152 THE DOMESDAY INQUEST 



western counties, and applies that term to those who in the 

 Exchequer Domesday are called " slaves " and " villans." 



Next above the slaves in the social scale were the cottagers, 

 who were called indiscriminately "bordars" or "cottagers" 

 according to the fancy of the Commissioners or their scribes. 

 In some hundreds of Sussex they were called " bordars," and in 

 others they were called " cottars ; " and in that county the two 

 names never appear in the same manor. We have seen that 

 before the Conquest a cotsetle occupied, as a rule, some 5 acres 

 of land, and worked one day a week on his lord's demesne, 

 and have quoted a passage from Domesday Book which tells 

 how the bordars at Ewias worked one day a week for their 

 lord. At Evesham there were twenty-seven bordars serving 

 the court (servientes curiam), 1 an expression which also points 

 to their works on the demesne. An examination of the 

 various classes of tenants in Middlesex shows a distinction 

 between the bordars and cottagers : while the villans usually 

 held half a virgate or more, the bordars held from 5 acres to 

 half a virgate, and the cottars held less than 5 acres ; some 

 cottars even appear to have been landless men. The Ely 

 Inquest, however, speaks of cottars who held as much as 10 

 acres. 2 At Westminster there were forty-one cottars who 

 paid 4O.y. for their gardens, 8 and at Sawbridge worth there 

 were forty-six bordars of 8 acres each, and two of 5 acres 

 each, twenty cottars who held 26 acres between them, and 

 thirty cottars about whose holdings we have no information ; 

 and as these latter are coupled with the slaves, it is not 

 improbable that they were landless. 4 



But the Rectitudines Singularum Personarum draws a 

 distinction between the cottager and the slave. The former 

 paid his hearthpenny on Holy Thursday, " as every freeman 

 should do ; " he was therefore a freeman, and his kinsfolk 

 received a wergild of 2OOs, if he was killed, while the kinsfolk 



1 D. B., I. 175 b i. 2 Seebohm, E. V. C., 96. 



3 P. B., I. 128 a 2. 4 D. B., I. 139 b 2. 



