gafolgelder

English

Etymology

Learned borrowing from Old English gafolgyldere.

Noun

gafolgelder (plural gafolgelders)

1. (historical) An Anglo-Saxon householder who owes rent to the king or his grantees rather than to a private landowner.
   • 1883, Frederic Seebohm, “Manors and Serfdom under Saxon Rule”, in The English Village Community Examined in Its Relations to the Manorial and Tribal Systems and to the Common or Open Field System of Husbandry. An Essay in Economic History., 2nd edition, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., page 163:

     And if the services had stopped here, we might have concluded that the ‘ceorls’ of Hysseburne were gafolgelders, and not serfs.

   • 1892 July, “Villainage in England”, in The English Historical Review, volume VII, number XXVII, London: Longmans, Green, and Co.; New York, N.Y.: […], page 460:

     How many of these gafolgelders by contract were to be found on Saxon manors, whether on the lord’s demesne or holding virgates in the open fields, libere tenentes or free holders of villain holdings, as I have elsewhere stated we cannot tell, but if we may take the experience of the interval between the Domesday survey and the hundred rolls as any guide to the natural multiplication of libere tenentes on the lord’s demesne, the class may have become numerous on many, and perhaps mostly on royal manors, without giving ground, I think, for any inference in favour of the original freedom of the Saxon village community.

   • 1905, Paul Vinogradoff, The Growth of the Manor, page 238:

     The position of gafolgelders is extended to English geburs, which in these cases appear as equivalent to ceorls […]

   • 1923, W[illiam] S[earle] Holdsworth, A History of English Law, Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown, and Company, page 68:

     It is probable that the owners of folkland are most nearly represented, at the later part of this period, by the geneats and the gafolgelders.