312 ANTIQUITIES OF SELBORNE. 
Diddle IRS. sll ee 
IT has been hinted in a former letter that Sir Adam Gurdon had 
availed himself by marrying women of property. By my evidences 
it appears that he had three wives, and probably in the following 
order : Constantia, Ameria, and Agnes. The first of these ladies, 
who was the companion of his middle life, seems to have been a 
person of considerable fortune, which she inherited from Thomas 
Makerel, a gentleman of Selborne, who was either her father or 
uncle. The second, Ameria, calls herself the quondam wife of Sir 
Adam, ‘ que fui uxor,” &c., and talks of her sons under age. 
Now Gurdon had no son: and beside, Agnes, in another document, 
says, ‘*Ego Agues quondam uxor Domini Ad@ Gurdon in pura et 
ligea viduitate mea:” but Gurdon could not leave two widows ; 
and therefore it seems probable that he had been divorced from 
Ameria, who afterwards married and had sons. By Agnes Sir 
Adam had a daughter Johanna, who was his heiress, to whom 
Agnes in her life-time surrendered part of her jointure: he had 
also a bastard son. 
Sir Adam seems to have inhabited the house now called Temple, 
lying about two miles east of the church, which had been the 
property of Thomas Makerel. 
In the year 1262 he petitioned the prior of Selborne in his own 
nanie, and that of his wife Constantia only, for leave to build him 
an oratory in his manor-house, “in curia sua.” Licenses of this 
sort were frequently obtained by men of fortune and rank from the 
bishop of the diocese, the archbishop, and sometimes, as I have 
seen instances, from the pope; not only for convenience-sake, and 
on account of distance, and the badness of the roads, but as a 
matter of state and distinction. Why the owner should apply to 
the prior, in preference to the bishop of the diocese, and how the 
former became competent to such a grant, I cannot say; but that 
the priors of Selborne did take that privilege is plain, because some 
years afterward, in 1280, Prior Richard granted to Henry Waterford 
and his wife Nicholaa, a license to build an oratory in their court- 
house, “curia sua de Waterford,” in which they might celebrate 
