manum preceptoris, vel ballivi nostri, qui pro tempore fuerit ibidem,” till they can provide the prior and canons with an equivalent in lands or rents within four or five miles of the said convent. It is also further agreed that, if the Templars shall be in arrears for one year, then the prior shall be empowered to distrain upon their live stock in Bradeseth. The next matter was a grant from Robert de Sunford to the priory for ever, of a good and sufficient road, “cheminum,” capable of admitting carriages, and proper for the drift of their larger cattle, from the way which extends from Sudington towards Blakemere, on to the lands which the convent possesses in Bradeseth.
The third transaction (though for want of dates we cannot say which happened first and which last) was a grant from Robert Samford to the priory of a tenement and its appurtenances in the village of Selborne, given to the Templars by Americus de Vasci*. This property, by the manner of describing it,—“totum tenementum cum omnibus pertinentiis suis, scilicet in terris, & hominibus, in pratis & pascuis, & nemoribus,” etc., seems to have, been no inconsiderable purchase, and was sold for two hundred marks sterling, to be applied for the buying of more land for the support of the holy war.
Prior John is mentioned as the person to whom Vasci’s land is conveyed. But in Willis’s list there is no Prior John till 1339, several years after the dissolution of the order of the Templars in 1312, so that, unless Willis is wrong, and has omitted a prior John since 1262 (that being the date of his first prior), these transactions must have fallen out before that date.
I find not the least traces of any concerns between Gurdon and the Knight Templars; but probably after his death his daughter Johanna might have, and might bestow, Temple on that order in support of the holy land; and, moreover, she seems to have been removing from Selborne, when she sold her goods and chattels to the priory, as mentioned above.
Temple, no doubt, did belong to the knights, as may be
* Americus Vasci, by his name, must have been an Italian, and had been probably a soldier of fortune, and one of Gurdon’s captains. Americus Vespucio, the person who gave name to the new world, was a Florentine.
