vill2 [57]
for them are called operarii.(28*) Another designation which may be found everywhere is consuetudinarii or custumarii.(29*) It points to customary services, which the people were bound to perform. When such tenants are opposed to the villains, they are probably free men holding in villainage by customary work.(30*) As the name does not give any indication as to the importance of the holding a qualification is sometimes added to it, which determines the size of the tenement.(31*) In many manors we find a group of tenants, possessed of small plots of land for the service of following the demesne ploughs. These are called akermanni or carucarii (32*), are mostly selected among the customary holders, and enjoy an immunity from ordinary work as long as they have to perform their special duty.(33*) On some occasions the records mention gersumarii, that is peasants who pay a gersuma, a fine for marrying their daughters.(34*) This payment being considered as the badge of personal serfdom, the class must have consisted of men personally unfree. Those names remain to be noticed which reflect the size of the holding. In one of the manors belonging to St. Paul's Cathedral in London we find hidarii.(35*) This does not mean that every tenant held a whole hide. On the contrary, they have each only a part of the hide, but their plots are reckoned up into hides, and the services due from the whole hide are stated. Virgatarius(36*) is of very common occurrence, because the virgate was considered as the normal holding of a peasant. It is curious that in consequence the virgate is sometimes called simply terra, and holders of virgates -- yerdlings.(37*) Peasants possessed of half virgates are halfyerdlings accordingly. The expressions 'a full villain'(38*) and 'half a villain' must be understood in the same sense. They have nothing to do with rank, but aim merely at the size of the farm and the quantity of services and rents. Ferlingseti are to be met with now and then in connexion with the ferling or ferdel, the fourth part of a virgate.(39*) The constant denomination for those who have no part in the common arable fields, but hold only crofts or small plots with their homesteads, is 'cotters' (cotsetle, cottagiarii, cottarii (40*), etc.). They get opposed to villains as to owners of normal holdings.(41*) Exceptionally the term is used for those who have very small holdings in the open fields. In this case the authorities distinguish between greater and lesser cotters (42*), between the owners of a 'full cote' and of 'half a cote.'(43*) The bordarii, so conspicuous in Domesday, and evidently representing small tenants of the same kind as the cottagers, disappear almost entirely in later times.(44*) We may start from this last observation in our general estimate of the terminology. One might expect to find traces of very strong French influence in this respect, if in any. Even if the tradition of facts had not been interrupted by the Conquest, names were likely to be altered for the convenience of the new upper class. And the Domesday Survey really begins a new epoch in terminology by its use of villani and bordarii. But, curiously enough, only the first of these terms takes root on English soil. Now it is not a word transplanted by the Conquest; it was in use before the Conquest as the Latin equivalent of ceorl, geneat, and probably gebur. Its success in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries is a success of Latin, and not of French, of the half-literary record language over conversational idioms, and not of foreign over vernacular notions. The peculiarly French 'bordier' on the other hand, gets misunderstood and eliminated. Looking to Saxon and Danish terms, we find that they hold their ground tenaciously enough; but still the one most prevalent before the Conquest - ceorl - disappears entirely, and all the others taken together cannot balance the diffusion of the 'villains.' The disappearance of ceorl may be accounted for by the important fact that it was primarily the designation of a free man, and had not quite lost this