BORDARS. Blount in his NOMO-AEZIKON says, this class
of men so often mentioned in Domesday Book are “by some esteemed to be boors,
husbandmen, or cottagers.” They are
invariably, or nearly so, therein mentioned immediately after the
villeins. Lord Coke says they were
“boors holding a little house with some land of husbandry, bigger than a
cottage.” Other writers offer other
conjectures. Some have considered them
as cottagers, taking their name from living on the borders of a village
or Manor; but this is a mistake on their
part, for Domesday itself generally mentions them among the agricultural
occupiers of land, and in one instance - not in Lincolnshire, however - as
“circa aulam manenantes,” dwellings about the Manor-house. Bishop Kennett in his Gloss. Par. Antiq. says
the servi and villani mentioned in Domesday were distinct classes, and seem to
have been men of a less servile condition, who had a bord or a cottage with a small parcel of land allowed to them, on
condition they should supply the Lord with poultry and eggs, and other small
provisions for his board and entertainment. Bloomfield
in his Hist. Norf. is of the same opinion, while the learned Brady says “they
were drudges, and performed vile services which were reserved by tge Lord upon
a poor little house and a small parcel of land, and might perhaps be domestic
labour, such as grinding, threshing, drawing water, cutting wood,” &c. The name is derived from the Saxon word bord,
a cottage. The condition of the bordars
was in all probability different on different Manors, just as the customs of
such Manors varied.
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