The aim of this book is to describe, in physical detail, how people in the kingdom of Castile moved, worked, suffered, competed, and starved during the years of pestilence at the turn of the sixteenth century. It begins with the monarchy because everything began with the monarchy, though in the years we are examining, the monarchy was suddenly not quite there. Yet the language and the expectations prevailed; small towns might be rent apart, but they knew themselves to be republics of a republic and they reacted as such, expecting help, petitioning, managing, and obeying, all as vassals of a king. The themes to be explored in this book – memory, custom, law, charity, duty, justice, knowledge, belief – will be found at every stop along the way, but by beginning in the palace, as it were, we can see more clearly how these all functioned in the context of political relationships and ideology. The following glimpses of royal intervention in plague matters concern the new reign of Philip III (r. 1598–1621) and then look specifically at shipbuilding, judicial jurisdiction, and taxes, all realms in which the monarchy had to continue exerting pressure on localities beset by disease. There is something necessarily fragmentary and anecdotal about these examples, but they provide different slants on the ways in which plague pushed the structures of an already pressured state, and how the state pushed back.