322 ANTIQUITIES OF SELBORNE. 
It is also further agreed that, if the Templars shall be in arrears 
for one year, that 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,” &c., seems to have been no 
inconsiderable purchase, and was soid 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 Knights 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 asserted, 
not only from its name, but also from another corroborating circum- 
stance of its being still a manor, tithe-free ; “ for, by virtue of their 
order,” says Blackstone, “the lands of the Knights Templars were 
privileged by the pope with a discharge from tithes.”’ 
Antiquaries have been much puzzled about the terms precepiores 
and preceptorium, not being able to determine what officer or edifice 
was meant. But perhaps all the while the passage quoted above 
* 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. 
