The English Cottagers of the Middle Ages. 9 



We are therefore entitled to conclude that under the French 

 name hordarius, Domesday Book includes the two Anglo-Saxon 

 classes of cotsetel and gehurs, two classes which were both, prob- 

 ably, of free origin, but one of which had sunk into genuine 

 serfdom, while the other might still be described as free peas- 

 antry. Two hundred years later, the class of cottagers included 

 also the now emancipated slaves, all being equally serfs in status, 

 and equally lacking any interest in the land, beyond that of a 

 tenure at will. 



But the cottagers of free and of servile origin, although agree- 

 ing in status and in tenure, were nevertheless not wholly identi- 

 cal. They appear to have differed in the locality of their 

 residence and tenure. It has been already said that the cottagers 

 of free origin in the eleventh century, so far as can be traced, 

 being sprung from the class of villagers, had their residence in 

 the village^ among the tenants of higher class. This is certainly 

 the case with the French hordarii, and it may be inferred to have 

 been the case in England. But the slaves, being the personal 

 property of their lord, had their residence, not in the village, on 

 the tenement lands or utlandoi the manor, but on the lord's per- 

 sonal estate, the demesne or inland ; just as, on our southern planta- 

 tions, the negro quarters were in the neighborhood of the " big 

 house." When the slaves were emancipated, it was natural that 

 they should continue to live upon the demesne, occupying cot- 

 tages and petty holdings just as the older class of cottagers did 

 upon the tenement lands. "^ Or if new lands were cleared upon 

 the waste, they might receive patches of this. At any rate they 

 would not be in the village with the customary tenants and their 

 companions. 



This probability is converted into a certainty by a few isolated 

 facts which we meet with in the period between Domesday Book 

 and the Extenta Manerii. The rent-rolls of the end of the 13th 

 century, the period of the Extenta Manerii.^ class all the cottagers 



' See, for the residence of cottagers in the villages of Germany, von Maurer. 

 Oeschichte der Fronhofe, Vol. Ill, p. 198. 



*^Von Maurer, id. p. 3U, speaks of coloni upon the Hoflcindereieii (or de- 

 mesnes.) 



