Definition
Bordlands is the plural of bordland. In medieval English feudal law, the term carried two related but distinct meanings:
1. Demesne lands retained by a lord for the direct support of his household table — that is, lands kept in the lord's own hands rather than granted out to tenants, specifically for the provisioning of his board (table) and those dependent upon it.
2. Lands granted by a lord to tenants (bordarii or bordars) on the condition that those tenants supply the lord's table with small provisions: poultry, eggs, and similar domestic produce. These tenants held in bordage, a subordinate form of tenure tied to domestic service in kind rather than military obligation or money rent.
The two meanings are connected: both revolve around the lord's table (bord) as the organizing concept, whether the lord retained the land himself or used tenant obligations to stock it.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Plural of bordland. No independent definition given; the term does not appear in ordinary modern English.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Not entered. The term had already passed out of common English usage by the nineteenth century.
Editorial note: Bordlands is pure historical legal vocabulary with no surviving common meaning. Researchers encountering the term in any context can treat it as a term of art from feudal land law requiring no comparison to lay usage.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
Two functional categories appear in the sources:
— Lord's bordlands: Demesne lands held in hand by the lord, not alienated or let, devoted to the direct maintenance of his household. This is the primary and older sense.
— Tenant bordlands (lands held in bordage): Lands granted to bordars or cottagers whose tenure obligation was to supply provisions to the lord's table rather than to pay rent in money or render military service. This is the secondary sense, appearing more fully in Black's 2nd edition.
Why It Matters in Research
Bordlands is a term researchers will encounter almost exclusively in two contexts: transcriptions of medieval English land records (surveys, extents, inquisitions post mortem, cartularies) and in treatises or digests drawing on Bracton, Spelman, or Cowell. It rarely appears in case law and has no significant modern statutory life in England or Wales.
The key research trap is conflating the two senses. A record that describes a lord's bordlands is describing demesne land held in hand — land not held by any tenant, not subject to alienation, and often central to disputes over what passed with a manor grant. A record describing lands held in bordage describes a tenure relationship, not the lord's own retained land. These distinctions matter when mapping the extent of a manor, tracing title, or interpreting a medieval conveyance.
In the American context, Black's 1st edition includes a truncated passage noting Pennsylvania usage, where the term appears to have been adapted into borough and township law. That passage is incomplete in the source material available, but researchers working in early Pennsylvania land records — particularly those dealing with the transformation of proprietary grants into borough and township structures — should be alert to this usage, which carries a different valence from the English feudal original.
The connection to demesne is the most important corpus bridge. Bordlands in the lord's-hand sense is a subset of demesne, and researchers tracing demesne concepts will find bordlands appearing alongside other demesne subcategories. The bordar or bordarius as a class of tenant connects the tenure-based sense to broader work on villein tenure, cottar tenure, and the gradations of unfree and semi-free tenure in the feudal hierarchy.
Historical Dictionary Support
The four source dictionaries agree on the core definition — demesne lands for the lord's table — and all trace to the same authority: Cowell's Interpreter (referenced as Cowel or Cowell across the entries). Burrill adds Bracton (fol. 263) and Spelman as authorities, making it the most scholastically grounded of the four entries. Burrill also supplies the Saxon etymology (bord, a table) and the Latin gloss (quod quis habet ad mensam suam — what one has for one's table), which helps confirm that the organizing concept is provisioning the household rather than any agricultural or military function.
Black's 2nd edition adds the tenant-bordlands sense that Bouvier omits entirely, and Bouvier's entry is the briefest of the four, essentially reproducing Cowell without elaboration. None of the historical dictionaries address the Pennsylvania usage at length; Black's 1st edition begins a note but the surviving text is truncated. This is a genuine gap in the historical sources for American legal historians.
No source raises the term in connection with common law pleading or modern property doctrine, confirming that bordlands is a historical term without continuing doctrinal life.
Jurisdictional Note
In English law, bordlands belongs entirely to medieval and early modern feudal tenure doctrine, dissolved as a practical matter by the Tenures Abolition Act 1660 and subsequent land law reforms. In American law, the term's primary relevance is to Pennsylvania colonial and early state land history; researchers in other states are unlikely to encounter it in operative legal sources.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Feudal Land Tenure
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Demesne
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Bordar; Bordage Tenure