DOMESDAY SURVEY 



Exchequer terminology is not helpful since it says merely that so many villani and so 

 many bordars had so many ploughs, without indicating how the ploughs were divided. 

 Two entries distinctly say that the ploughs were shared among all the peasants. At 

 Burton Bradstock (nos. 2 and x) there were 41 villani, 30 bordars, 7 coliberti, and 74 

 cottars, and inter omnes habent xxvii carucas, and at Wai (no. 163) Hi coscez cum uno 

 Tillano habefit imam carucam. On the other hand, two entries specifically assign the 

 plough to the villani alone. At Corscombe (no. 488) there was unus villanus cum i caruca 

 et an bordariis et i servo, and at Stoke Abbott (no. 45) ibi est in dominio i caruca cum i 

 servo et vi coscez. Ibi viii villani habent iiii carucas. At Woolcombe (no. 262) the bordars 

 but not the cottars seem to be sharing in the ploughs {ii villani et viii bordarii cum i 

 caruca et Hi cotarii). With this basic uncertainty it is obviously difficult to decide what 

 fraction of a plough was held by the average villanus. Only the total number of ploughs 

 is given and there is no guarantee that they were shared equally among the villani even 

 if the share of the bordars and cottars could be satisfactorily established. In 19 cases the 

 villani were either the only peasants or can be shown to have held all the ploughs. In 10 

 of these cases the proportion of villani to ploughs is exactly or approximately 2:1, so 

 that it is possible that each villanus held about J plough. In 5 cases the proportion is 

 exactly or approximately 4:1. There are 3 cases of a villanus with a whole team (nos. 182, 

 488, and 515) and at Gillingham (no. 250) there is the extremely rare case of a villanus 

 with two teams of which there are only two other known examples, at Haiugurge (Suss.) 

 and Keresforth (Yorks. W.R.).5' 



The bordars, cotsets, and cottars, who are enumerated after the villani, together form 

 the cottager class, corresponding to the kotsetlan of the Rectitudines Singularum 

 Personarum. The bordars are by far the most numerous, and usually take precedence 

 over the cotsets, who in turn take precedence over the cottars.^^ Since the Domesday 

 commissioners took the trouble to distinguish three classes of cottagers, there must 

 have been some diflFerence between them, but the nature of this difference is now 

 unknown and there is evidence that the distinction was not clear-cut even in the nth 

 and 1 2th centuries. In the summary of the fief of Glastonbury Abbey in Exon. 

 Domesday it is stated that the abbot had 72 bordars, whereas according to the Ex- 

 chequer text he had 40 bordars and 32 cottars. The Exon. figure thus lumps the 

 bordars and cottars together without distinction. s^ It is noticeable, also, that the 

 Shaftesbury surveys of the 12th century record only cotsets, whereas in all but one case 

 the Domesday account of the manors of that abbey mentions only bordars.'-* Round 

 noted that in the accounts of Surrey and Sussex the cottager class were called bordars in 

 some areas and cottars in others, the terms being mutually exclusive." The Middlesex 

 survey, on the other hand, which is the only one to record individual peasant holdings, 

 suggests that there was a distinction between bordars and cottars based on the size of 

 their holdings. Whereas most bordars in Middlesex had tenements of between 5 and 15 

 acres, the majority of cottars had no land at all or only their gardens. Those cottars who 

 did have land had as a rule between i acre and 5 acres, only two having more than this. 

 Only 54 out of 342 bordars had less than 5 acres, and only 9 had no land at all.s^ 

 Whether this distinction holds good in Dorset is conjectural, since there are no details 

 of individual holdings, but a distinction of this sort can be seen in the survey of 



5' Dom. Bk. (Rec. Com.), i, ff. 2ib, 317; see also R. " Seep. 148. 



Lennard, 'The Economic Position of the Domesday " Qn one occasion the Shaftesbury surveys do use the 



Villani', Econ. Jnl. Ivi. 260. term 'bordar'. This is in the account of Melbury Abbas 



" It is unknown in Dorset for all 3 types to be found (B. M. Harl. MS. 61, f. 48V), which is the only Shaftesbury 



together in a single entry, but when bordars are found with manor where cotsets are recorded in Domesday (no. 130). 



cotsets or cottars they are enumerated first, and when " V.C.H. Siirr. i. 292; V.C.H. Suss. i. 368. 



cotsets are found with cottars the cotsets come first. '^ V.C.H. Mdx. i. 92. 



DO. Ill 17 * 



