Forms: 4–5 cotier, cotyer, 6 cottyer, 7– cottier. [a. OF. cotier, cottier = med.L. cotārius, coterius, f. cota COT.]
1. A peasant who lives in a cot or cottage; a cottager; orig. a villein who occupied a cottage; a ‘cotset,’ ‘cottar’ or ‘coterell.’
1386. in Madox, Formul. Angl., 428 (Du Cange). Omnibus tenentibus meis, videlicet Husbandis, Cotiers & Bond.
1393. Langl., P. Pl., C. X. 97. Almes … to comfortie suche cotyers [i.e., women þat wonyeþ in Cotes] and crokede men and blynde. Ibid., 193. These lolleres, lacchedraweres, lewede eremytes, Coueyten þe contrarie as cotiers þei lybben.
1599. Bp. Hall, Sat., IV. ii. 9. Himself goes patched like some bare cottyer.
1603. Holland, Plutarch’s Mor., 200. [He] asked for bread and water; which the said peasant or cottier gave unto him.
1649. Blithe, Eng. Improv. Impr. (1653), 77. I begin with … the Poor Cottier, or day Labourer.
1821. Mar. Edgeworth, Mem. R. L. Edgeworth, II. 24. They had cottiers, day labourers established in cottages, on their estate.
1861. Pearson, Early & Mid. Ages Eng., 268. The largest class of all was the semi-servile. Of these villeins, borders, or cottiers, make up the mass, about 200,000 in all.
1868. Milman, St. Paul’s, 136. Everyone, from the lord to the cottier, had his customary claims.
2. spec. In Ireland, a peasant renting and cultivating a small holding under a system hence called cottier tenure.
The main feature of this system was the letting of the land annually in small portions directly to laborers, the rent being fixed not by private agreement but by public competition; recent legal and political changes have rendered this practice obsolete.
1832. Ht. Martineau, Ireland, i. 6. An Irish cottier finds his business finished when he has dug and planted his potato field.
1842. S. C. Hall, Ireland, II. 120. Some landlords in Munster set their lands to cottiers far above their value.
1868. Mill, Eng. & Irel., 40. He was a cottier, at a nominal rent, puffed up by competition to a height far above what could, even under the most favourable circumstances, be paid.
3. transf. A small farmer cultivating his parcel of land by his own labor.
1877. D. M. Wallace, Russia, xxix. 460. These peasants proper, who may be roughly described as small farmers or cottiers, were distinguished from the free agricultural laborers in two respects: they were possessors of land in property or usufruct, and they were members of a rural Commune.
4. attrib. (chiefly in sense 2), as cottier farmer, rent, tenant, tenure, etc.; cottier tenancy, the tenancy of the Irish cottier; by an Act of Parliament of 1860 defined as tenancy of a cottage and not more than half an acre of land, at a rent not exceeding £5 a year.
1831. R. Jones, Ess. Distrib. Wealth, 145. The disadvantages of cottier rents may be ranged under three heads.
1848. Mill, Pol. Econ., II. ix. § 1. By the general appellation of Cottier tenure, I shall designate all cases, without exception, in which the labourer makes his contract for land without the intervention of a capitalist farmer.
1861. May, Const. Hist. (1863), II. xiv. 475. In Ireland … the tithes … were levied upon vast numbers of cottier tenants, miserably poor, and generally Catholics.
1863. Fawcett, Pol. Econ., II. vii. (1876), 214. In the case, however, of a cottier tenancy, it is population, and not capital, which competes for the land.
Hence Cottierism, the system of cottier-tenure (see 2).
1848. Mill, Pol. Econ., II. x. § 2. The old vicious system of cottierism.
Cotting, Cottise, -ize: see COT v.1 2, COTISE.
