Definition of "cottager"

A cottager, I mark’d a throneOf half the world as all my own,And murmur’d at such lowly lot —

1829, Edgar Allan Poe, “Tamerlane”, in Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane and Minor Poems

I don't like shoppy people. I think we are far better off, knowing only cottagers and labourers, and people without pretence.

1855, Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South