returned to the hotel for luncheon and for rest.
“But he isn’t here!” Tavia exclaimed, when they entered the big
restaurant for the midday meal. “And I remember now he said last
evening that he would probably be down town almost all day to-day
—trying to sell that property of his, you know.”
“Who, dear?” asked Dorothy, with a far-away look on her face.
“Peleg Swift!” snapped Tavia. “You know very well of whom I am
talking. Garry Owen!” and she hummed a few bars of the old, old
march.
Garry certainly was not present; but Dorothy still smiled. They
went out again and purchased a few more things. When they
returned late in the afternoon the young Westerner was visible in the
lobby the moment the girls came through the doorway.
But he was busy. He did not even see them. He was talking with
two men of pronounced New York business type who might have
been brokers or Wall Street men. All three sat on a lounge near the
elevators, and Dorothy heard one of the strangers say crisply, as she
and Tavia waited for a car:
“That’s our top price, I think, Mr. Knapp. And, of course, we cannot
pay you any money until I have seen the land, save the hundred for
the option. I shall be out in a fortnight, I believe. It must hang fire until
then, even at this price.”
“Well, Mr. Stiffbold—it’s a bet!” Garry said, and Dorothy could
imagine the secret sigh he breathed. Evidently, he was not getting
the price for the wornout ranch that he had hoped.
 The two girls went up in the elevator and later made their dinner
toilet. To-night Dorothy was the one who took the most pains in her
primping; but Tavia said never a word. Nevertheless, she “looked
volumes.”
They were downstairs again not much later than half past six. Not
a sign of Garry Knapp either in the lobby or in the dining-room. The
girls ate their dinner slowly and “lived in hopes,” as Tavia expressed
it.
Both were frankly hoping Garry would appear. Tavia was grateful
to him for the part he had taken in the recovery of her bag; and, too,
he was “nice.” Dorothy felt that she had misjudged the young
Westerner, and she was fired with a desire to be particularly pleasant
to him so as to salve over her secret compunctions of conscience.
“‘He cometh not, she said,’” Tavia complained. “What’s the matter
with the boy, anyway? Can he be eating in the cafê with those two
men?”
“Oh, Tavia!” suddenly exclaimed Dorothy. “You said he was going
home to-day.”
“Oh—ah—yes. He did say he expected to get out for the West
again some time to-day——”
“Maybe he’s go-o-one!” and Dorothy’s phrase was almost a wail.
“Goodness! Never! Without looking us up and saying a word of
good-bye?”
Dorothy got up with determination. “I am going to find out,” she
said. “I feel that I would like to see Mr. Knapp again.”
“Well! if I said a thing like that about a young man——”
However, Tavia let the remark trail off into silence and followed her
chum. As they came out of the dining-room the broad shoulders and
broad-brimmed hat of Garry Knapp were going through the street
door!
“Oh!” gasped Dorothy.
“He’s going!” added Tavia, stricken quite as motionless.
 “Going——”
“Gone!” ended Tavia, sepulchrally. “It’s all off, Dorothy. Garry
Knapp, of Desert City, has departed.”
“Oh, we must stop him—speak to him——”
Dorothy started for the door and Tavia, nothing loath, followed at a
sharp pace. Just as they came out into the open street a car stopped
before the hotel door and Garry Knapp, “bag and baggage” stepped
aboard. He did not even look back!
As the girls returned to the hotel lobby the two men with whom
they had seen Garry Knapp earlier in the evening, were passing out.
They lingered while one of the men lit his cigar, and Dorothy heard
the second man speaking.
“I could have paid him spot cash for the land right here and been
sure of a bargain, Lightly. I know just where it is and all about it. But
it will do no harm to let the thing hang fire till I get out there. Perhaps,
if I’m not too eager, I can get him to knock off a few dollars per acre.
The boy wants to sell—that’s sure.”
“Uh-huh!” grunted the one with the cigar. “It’ll make a tidy piece of
wheat land without doubt, Stiffbold. You go for it!”
They passed out then and the girl who had listened followed her
friend slowly to the elevator, deep in thought. She said not a word
until they were upstairs again. Perhaps her heart was really too full
just then for utterance.
As they entered Dorothy’s room the girls saw that the maid had
been in during their absence at dinner. There was a long box,
unmistakably a florist’s box, on the table.
“Oh, see what’s here!” cried Tavia, springing forward.
The card on the box read: “Miss Dale.”
“For you!” cried Tavia. “What meaneth it, fair Lady Dorothy? Hast
thou made a conquest already? Some sweet swain——”
“I don’t believe you know what a ‘sweet swain’ is,” laughed
Dorothy.
 Her fingers trembled as she untied the purple cord. Tavia asked,
with increased curiosity:
“Who can they be from, Doro? Flowers, of course!”
Dorothy said nothing in reply; but in her heart she knew—she
knew! The cord was untied at last, the tissue paper, all fragrant and
dewy, lifted.
“Why!” said Tavia, rather in disappointment and doubt. “Not roses
—or chrysanthemums—or—or——”
“Or anything foolish!” finished Dorothy, firmly.
She lifted from their bed of damp moss a bouquet of the simplest
old-fashioned flowers; mignonette, and several long-stemmed, dewy
violets and buttercups, pansies, forget-me-nots——
“He must have been robbing all the old-fashioned gardens around
New York,” said Tavia. “But that’s a lovely ribbon—and yards of it.”
Dorothy did not speak at first. The cost of the gift meant nothing to
her. Yet she knew that the monetary value of such a bouquet in New
York must be far above what was ordinarily paid for roses and the
like.
A note was nestling in the stems. She opened it and read:

“Dear Miss Dale:

“Was mighty sorry to hear you are still in retirement.
Your friend said last evening that you were quite done-up.
Now I am forced to leave in a hurry without seeing you.
Sent bellhop up to your room and he reports ‘no answer.’
“But, without seeming too bold, will hope that we shall
meet again—and that these few flowers will be a reminder
of
“Faithfully and regretfully yours,
“G. Knapp.”
 CHAPTER X
“HEART DISEASE”

After one passes the railroad station at The Beeches, and before
reaching the town limits of North Birchland, the traveler sees a gray
road following closely the railway tracks, sometimes divided from
them by rail-fences, sometimes by a ditch, and sometimes the
railway roadbed is high on a bank overlooking the highway.
For several miles the road grades downward—not a sharp grade,
but a steady one—and so does the railroad. At the foot of the slope
the highway keeps straight on over a bridge that spans the deep and
boisterous creek; but a fork of the road turns abruptly and crosses
the railroad at grade.
There is no flagman at this grade crossing, nor is there a drop-
gate. Just a “Stop, Look, Listen” sign—two words of which are
unnecessary, as some philosopher has pointed out. There had been
some serious accidents at this crossing; but thus far the railroad
company had found it cheaper to pay court damages than to pay a
flagman and the upkeep of a proper gate on both sides of its right-of-
way.
When they came in sight of the down-hill part of the road Dorothy
Dale and Tavia Travers knew it was time to begin to put on their
wraps and take down their bags. The North Birchland station would
soon be in sight.
It was Dorothy who first stood up to reach for her bag. As she did
so she glanced through the broad window, out upon the highway.
“Oh, Tavia!” she gasped.
“What’s the matter, dear? You don’t see Garry Knapp, do you?
Maybe his buying those flowers—that ‘parting blessing’—‘busted’
him and he’s got to walk home clear to Desert City.”
 “Don’t be a goose!” half laughed Dorothy. “Look out. See if you
see what I see.”
“Why, Doro! it’s Joe and Roger I do believe!”
“I was sure it was,” returned her friend. “What can those boys be
doing now?”
“Well, what they are doing seems plain enough,” said Tavia. “What
they are going to do is the moot question, my dear. You never know
what a boy will do next, or what he did last; you’re only sure of what
he is doing just now.”
What the young brothers of Dorothy Dale were doing at that
moment was easily explained. They were riding down the long slope
of the gray road toward North Birchland, racing with the train Dorothy
and Tavia were on. The vehicle upon which the boys were riding was
a nondescript thing composed of a long plank, four wheels, a
steering arrangement of more or less dependence, and a soap box.
In the soap box was a bag, and unless the girls were greatly
mistaken Joe and Roger Dale had been nutting over toward The
Beeches, and the bag was filled with hickory nuts and chestnuts in
their shells and burrs.
Roger, who was the youngest, and whom Dorothy continued to
look upon as a baby, occupied the box with the nuts. Joe, who was
fifteen, straddled the plank with his feet on the rests and steered.
The boys’ vehicle was going like the wind. It looked as though a
small stone in the road, or an uncertain jerk by Joe on the steering
lines, would throw the contraption on which they rode sideways and
dump out the boys.
“Enough to give one heart disease,” said Tavia. “I declare! small
brothers are a nuisance. When I’m at home in Dalton I have to wear
blinders so as not to see my kid brothers at their antics.”
“If something should happen, Tavia!” murmured Dorothy.
“Something is always happening. But not often is it something
bad,” said Tavia, coolly. “‘There’s a swate little cherub that sits up
aloft, and kapes out an eye for poor Jack,’ as the Irish tar says. And
there is a similar cherub looking out for small boys—or a special
providence.”
The train was now high on the embankment over the roadway.
The two boys sliding down the hill looked very small, indeed, below
the car windows.
“Suppose a wagon should start up the hill,” murmured Dorothy.
“There’s none in sight. I never saw the road more deserted—oh,
Doro!”
Tavia uttered this cry before she thought. She had looked far
ahead to the foot of the hill and had seen something that her friend
had not yet observed.
“What is it?” gasped Dorothy, whose gaze was still fixed upon her
brothers.
“My dear! The bridge!”
The words burst from Tavia involuntarily. She could not keep them
in.
At the foot of the hill the road forked as has before been shown. To
the left it crossed the railroad tracks at grade. Of course, these
reckless boys had not intended to try for the crossing ahead of the
train. But the main road, which kept straight on beside the tracks,
crossed the creek on a wooden bridge. Tavia, looking ahead, saw
that the bridge boards were up and there was a rough fence built
across the main road!
“They’ll be killed!” screamed Dorothy Dale, and sank back into her
chair.
The train was now pitching down the grade. It was still a mile to
the foot of the slope where railroad and highway were on a level
again. The boys in their little “scooter” were traveling faster than the
train itself, for the brakes had been applied when the descent was
begun.
The boys and their vehicle, surrounded by a little halo of dust,
were now far ahead of the chair car in which their sister and Tavia
rode. The girls, clinging to each other, craned their necks to see
ahead. There were not many other passengers in the car and
nobody chanced to notice the horror-stricken girls.
It was a race between the boys and the train, and the boys would
never be able to halt their vehicle on the level at the bottom of the hill
before crashing into the fence that guarded the open bridge.
Were the barrier not there, the little cart would dart over the edge
of the masonry wall of the bridge and all be dashed into the deep
and rock-strewn bed of the creek.
There was but one escape for the boys in any event. Perhaps their
vehicle could be guided to the left, into the branch road and so
across the railroad track. But if Joe undertook that would not the train
be upon them?
“Heart disease,” indeed! It seemed to Dorothy Dale as though her
own heart pounded so that she could no longer breathe. Her eyes
strained to see the imperiled boys down in the road.
The “scooter” ran faster and faster or was the train itself slowing
down?
“For sure and certain they are beating us!” murmured Tavia.
She could appreciate the sporting chance in the race; but to
Dorothy there loomed up nothing but the peril facing her brothers.
The railroad tracks pitched rather sharply here. It was quite a
descent into the valley where North Birchland lay. When the
engineers of the passenger trains had any time to make up running
west they could always regain schedule on this slope.
Dorothy knew this. She realized that the engineer, watching the
track ahead and not the roadway where the boys were, might be
tempted to release his brakes when half way down the slope and
increase his speed.
If he did so and the boys, Joe and Roger, turned to cross the rails,
the train must crash into the “scooter.”
 CHAPTER XI
A BOLD THING TO DO!

The threatening peril—which looked so sure to Dorothy Dale if to

nobody else—inspired her to act, not to remain stunned and
helpless. She jerked her hand from Tavia’s clutch and sprang to her
feet. She had been reaching for her bag on first observing the boys
coasting down the long hill beside the railroad tracks; and her
umbrella was in the rack, too. She seized this. Its handle was a
shepherd’s crook. Reaching with it, and without a word to Tavia, she
hooked the handle into the emergency cord that ran overhead the
length of the car, and pulled down sharply. Instantly there was a
shriek from the engine whistle and the brakes were sharply applied.
The brake shoes so suddenly applied to the wheels on this
downgrade did much harm to the wheels themselves. Little cared
Dorothy for this well-known fact. If every wheel under the train had to
go to the repair shop she would have made this bold attempt to stop
the train or retard its speed, so that Joe and Roger could cross the
tracks ahead of it.
Glancing through the window she saw the boys’ “scooter” dart
swiftly and safely into the fork-road and disappear some rods ahead
of the pilot of the engine. The boys were across before the brakeman
and the Pullman conductor opened the car door and rushed in.
“Who pulled that emergency cord? Anybody here?” shouted the
conductor.
“Oh! don’t tell him!” breathed Tavia.
But her friend, if physically afraid, was never a moral coward. She
looked straight into the angry conductor’s face and said:
“I did.”
“What for?” he demanded.
 “To stop the train. My brothers were in danger——”
“Say! What’s that?” demanded the Pullman conductor of Tavia.
“Where are her brothers?”
The brakeman, who had long run over this road, pulled at the
conductor’s sleeve.
“That’s Major Dale’s girl,” he whispered, and Tavia heard if Dorothy
did not.
“Who’s Major Dale?” asked the conductor, in a low voice, turning
aside. “Somebody on the road?”
“Owns stock in it all right. And a bigwig around North Birchland.
Go easy, I say,” advised the brakeman, immediately turning back to
the door.
The train, meanwhile, had started on again, for undoubtedly the
other conductor had given the engineer the signal to go ahead.
Through the window across the car Dorothy could see out upon the
road beyond the tracks. There was the little “scooter” at a standstill.
Joe and Roger were standing up and waving their caps at the train.
“They’re safe!” Dorothy cried to Tavia.
“I see they are; but you’re not—yet,” returned her chum.
“Who’s that is safe?” asked the conductor, still in doubt.
“My brothers—there,” answered Dorothy, pointing. “They had to
cross in front of the train because the bridge is open. They couldn’t
stop at the bottom of the hill.”
The Pullman conductor understood at last. “But I’ll have to make a
report of this, Miss Dale,” he said, complainingly.
Dorothy had seated herself and she was very pale. The fright for
her at least had been serious.
“Make a dozen reports if you like—help yourself,” said Tavia, tartly,
bending over her friend. “If there is anything to pay send the bill to
Major Dale.”
 The conductor grumbled something and went out, notebook in
hand. In a few moments the train came to a standstill at the North
Birchland station. The girls had to bestir themselves to get out in
season, and that helped rouse Dorothy.
“Those rascals!” said Tavia, once they were on the platform. “Joe
and Roger should be spanked.”
“I’m afraid Joe is too big for that,” sighed Dorothy. “And who would
spank them? It is something they didn’t get when they were little
——”
“And see the result!”
“Your brothers were whipped sufficiently, I am sure,” Dorothy said,
smiling at length. “They are not one whit better than Joe and Roger.”
“Dear me! that’s so,” admitted Tavia. “But just the same, I belieev
in whippings—for boys.”
“And no whippings for girls?”
“I should say not!” cried Tavia. “There never was a girl who
deserved corporal punishment.”
“Not even Nita Brandt?” suggested Dorothy, naming a girl who had
ever been a thorn in the flesh for Tavia during their days at
Glenwood.
“Well—perhaps she. But Nita’s about the only one, I guess.”
The next moment Tavia started to run down the long platform,
dropping her bag and screaming:
“Jennie Hapgood! Jennie Jane Jemina Jerusha Happiness—good!
How ever came you here?”
Dorothy was excited, too, when she saw the pretty girl whom Tavia
greeted with such ebullition; but she looked beyond Jennie Hapgood,
the expected guest from Pennsylvania.
There was the boys’ new car beside the station platform and Ned
was under the steering-wheel while Nat was just getting out after
Jennie. Of course, the two girls just back from New York were
warmly kissed by Jennie. Then Nat came next and before Tavia
realized what was being done to her, she was soundly kissed, too!
“Bold, bad thing!” she cried, raising a gloved hand toward the
laughing Nat. But it never reached him. Then Dorothy had to submit
—as she always did—to the bearlike hugs of both her cousins, for
Ned quickly joined them on the platform. Tavia escaped Ned—if,
indeed, he had intended to follow his brother’s example.
“What is the use of having a pretty cousin,” the White boys always
said, “if we can’t kiss her? Keeps our hands in, you know. And if she
has pretty friends, why shouldn’t we kiss them, too?”
“Did you boys kiss Jennie when she arrived this morning?” Tavia
demanded, repairing the ruffled hair that had fallen over her ears.
“Certainly!” declared Nat, boldly. “Both of us.”
“They never!” cried Jennie, turning very red. “You know I wouldn’t
let these boys kiss me.”
“I bet a boy kissed you the last thing before you started up here
from home,” teased Nat.
“I never let boys kiss me,” repeated Jennie.
“Oh, no!” drawled Ned, joining in with his brother. “How about
Jack?”
“Oh, well, Jack!”
“Jack isn’t a boy, I suppose?” hooted Nat. “I guess that girl he’s
going to marry about Christmas time thinks he’s a pretty nice boy.”
“But he’s only my brother,” announced Jennie Hapgood, tossing
her head.
“Is he really?” cried Tavia, clasping her hands eagerly.
“Is he really my brother?” demanded Jennie, in amazement. “Why,
you know he is, Tavia Travers!”
“Oh, no! I mean are they going to be married at Christmas?”
 “Yes. That is the plan now. And you’ve all got to come to
Sunnyside to the wedding. Nothing less would suit Jack—or father
and mother,” Jennie said happily. “So prepare accordingly.”
Nat raced with Tavia for the bag she had dropped. He got it and
clung to it all the way in the car to The Cedars, threatening to open it
and examine its contents.
“For I know very well that Tavia’s got oodles of new face powder
and rouge, and a rabbit’s foot to put it on with—or else a kalsomine
brush,” Nat declared. “Joe and Roger want to paint the old pigeon
house, anyway, and this stuff Tavia’s got in here will be just the
thing.”
In fact, the two big fellows were so glad to see their cousin and
Tavia again that they teased worse than ever. A queer way to show
their affection, but a boy’s way, after all. And, of course, everybody
else at the Cedars was delighted to greet Dorothy and Tavia. It was
some time before the returned travelers could run upstairs to change
their dresses for dinner. Jennie had gone into her room to change,
too, and Tavia came to Dorothy’s open door.
“Oh, that letter!” she exclaimed, seeing Dorothy standing very
gravely with a letter in her hand. “Haven’t you sent it?”
“You see I haven’t,” Dorothy said seriously.
“But why not?”
“It seems such a bold thing to do,” confessed her friend. “We know
so little about him. And it might encourage him to write in return——”
“Of course it will!” laughed Tavia.
“There! that’s what I mean. It is bold.”
“But, you silly!” cried Tavia. “You only write Mr. Knapp to do him a
good turn. And he did us a good turn—at least, he did me one that I
shall never forget.”
“True,” Dorothy said thoughtfully. “And I have only repeated to him
in this note what I heard that man, Stiffbold, say about the purchase
of Mr. Knapp’s ranch.”
 “Oh, help the poor fellow out. Those men will rob him,” Tavia
advised. “Why didn’t you send it at once, when you had written it?”
“I—I thought I’d wait and consult Aunt Winnie,” stammered
Dorothy.
“Then consult her.”
“But—but now I don’t want to.”
Tavia looked at her with certainty in her own gaze. “I know what is
the matter with you,” she said.
Dorothy flushed quickly and Tavia shook her head, saying nothing
more. But when the girls went downstairs to dinner, Tavia saw
Dorothy drop the stamped letter addressed to “Mr. Garford Knapp,
Desert City,” into the mail bag in the hall.
 CHAPTER XII
UNCERTAINTIES

Dorothy had no time before dinner, but after that meal she seized
upon her brothers, Joe and Roger, and led them aside. The boys
thought she had something nice for them, brought from New York.
They very quickly found out their mistake.
“I want to know what you boys mean by taking such risks as you
did this afternoon?” she demanded, when out of hearing of the rest
of the family. She would not have her aunt or the major troubled by
knowing of the escapade.
“You, especially, Joe,” she went on, with an accusing finger raised.
“You both might have been killed. Then how would you have felt?”
“Er—dead, I guess, Sister,” admitted Roger, for Joe was silent.
“Didn’t you know the road was closed because of repairs on the
bridge?” she asked the older boy sternly.
“No-o. We forgot. We didn’t go over to the nutting woods that way.
Say! who told you?” blurted out Joe.
“Who told me what?”
“About our race with the train. Cricky, but it was great!”
“It was fine!” Roger added his testimony with equal enthusiasm.
“I saw you,” said Dorothy, her face paling as she remembered her
fright in the train. “I—I thought I should faint I was so frightened.”
“Say! isn’t that just like a girl?” grumbled Joe; but he looked at his
sister with some compunction, for he and Roger almost worshipped
her. Only, of course, they were boys and the usual boy cannot
understand the fluttering terror in the usual girl’s heart when danger
threatens. Not that Dorothy was a weakling in any way; she could be
courageous for herself. But her fears were always excited when
those she loved were in peril.
“Why, we were only having fun, Sister,” Roger blurted out. Being
considerably younger than his brother he was quicker to be moved
by Dorothy’s expression of feeling.
“Fun!” she gasped.
“Yes,” Joe said sturdily. “It was a great race. And you and Tavia
were in that train? We didn’t have an idea, did we, Roger?”
“Nop,” said his small brother thoughtlessly. “If we had we wouldn’t
have raced that train.”
“Now, I want to tell you something!” exclaimed their sister, with a
sharper note in her voice. “You’re not to race any train! Understand,
boys? Suppose that engine had struck you as you crossed the
tracks?”
“Oh, it wouldn’t,” Joe said stoutly. “I know the engineer. He’s a
friend of mine. He saw I had the ‘right-of-way,’ as they call it. I’d beat
him down the hill; so he held up the train.”
“Yes—he held up the train,” said Dorothy with a queer little laugh.
“He put on brakes because I pulled the emergency cord. You boys
would never have crossed ahead of that train if I hadn’t done so.”
“Oh, Dorothy!” gasped Joe.
“Oh, Sister!” cried Roger.
“Tavia and I almost had heart disease,” the young woman told
them seriously. “Engineers do not watch boys on country roads when
they are guiding a great express train. It is a serious matter to control
a train and to have the destinies of the passengers in one’s hands.
The engineer is looking ahead—watching the rails and the roadbed.
Remember that, boys.”
“I’d like to be an engineer!” sighed Roger, his eyes big with
longing.
“Pooh!” Joe said. “It’s more fun to drive an automobile—like this
new one Ned and Nat have. You don’t have to stay on the tracks,
you know.”
“Nobody but cautious people can learn to drive automobiles,” said
Dorothy, seriously.
“I’m big enough,” stated Joe, with conviction.
“You may be. But you’re not careful enough,” his sister told him.
“Your racing our train to-day showed that. Now, I won’t tell father or
auntie, for I do not wish to worry them. But you must promise me not
to ride down that hill in your little wagon any more or enter into any
such reckless sports.”
“Oh, we won’t, of course, if you say not, Dorothy,” sniffed Joe. “But
you must remember we’re boys and boys have got to take chances.
Even father says that.”
“Yes. When you are grown. You may be placed in situations where
your courage will be tested. But, goodness me!” finished Dorothy
Dale. “Don’t scare us to death, boys. And now see what I bought you
in New York.”
However, her lecture made some impression upon the boys’ minds
despite their excitement over the presents which were now brought
to light. Full football outfits for both the present was, and Joe and
Roger were delighted. They wanted to put them on and go out at
once with the ball to “pass signals,” dark as it had become.
However, they compromised on this at Dorothy’s advice, by taking
the suits, pads and guards off to their room and trying them on,
coming downstairs later to “show off” before the folks in the drawing-
room.
Major Dale was one of those men who never grow old in their
hearts. Crippled as he was—both by his wounded leg and by
rheumatism—he delighted to see the young life about him, and took
as much interest in the affairs of the young people as ever he had.
Aunt Winnie looked a very interesting invalid, indeed, with her
lame ankle, and rested on the couch. The big boys and Dorothy and
her friends always made much of Aunt Winnie in any case; now that
she was “laid up in drydock,” as Nat expressed it, they were
especially attentive.
Jennie and Tavia, with the two older boys, spent most of the
evening hovering about the lady’s couch, or at the piano where they
played and sang college songs and old Briarwood songs, till eleven
o’clock. Dorothy sat between her father and Aunt Winnie and talked
to them.
“What makes you so sober, Captain?” the major asked during the
evening. He had always called her “his little captain” and sometimes
seemed really to forget that she had any other name.
“I’m all right, Major,” she returned brightly. “I have to think,
sometimes, you know.”
“What is the serious problem now, Dorothy?” asked her aunt, with
a little laugh. “Did you forget to buy something while you were in
New York?”
Dorothy dimpled. “Wait till you see all I did buy,” she responded,
“and you will not ask that question. I have been the most reckless
person!”
“Why the serious pucker to your brow, Captain?” went on the
major.
“Oh, I have problems. I admit the fact,” Dorothy said, trying to
laugh off their questioning.
“Out with them,” advised her father. “Here are two old folks who
have been solving problems all their lives. Maybe we can help.”
Dorothy laughed again. “Try this one,” she said, with her eyes
upon the quartette “harmonizing” at the piano in dulcet tones, singing
“Seeing Nellie Ho-o-ome.” “Which of our big boys does Tavia like
best?”
“Goodness!” exclaimed her aunt, while the major chuckled
mellowly. “Don’t you know, really, Dorothy? I was going to ask you. I
thought, of course, Tavia confided everything to you.”