Squires’ customary service for reward rather than fixed wages

Squires’ customary service for reward rather than fixed wages is a central expectation of knight-errantry, but not a secure contract: service is given in hope of a future grant, such as an island or lordship, rather than for an agreed monthly salary. The custom brings Don Quixote and Sancho Panza into disagreement over what service is worth, and exposes the distance between the imagined reward of knighthood and the practical uncertainty borne by a squire.

The custom and its uncertain rewards

Don Quixote explains the practice through the histories of knight-errants. He says he has read all, or nearly all, of those histories without finding even the slightest indication that knights assigned their squires monthly or yearly wages. In his account, squires serve in expectation of reward: when a knight’s fortune turns favorable, the squire may receive an island or something equivalent, or at least a title and lordship. The precedent is literary and customary, rather than a specific agreement about pay or timing.

The arrangement places the risk of delay on the squire. Sancho makes that uncertainty explicit: rewards may arrive late, prove inadequate, or never come. He invokes mortality as well as money, reasoning that no one can promise himself more life than God grants and that death cannot be held back by prayers, struggles, sceptres, or mitres. His point is practical: a future reward is no substitute for knowing what he can count on while alive and in service.

Sancho’s request for fixed pay

Sancho asks Don Quixote to settle wages payable every month from his estate. He is willing to know in advance whether the amount will be large or small; regularity matters more to him than an uncertain promise. His proverbs reinforce the argument that small, repeated earnings accumulate, whereas waiting for a reward leaves the squire dependent on luck and his master’s success.

He does not simply reject the promised island. Sancho offers to have its revenue valued and deducted from his wages if Don Quixote eventually grants it. That proposal tries to reconcile the traditional reward with a dependable present arrangement: the island can remain part of the bargain, but it need not leave Sancho without predictable income in the meantime. When Don Quixote corrects Sancho’s mistaken use of a word, Sancho accepts the correction, while maintaining that his meaning has been understood.

Don Quixote’s defense of tradition

Don Quixote recognizes that Sancho’s proverbs reveal his aim, but refuses to establish fixed wages. He treats the absence of such payment in knightly histories as a reason not to introduce it into their service. To pay a monthly salary, he argues, would disturb the ancient usage of knight-errantry. His answer therefore rests on the authority of inherited stories, not on a claim that Sancho’s request is unintelligible or that the promised reward is certain.

He leaves the choice to Sancho: return to service on reward, with its accompanying hopes, or decline and remain a friend. Don Quixote tells him to explain his intentions to Teresa Panza as well as consider them himself. Yet his offer is not wholly conciliatory. He says he can find other squires, describing them as more obedient and painstaking and less thickheaded or talkative. The exchange thus makes continued service conditional: Sancho can retain his place only by accepting the customary uncertainty.

The promise in practice

Sancho’s response shows that the arrangement matters to him as more than an abstract rule. Don Quixote’s firmness leaves him dismayed because he had assumed his master would not travel without him. His disappointment reveals a tension between personal attachment and material security: he wants to remain in the service, but had hoped that loyalty and the promise of an island would not prevent him from seeking wages.

A later conversation with the squire of the Grove shows the reward custom continuing to shape expectations. That squire says hardship can be endured when there is hope of reward, and expects at least an island government or a fair county after a few turns, unless his knight is exceptionally unlucky. Sancho replies that Don Quixote has promised him an island many times. The other squire, meanwhile, says his master has assigned him a canonry; Sancho infers that this master must be a knight in the Church, since his own master is a layman. Sancho recalls that others tried to persuade Don Quixote to become an archbishop, but that he wanted to be emperor instead, and admits he would not be fit for Church office.

The contrast underscores how the hoped-for reward depends on each knight’s status and fortunes, while remaining a hope rather than regular compensation. In the Grove squire’s account, the work itself means eating bread through sweat, enduring heat and cold, and sometimes going a day or two without food. The custom offers these servants a future prospect, but supplies no guaranteed wage against present hardship. Its comic promise of islands and church offices sits beside Sancho’s insistence on monthly pay: the grand reward is alluring precisely because it is uncertain.