ANTIQUITIES OF SELBORNE. 319 



thDught proper to assign so spacious a spot for the sports and 

 amusements of its young people.* 



As soon as the prior became possessed of this piece of ground, 

 he procured a charter for a market t from King Henry III., and 

 began to erect houses and stalls, " seldas" around it. From this 

 period Selborne became a market town ; but how long it enjoyed 

 that privilege does not appear. At the same time, Gurdon 

 reserved to himself, and his heirs, a way through the said Plestor 

 to a tenement and some crofts at the upper end, abutting on the 

 south corner of the churchyard. This was in old days the 

 manerial house of the street manor, though now a poor cottage, 

 and is known at present by the modern name of Elliot's. Sir Adam 

 also did, for the health of his own soul and that of his wife 

 Constantia, their predecessors and successors, grant to the prior 

 and canons quiet possession of all the tenements and gardens, 

 " curtillagia? which they had built and laid out on the lands in 

 Selborne, on which he and his vassals, " homines" had undoubted 

 right of common ; and moreover did grant to the convent the full 

 privilege of that right of common, and empowered the religious 

 to build tenements and make gardens along the king's highway 

 in the village of Selborne. 



From circumstances put together, it appears that the above 

 were the first grants obtained by the Priory in the village of 

 Selborne after it had subsisted about thirty-nine years ; moreovei , 

 they explain the nature of the mixed manor still remaining in and 

 about the village, where one field or tenement shall belong to 

 Magdalen College in the University of Oxford, and the next to 

 Norton Powlet, Esq., of Rotherfield House, and so down the 

 whole street. The case was, that the whole was once the pro- 



* For more circumstances respecting the Plestor, see Letter 1 1. to Mr. Pennant. 



f Bishop Tanner, in his " Notitia Monastica^ has made a mistake respecting 

 the market and fair at Selborne ; for in his references to Dodsworth, cart. 54 

 Hen. III., m. 3., he says, " De mercatu, et feria de Seleburn." But this 

 reference is wrong ; for, instead of Seleburn, it proves that the place there 

 meant was Lekeborne, or Legeborne, in the county of Lincoln. This error 

 was copied from the index of the Cat. MSS. Angl. It does not appear that 

 there ever was a chartered fair at Selborne. For several particulars respecting 

 the present fair at Selborne, see Letter XXVI. of these Antiquities. 



