Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. I.djvu/82



The inferior orders of nobility, the hidalgos, (whose dignity, like that of the ricos hombres, would seem, as their name imports, to have been originally founded on wealth,) and the cavalleros, or knights, enjoyed many of the immunities of the higher class, especially that of exemption from tax- ation. Knighthood appears to have been regarded with especial favor by the law of Castile. Its ample privileges and its duties are defined with a precision, and in a spirit of romance, that might have served for the court of King Arthur. Spain was indeed the land of chivalry. The respect for the sex, which had descended from the Visigoths,