320 ANTIQUITIES OF SELBORNE. 
LOM Oe tal ing Sal tana, 04 
THE 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 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 after- 
wards of St. John of Jerusalem, valued at one hundred and 
eighteen pounds sixteen shillings and sevenpence per annum. 
* 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. 1. 
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. 24, Io. 
The ccmmandries of the Hospitalars, and preceptories of Templars, were each sub- 
ordinate to the principal house of their respective religion in London. Although these 
are the different denominations, which ‘‘ Tanner ’’ at p. 37 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.’’? com- 
mandries are attributed to the Templars, it is cnly where the place afterwards became the 
property of the Hospitalars, and so is there indifferently styled preceptory or commandry ; 
see p. 243, 263, 276, 577, 678. But, to account for the first observed in accuracy, 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 
societies of the Hospitalars were indeed (as has been said) commandries. And such 
deviation from the strictness of 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, n. e. 
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.” 
—CopEx, 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 
preceptoria in the text by a commandry in the margin, p. 356, 510.—J. L. 
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 com- 
mander, 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.— 
CowELt. 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 Praeceptores Templi. 
—CoweELt, who refers to STEPHENS De ¥uvisd. lib. iv. c. 10, no. 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 
emendassé panis. et suis [cerevisiz] in Sodington, et nescint q°. war. et—et magist. Milicie 
Templi non vén id distr,’—Chapter House, Westminster. 
