8 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 



The name hordarius, used in this document and in a few other 

 o.^casional ca.=!es, may assist us to a conclusion. It is a French 

 term, used by the French officials of William the Conqueror in- 

 stead of the native English term. In France, the hordarius was 

 the tenant of a hordaria, a smaller estate attached to a mansus or 

 hide, upon the outskirts of which it was situated' ; the hordarius, 

 therefore, although not a fall member of the community, was an 

 outgrowth of the community and belonged, by origin, to the class 

 of villani. He was a cottager, but a cottager of free origin. 



The French hordarius, therefore, the ocaupxntof a cottage upon 

 the estate of another peasant, belonged by his origin to the class 

 of villani, but did not hold his land by prescriptive right, like 

 the villani proper, but by spe3ial grant, liki the serfs. He was a 

 cottager, but a cottager of free, not servile, origin. It does not 

 follow, of course, that the compilers of Djmesday Bjok used 

 the term strictly in this sense. In all probability it meant to 

 them simply cottager, and they applied it without discrimination 

 to all those English peasants whom this term could properly de- 

 scribe. It is not surprising that they classed together, under this 

 name, the cotsetel or free cottagers, and the gehurs or serfs, seeing 

 that these classes agreed in occupying cottages with a few acres 

 attached. It must be remembered that Domesday Book does not, 

 as a rule, record tenures but classes of men. It was no object to 

 distinguish between the different classes of cottagers, whether as 

 to tenure or as to status. And if in a few instances we have 

 cotarii or cosceti by the side of hordarii, all we are entitled to infer 

 is that the officials who drew up the report of this particular 

 manor, noted distinctions which other officials passed over as insig- 

 nificant ; that the distinctions existed generally, but were not 

 generally put on record. It was not even necessary that the hor- 

 darius should hold any land at all. Domesday Book mentions 

 one hordarius who, on account of poverty, had nothing," and ten 

 who had no land of their own. 



' Lamprecht ; Beilrilge zar Geschichte des franzosischea Wirthschaftslebens, 

 p. 38. 



« Vol. I. f. 177 b., Ilatete in Worcestershire. Vol. II, f. 299, Gepeswiz in 

 S IFolk. 



