THE STATUS OF PEASANTRY IN PORTLAND. 79 



the various officers still comprise the steward, bailiff, reeve, chief 

 constable, affeerors, and haywards. Also the rights of pasturage 

 appear to be the same as in Saxon times ; and the old methods 

 of land disposal, namely, by Church-gift, by Surrender in Court, 

 or by last will or testament, are still favoured by the inhabitants, 

 though Surrender in Court has well-nigh died out. 



\Yhen we get to the Norman period we find that the position 

 of a man is determined wholly by his services, rural sen-ices 

 being most damaging, as these were considered base. The 

 Norman commissioners seem to attempt to put villains, bordarii 

 and cotters (i.e., people engaged in rural sendees), on one side, 

 and those entirely free from these occupations on the other. 

 The Kentish peasantry at the time of the survey was included in 

 the rank of villainage, though later we find Kent is considered 

 free from this taint, and the population there not only claim a 

 superior position, but it is accorded to them still they were 

 villains and bordarii in the sense of being peasant-shareholders. 

 On the whole the villains and bordarii of Domesday are taken to 

 be those who not only live themselves by rural work, but support 

 others (i.e., the overlords) by the same, so that the status of this 

 class at the time of Domesday appears to depend really on 

 whether they are merely self-supporting or have to render certain 

 services to others. 



The bordarii seem to have been the holders of a smaller unit 

 than the villains, and the term villani is used in Domesday to 

 mark off a large group of free tenants whose holdings are of a 

 certain size and quality, this term not corresponding to the 

 villain class of later Feudal records. Vinogradoff states 

 positively that the terminology of Domesday refers to the size 

 and character of tenements, and does not refer to legal distinction 

 between classes of persons as in preceding and subsequent 

 times ; i.e., in Old English and Feudal classification. He also 

 thinks that the upper stratum of tenantry did not obtain the same 

 recognition of its better position at the hands' of the western 

 commissioners and jurymen. Later on, when the Feudal System 

 was at its strongest, the villani were, roughly speaking, peasants, 



