Introduction

A trial provides a forum in which the significant issues are frozen in a way that makes them resonate with the parties, and in high profile contests, among those with similar concerns. The trial sorted the fluid mix of different interpretive schemes available within the Castilian cultural environment into starkly contrasting positions. When they realized that the only chance to keep Toledo from regaining the viscounty of Puebla de Alcocer probably lay in the outcome of the judicial proceedings, the duke of Béjar's lawyers increased their efforts to improve their case. By the time of the Granadan audiencia's second decision in 1555, both sides had presented the evidence and arguments clearly showing that the root problem of the lawsuit was the nature of the monarch's authority.

Of course, the complex interactions among the parties to the dispute and the royal officials involved yielded subtle alterations in the meaning of absolute royal authority as it had been perceived by protagonists in the fifteenth century or during the Comunidades rebellion. Moreover, these interactions took place during a period in which territorial aristocrats became estranged from the political life of the Cortes as an institution and the interpretive schemes cued for participants there. Because of the increasing financial difficulties of many aristocratic houses, grandees became more dependent on royal service and intervention in their affairs by a monarchy approaching the bankruptcy of 1557.