Online Encyclopedia
Make a correction
Your email address will not appear on the site. Note, comments may take some time to be approved.
Back to article:
COTTER, COTTAR, or COTTIER
Your email:
Article name:
Article content:
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. Vinogradoff, Villainage in England (Oxford, 1892):