highly acceptable; and, in a few reigns after, it was given to princes of the blood.1 In old days gentry resided more at home on their estates, and, having fewer resources of elegant in-door amusement, spent most of their leisure hours in the field and the pleasures of the chase. A large domain, therefore, at a little more than a mile distance, and well-stocked with game, must have been a very eligible acquisition, affording him influence as well as entertainment; and especially as the manorial house of Temple, by its exalted situation, could command a view of near two-thirds of the forest.

That Gurdon, who had lived some years the life of an outlaw, and, at the head of an army of insurgents, was for a considerable time in high rebellion against his sovereign, should have been guilty of some outrages, and should have committed some depredations, is by no means matter of wonder. Accordingly we find a distringas against him, ordering him to restore to the Bishop of Winchester some of the temporalities of that see, which he had taken by violence and detained, viz., some lands in Hocheleye, and a mill.2 By a breve, or writ, from the king, he is also enjoined to readmit the Bishop of Winchester, and his tenants of the parish and town of Farnham, to pasture their horses, and other larger cattle, "averia," in the Forest of Wolmer, as had been the usage from time immemorial. This writ is dated in the tenth year of the reign of Edward, viz., 1282.

All the king's writs directed to Gurdon are addressed in the following manner: "Edwardus, Dei gratia, &c. dilecto et fideli suo Ade Gurdon salutem ;" and again, "Custodi foreste sue de Wolvemere."3

In the year 1293 a quarrel between the crews of an

"Bensted and Kingsley; a petition of the parishioners concerning the three parks in Aliceholt Forest."

William, first Earl of Dartmouth, and paternal grandfather to the present Lord Stawel, was a lessee of the forests of Aliceholt and Wolmer, before Brigadier-General Emanuel Scroope Howe.-G. W.

1 See Letter II. of these Antiquities.-G. W.

2 Hocheleye, now spelt Hawkley, is in the hundred of Selborne, and has a mill at this day.-G. W.

English and a Norman ship, about some trifle, brought on by degrees such serious consequences, that in 1295 a war broke out between the two nations. The French king, Philip the Hardy, gained some advantages in Gascony; and, not content with those, threatened England with an invasion, and, by a sudden attempt, took and burnt Dover.

Upon this emergency Edward sent a writ to Gurdon, ordering him and four others to enlist three thousand soldiers in the counties of Surrey, Dorset, and Wiltshire, ablebodied men, "tam saggitare quam balistare potentes: " and to see that they were marched, by the feast of All Saints, to Winchelsea, there to be embarked aboard the king's transports.

The occasion of this armament appears also from a summons to the Bishop of Winchester to parliament, part of which I shall transcribe on account of the insolent menace which is said therein to have been denounced against the English language:-" qualiter rex Franciæ de terra nostra Gascon nos fraudulenter et cautelose decepit, eam nobis nequiter detinendo... vero predictis fraude et nequitia non contentus, ad expugnationem regni nostri classe maxima et bellatorum copiosa multitudine congregatis, cum quibus regnum nostrum et regni ejusdem incolas hostiliter jam invasurus, linguam Anglicam, si concepte iniquitatis proposito detestabili potestas correspondeat, quod Deus avertat, omnino de terra delere proponit." Dated 30th September, in the year of King Edward's reign xxiii.1

The above are the last traces that I can discover of Gurdon's appearing and acting in public. The first notice that my evidences give of him is, that, in 1232, being the sixteenth of Henry III., he was the king's bailiff, with others, for the town of Alton. Now, from 1232 to 1295 is a space of sixty-three years; a long period for one man to be employed in active life! Should any one doubt whether all these particulars can relate to one and the same person, I should wish him to attend to the following reasons why

1 Reg. Wynton, Stratford, but query Stratford; for Stratford was not Bishop of Winton till 1323, near thirty years afterwards.-G. W.

they might. In the first place, the documents from the Priory mention but one Sir Adam Gurdon, who had no son lawfully begotten; and in the next, we are to recollect that he must have probably been a man of uncommon vigour both of mind and body; since no one, unsupported by such accomplishments, could have engaged in such adventures, or could have borne up against the difficulties which he sometimes must have encountered; and, moreover, we have modern instances of persons that have maintained their abilities for near that period.

Were we to suppose Gurdon to be only twenty years of age in 1232, in 1295 he would be eighty-three; after which advanced period it could not be expected that he should live long. From the silence, therefore, of my evidences it seems probable that this extraordinary person finished his life in peace, not long after, at his mansion of Temple. Gurdon's seal had for its device-a man with a helmet on his head, drawing a cross-bow; the legend, "Sigillum Ade de Gurdon ;" his arms were, "Goulis et iii floures argent issant de testes de leopards." 1

If the stout and unsubmitting spirit of Gurdon could be so much influenced by the belief and superstition of the times, much more might the hearts of his ladies and daughter. And accordingly we find that Ameria, by the consent and advice of her sons, though said to be all under age, makes a grant for ever of some lands down by the stream at Durton; and also of her right of the common of Durton itself.2 Johanna, the daughter and heiress of Sir Adam, was married, I find, to Richard Achard; she also grants to the prior and convent lands and tenements in the village of Selborne, which her father obtained from Thomas Makerel; and all also her goods and chattels in Selborne for the consideration of two hundred pounds sterling. This last business was transacted in the first year of Edward II.

1 From the collection of Thomas Martin, Esq., in the Antiquarian Repertory, vol. iii. p. 109, No. XXXI.-G. W.

2 Durton, now called Dorton, is still a common for the copyholders of Selborne manor.-G. W.

esteemed

diemed

viz. 1307. It has been observed before that Gurdon had a natural son: this person was called by the name of John Dastard, alias Wastard, but more probably Bastard; since bastardy in those days was not deemed any disgrace, though dastardy was esteemed the greatest. He was married to Gunnorie Duncun; and had a tenement and some land granted him in Selborne by his sister Johanna.

LETTER XI.

HE Knights Templars,' who have been mentioned in a former letter, had considerable property in Selborne; and also a preceptory at Sudington, now called Southington, a hamlet lying one mile to the east of the village. Bishop Tanner mentions only two such houses of

1 The Military Orders of the Religious.

The Knights Hospitalars of St. John of Jerusalem, afterwards called Knights of Rhodes, now of Malta, came into England about the year 1100, 1 Hen. I.

The Knights Templars came into England pretty early in Stephen's reign, which commenced 1135. The order was dissolved in 1312, and their estates given by act of Parliament to the Hospitalars in 1323, (all in Edw. II.) though many of their estates were never actually enjoyed by the said Hospitalars.-Vid. Tanner, p. xxiv. x.

The commandries of the Hospitalars, and preceptories of Templars, were each subordinate to the principal house of their respective religion in London. Although these are the different denominations, which Tanner at p. xxviii. assigns to the cells of these different orders, yet throughout the work very frequent instances occur of preceptories attributed to the Hospitalars; and if in some passages of Notitia Monast. commandries are attributed to the Templars, it is only where the place afterwards became the property of the Hospitalars, and so is there indifferently styled preceptory or commandry; see pp. 243, 263, 276, 577, 678. But, to account for the first observed inaccuracy, it is probable the preceptories of the Templars, when given to the Hospitalars, were still vulgarly, however, called by their old name of preceptories; whereas in propriety the societies of the Hospitalars were indeed (as has been said) commandries. And such deviation from the strictness of

the Templars in all the county of Southampton, viz. Godesfield, founded by Henry de Blois, Bishop of Winchester, and South Badeisley, a preceptory of the Knights Templars, and afterwards of St. John of Jerusalem, valued at £118 168. 7d. per annum. Here then was a preceptory unnoticed by antiquaries, between the village and Temple. Whatever the edifice of the preceptory might have been, it has long since been dilapidated; and the whole hamlet contains now only one mean farm-house, though there were two in the memory of man.

It has been usual for the religious of different orders to fall into great dissensions, and especially when they were near neighbours. Instances of this sort we have heard of between the monks of Canterbury; and again between the old abbey of St. Swythun, and the comparatively new

expression in this case might occasion those societies of Hospitalars also to be indifferently called preceptories, which had originally been vested in them, having never belonged to the Templars at all.-See in Archer, p. 609. Tanner, p. 300, col. 1. 720, note e.

66

It is observable that the very statute for the dissolution of the Hospitalars holds the same language; for there, in the enumeration of particulars, occur commandries, preceptories." Codex, p. 1190. Now this intercommunity of names, and that in an act of parliament too, made some of our ablest antiquaries look upon a preceptory and commandry as strictly synonymous; accordingly we find Camden, in his Britannia, explaining præceptoria in the text by a commandry in the margin, pp. 356, 510.

Commandry, a manor or chief messuage with lands, &c., belonging to the priory of St. John of Jerusalem; and he who had the government of such house was called the commander, who could not dispose of it but to the use of the priory, only taking thence his own sustenance, according to his degree, who was usually a brother of the same priory. Cowell. He adds (confounding these with preceptories) they are in many places termed Temples, as Temple Bruere in Lincolnshire, &c. Preceptories were possessed by the more eminent sort of Templars, whom the chief master created and called Præceptores Templi. Cowell, who refers to Stephens de Jurisd. lib. 4. c. 10. num. 27.

Placita de juratis et assis coram Salom. de Roff et sociis suis justic. Itiner. apud Wynton, &c. anno regni R. Edwardi fil. Reg. Hen. octavo." et Magr. Milicie Templi in Angl. ht emendassē panis, & suis [cerevisia] in Sodington, & nescint q°. war. et-et magist. Milicie Templi nōn vẽn iō distr.-Chapter House, Westminster.-G. W.