‘The best procedure now will be for you to forgive me for not paying you’, Don Quixote told the innkeeper, ‘because I cannot contravene the order of knights errant, of whom I know for certain … that they did not pay for their lodging or anything else at any inn where they stayed.’ So that latter-day paladin of chivalry, Don Quixote, found himself at variance with what he was to call this ‘age of iron’. From the schools and counting houses of the Renaissance was coming a breed of men more used to exploiting the reality of the world than seeking to transcend it. Yet such people aspired to join, not transform the old chivalric hierarchy – with enormous consequences for the social system, and particularly perhaps in Spain. Too many commoners were entering the ranks of the nobility, said the arbitrista Fernández Navarrete in 1626. Some argue, he went on, that this was a healthy state of affairs since the ambition to live like a noble spurred men to noble deeds. Yet in practice too many lacked the means to ‘keep up the vain appearance of aristocracy’, and therefore resorted to fraud and to cheating their creditors, ‘for they can no longer get a living in trade or work’.

Meanwhile, even the down-at-heel squire who hired the services of young Lazarillo de Tormes was dimly aware that people's lack of respect for him had something to do with money, and he protested: ‘I am not so hard up that I don't have a bit of land where I could run up a house or two, if I chose … And I have a dovecote … – a pity it has collapsed.’