Feudal System. Also 9 border. [mod. ad. med.L. bordārius cottager, f. med.L. borda (Pr., Cat. borda, F. borde) hut, cottage, referred by Diez to Teut. bord (neuter) ‘wooden board,’ etc. (The OF. was bordier.)
(The actual history of the sense which borda has taken in Romanic, and of its fem. gender, is still wanting; one might conjecture a neuter plural borda ‘thing of boards’ taken as a feminine sing.)]
A villein of the lowest rank, who held a cottage at his lord’s pleasure, for which he rendered menial service; a cottier. (As an English word, found only in modern historians: the L. bordarii is a regular term of Domesday Book.)
[1087. Domesday Bk., Middlesex, St. Petrus Stanes, Et xxxvi bordarii de iii hidis, et iv bordarii de xl acris,. et xii servi.
1670. Blount, Law Dict., Bordarii seu Bordmanni, often occur in Domesday; by some esteemed to be Bores, Husbandmen, or Cotagers; which are there always put after Villains.]
1776. Strutt, Horda Angel-Cyn., III. 16. The military tenants and socmen had their labourers and dependants, as bordars.
1809. Bawdwen, Domesday Bk., 11. The King has now there five villanes and three bordars, with two ploughs.
1861. Pearson, Early & Mid. Ages Eng., 268. Of these [the semi-servile], villeins, borders, or cottiers, make up the mass, about 200,000 in all.
1876. Green, Short Hist., v. § 4. 238. The cottar, the bordar, and the labourer were bound to aid in the work of the home-farm.
