DEPARTMENT OF LETTERS. THE ENGLISH COTTAGERS OF THE MIDDLE AGES. BY PROF. W. F. ALLEN. In the statute entitled Extenta Manerii, enacted in the fourth year of Edward L. (1276), three classes of tenants of the manor are enumerated: the libere tenentes or freeholders; the custumariï or customary tenants; and the coterelli or cottagers. In former papers I have inquired into the origin of the two first of these classes, and attempted to show that the customary tenants were representatives of the primitive village community, and that the freeholders were of feudal origin. In the present paper I propose to consider the third class, the cottagers. The class who, in this document, are called coterelli, are known by several other names-cotagii, cot manni, cotarii, coterii, cotlan darii. The several manors enumerated in the Gloucester Cartulary use these terms indifferently, while the Domesday of St. Paul's, in a passage corresponding to that in the Extenta Manerii, uses the word cotagi instead of coterelli. The Exchequer Domesday has coterii and cotmanni, as well as a new variation, cosceti or coscez, and the laws of Henry I. also mention cotseti. Lastly, the Rectitudines singularum personarum, of the period before the Norman Conquest, has cotsetlan, a form which is repeated in the conset of the Abingdon Cartulary, in the latter half of the twelfth century. Here are ten forms of the same word, evidently having the sante derivation, and apparently the same meaning. Nor is there difference discernible in their tenures and services. They generally hold a messuage and curtilage, that is a cottage with a yard, or an acre or two of land, and render therefor some trifling services. Still they occasionally are found with estates of considerable size; as, an entire virgate,1 twelve acres, ten, nine and 'Domesday of St. Paul's, p. 5. 2 Boldon Book, p. 566. so on.1 Neither are we entitled to assume an absolute identity in the several terms, inasmuch as cotarii and cosceti are occasionally found in the same manor. To add to the perplexity, Domesday Book regularly uses a word of entirely different etymology, bordarii, for the class of cottagers, the terms cotarii, cotmanni and cosceti being only occasionally used, and then being often found on the same estate with bordarii. The differences here indicated were no doubt slight and unessential and at any rate it would be a hopeless task to attempt at the present day to trace them in detail. Let us return to the threefold classification made by the Extenta Manerii; this classification evidently indicates broad and intelligible distinctions. We will inquire first into the position of the cottagers of the thirteenth century, and then proceed to trace the origin of the class. We are here at the start upon firm standing ground. The cottagers of the thirteenth century are sufficiently well understood: in order, however, to make their condition intelligible, a brief review of the previous history of the peasantry will be necessary. The peasantry of the Germanic nations were, in the earliest times, divided into small communities, each occupying a definite tract of land, called mark, which they owned and cultivated in common. When they reached a more advanced stage of progress, which require the ownership of land in severalty, each member of the community received an equal portion of land, consisting of house-lot and arable land, with rights of user in the meadows, pasture and forest, which he held as his own, subject, however, to the methods of cultivation followed by the community. This share was called in England, hide, on the continent, mansus. At first the proprietor of the hide held it as it were in trust for his family; he could not alienate it, but must transmit it to his heirs. Soon, however, at a very early time in England, he acquired the right of alienation; and, as a matter of course, the primitive equality of ownership was speedily succeeded by great inequality. A few became rich, others were forced to dispose of a part, or even the whole, of their land. We have, therefore, rich peasants, poor peasants, and landless peasants.' The name given to the village mark in Latin the language. almost universally used for public documents in the middle ages was villa, and its inhabitants were villani. Now in the changes in landed property, so long as a man kept his hold upon his share (hide), or even upon any aliquot portion of it, he was by right a villanus, a "townsman," and entitled to all the political and economical privileges which belonged to the community. Thus, the manor of Sindun' gives first of this class those who held half a virgate (i. e., one eighth of a hide, the regular share having been reduced to this amount by successive subdivision), then the operarii of ten acres, and then those of five. These three classes were the villani proper, or, as they were now called, the custumari, or customary tenants. They were the higher order of serfs, bound to labor by an hereditary obligation from which they could not escape; but having an interest in the soil, also hereditary, and of which they could not be deprived. Above them were the freeholders, libere tenentes, also having an interest in the soil, and held to labor; but an interest and an obligation. resting upon definite and personal contract. But there was a class below the customary tenants; serfs, like them, held to labor by an obligation which they did not themselves enter into, and from which they could not escape, but having no interest in the soil to compensate for it. They might hold land, even in considerable amount; but it was purely at the will of the lord. These were the cottagers. If the customary tenants may be called vill-ins regardant (prædial serfs), the cottagers may be called villeins in gross (personal serfs), with a status hardly better than that of slaves proper. Both classes held their lands nominally at will," but with the customary tenants the prescriptive rights of the tenant were effective against the bare legal right of the lord. It will be noted that there were no slaves in England at this time (the close of the thirteenth century.) There had been at an 1 See, on this point, Thudichum, Gau und Markverfassung, p. 211. |