Domesday Book. 167 



felt. On tlie otlier hand, there is Vinogradoff s supposition * 

 that they were riding bailiffs whose duty it was to super- 

 vise and check the agricultural operations of predial and 

 boon service. Next in importance were the coliberti, who 

 came between the servi and homines liberi, and who held their 

 freedom of tenure under certain conditions which still detained 

 them in servitude. Chief of the servi was the bordarius, who 

 was the gebur of the preceding era.^ These villeins were the 

 Gibeonites of the manorial community. They held a cottage 

 and a small parcel of land for which they paid rent in such 

 vile services as grinding, threshing, ploughing, drawing water, 

 cutting wood, etc. But they had their social grades, such as 

 the cotarii, who paid predial services of poultry or provisions 

 in lieu of some of the more degrading labours enumerated 

 above. To this class we may also assign the various holders 

 of virgates, half virgates, or quarter virgates, who were dis- 

 tinguished from each other under the many local terms of 

 virgarius, yerdling, half yerdlings, majores and minores 

 erdlinges, halferdlinges,^ ferling-seti. The cotarii were 

 further subdivided into majores and minores cotarii, the latter 

 of whom could not have been very far removed from the 

 grade of rusticus or nativus, a class which, without any de- 

 termined tenure of land, worked at agriculture on the demesne 

 lands, or performed less honourable duties about the manor 

 house. 



We next come to a numerous list of synonymous terms, such 

 as akermanni, carucarii, answering to our description above 

 of the coliberti ; operarii, signifying individuals of the bordar 

 class who rendered predial instead of monied service ; ger- 

 sumarii, by which is to be understood bordarii who paid a fine 

 for marrying their daughters, and many others, which it is 

 not worth our while to examine. 



Terms denoting the same social grade varied throughout 

 the country ; thus the landsettus of the Eastern counties 



' Vinogradoff, Villeinage in Engl., ch. vi., p. 407. 

 ' Id., Ibid., ch. v., p. 145. 



^ Ashley, Economic Hist., p. 54, note 41, and Vinogradoff, Villeinage 

 in Engl., p. 148. 



