COTTER, COTTAR, or COTTIER  , a word derived from the Latin cola, a cot or cottage, and used to describe a man who occupies a cottage and cultivates a small plot of land . This word is often employed to translate the cotarius of Domesday Book, a class whose exact status has been the subject of some discussion, and is still a matter of doubt . According to Domesday the cotarii were comparatively few, numbering less than seven thousand, and were scattered unevenly throughout England, being principally in the southern counties; they were occupied either in cultivating a small plot of land, or in working on the holdings of the villani . Like the villani, among whom they were frequently classed, their economic condition may be described as " free in relation to every one except their lord." See F . W . Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond (Cambridge, [897) ; and P .