For a time about the beginning of the century the practice by farmers of taking land on speculation to sublet to cottierswas so common that a class of "middlemen" arose.
The ejected cottiers and broken small farmers of the neighbouring county flocked to it, living in beggary in wretched lodging-houses with swarms of infants and children, the breadwinners finding only an occasional day's work as labourers.
Again the cottiers or cottagers paid, in effect, the whole of the poor rate in the form of alms; for the dogs of the gentry kept all beggars from their gates.
The sons of Irish cottiers were not wanted for the war, and the daughters were no longer profitable as flax-spinners to the small farmers.
But for the most part the cottiers and cottagers tasted little of the oats or wheat which they grew; as soon as the harvest was gathered, the corn was sold to pay the November rents, and was exported.
The country cottiers and the poor of the towns were always on the verge of starvation.
In Norman times their condition was greatly improved; they mingled with the cottiers and household servants, and gradually were merged with them.
The successors of the bordarii seem to become in the later documents either villani with small or cottiers with large tenements.
The Inquisitio Eliensis puts the number of cottiers at 18, while Domesday gives 28.
Out of his cottiers however he will get but one day's work in the week.
Below the geburs and the cottiers were the theows, thralls, or slaves, who could be bought and sold.
For many centuries the houses of the villeins and cottiers did not alter very much in their general plan.
Now the land was shared amongst the villeins and cottiers in strips, usually containing an acre or halfacre, in the common fields of which we have heard before.
The land in villenage, as in the Winslow manor, is held mostly in virgates and half-virgates, and below these cottiers hold smaller holdings, also in villenage.
Comparing the services of the villani with those of the cottiers or bordarii, the difference evidently turns upon the size of the holdings, and the possession or non-possession of oxen.
It speaks of the cottiers as holding mostly five acres each--sometimes more and sometimes less--in singular coincidence with the Domesday Survey and later evidence.
In another manor in Huntingdonshire certain cottiersought to make summonses.
The conversion of cottiers into hired labourers," he justly observes, "implies the introduction all over Ireland of capitalist farmers, in lieu of the present small tenants.
Of such a child the happy cottiers were thinking in their silence.
This is the poorest parish in Donegal, and no statement can be too strong with respect to the wretched condition, the positive misery and starvation in which the cottiers and small farmers on this immense domain are found.
Under the old system, the cottiers in the small towns and villages, as well as on the roads in the country, were enabled to keep pigs.
The evicted cottiers and small farmers are forced to go to towns and villages, shut up in unwholesome rooms.
For a few weeks after the blight of the potato crop in 1846 the cottiers and small farmers managed to eke out a subsistence by the sale of their pigs and any little effects they had.
Years ago it was a matter of complaint by the cottiers of Clashatlea that to obtain turf they were obliged to make a great detour involving the climbing of a severe hill.
In equally poor case with the cottiers is the woman who keeps the village shop at Derryinver.
Now the land was shared amongst the villeins and cottiers in strips, usually containing an acre or a half-acre, in the common fields of which we have heard before.
The above list will hopefully give you a few useful examples demonstrating the appropriate usage of "cottiers" in a variety of sentences. We hope that you will now be able to make sentences using this word.
