266 WHITE 



LETTER IX 



IT has been hinted in a former letter that Sir Adam Gur- 

 don 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 gentle- 

 man of Selborne, who was either her father or uncle. The 

 second, Ameria, calls herself the quondam wife of Sir Adam, 

 " quae fui uxor," etc., and talks of her sons under age. Now 

 Gurdon had no son : and beside, Agnes, in another document, 

 says, "Ego Agnes quondam uxor Domini Ada 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 lifetime 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 name, 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 fort- 

 une 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 dis- 

 tinction. Why the owner should apply to the prior, in prefer- 

 ence 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 

 afterwards, in 1280, Prior Richard granted to Henry Water- 

 ford and his wife Nicholaa, a license to build an oratory in 

 their court-house, " curia sua de Waterford," in which they 



