Definition
An officer of a royal or noble household responsible for the oversight of the buttery — that is, the cellar and stores of wine, ale, and related provisions. The bottiler held charge over the supply and distribution of drink within the household, a position of both practical trust and some dignity in medieval domestic organization. The term is an archaic Anglo-French rendering of what later settled into the English "butler."
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "Butler" — a principal male servant of a household, typically responsible for the care of the wine cellar, the oversight of other servants, and the general management of domestic affairs.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "Butler" — an officer in a king's or nobleman's household, charged with the care and service of liquor; in great establishments, also the head of the servants.
The legal resonance of "bottiler" is narrower and more specifically tethered to household office in the context of feudal and royal service. Where the modern "butler" is understood as a domestic servant, the bottiler carried a defined role within the formal structure of household governance — a distinction that matters when the term appears in records touching on household tenure, fees of office, or the perquisites attached to service under the Crown.
Why It Matters in Research
This term appears almost exclusively in Year Book materials and medieval household records. Researchers encountering "bottiler" in Anglo-French legal sources should recognize it as a title of office rather than a mere occupational description — the distinction carries consequences for questions of tenure, inheritance of office, and the legal rights attached to household positions.
The primary trap is anachronism: reading "bottiler" through the lens of the modern domestic butler obscures the formal, quasi-official character the role held in medieval household law. Household offices of this kind could carry heritable rights, fees, and legal incidents that generated litigation — which is precisely why the term surfaces in the Year Books at all.
Researchers working in the Law Mind corpus should treat "bottiler" as a gateway term. Its appearance in a source signals proximity to materials on household tenure, serjeanty, and the law of offices — areas where Latin, Law French, and early English terminology shift across different periods and manuscript traditions. Cross-referencing against parallel Year Book entries for related household officers (steward, chamberlain, marshal) will generally provide useful context for any specific passage under examination.
Because the corpus of direct legal authority on the bottiler is thin — essentially confined to the Year Book entry Burrill cites — the term is better understood as an index to a broader subject matter than as a freestanding legal concept with developed doctrine.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's entry is spare: "L. Fr. Butler. A son chiefe bottiler. Yearb. H. 6 Edw. III. 15." The citation to Henry's reign in 6 Edward III places the reference squarely in the early fourteenth century, and the Year Book context is consistent with the period's treatment of household office questions.
Burrill does not elaborate on the legal incidents of the office, and no substantial development of the term appears in the standard historical dictionaries. Cowell's Interpreter and Blount's Nomo-Lexicon do not carry a distinct entry for "bottiler" as such, though both treat "butler" in ways consistent with Burrill's equation of the terms. Jacob's Law Dictionary similarly folds the role into the broader category of household officers without treating the Anglo-French form. The historical record is therefore thin and largely derivative — researchers should not expect doctrinal elaboration from the dictionary tradition on this term and should go directly to the Year Book sources and to secondary scholarship on medieval household law.