XI.] 



OF SELBORNE. 



195 



which cannot be ascertained, because they fell out before dates 

 were usually inserted ; though probably they happened about 

 the middle of the thirteenth century ; not long after Saunford 

 became master. The first of these is that the Templars shall 

 pay to the priory of Selborne, annually, the sum of ten shillings 

 at two half-yearly payments from their chamber, " camera" at 

 Sudington, " per mauurn preceptoris, vel ballivi nostri, qui pro 

 tempore fuerit ibidem," till they can provide the prior and 

 canons with an equivalent in lands or rents within four or five 

 miles of the said convent. 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 Eobert de 

 Saunford to the Priory for ever, of a good and sufficient road, 

 " chem/inum," 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 Eobert 

 Samford to the Priory of a tenement and its appurtenances in 

 the village of Selborne, given to the Templars by Americus de 

 Vasci. 1 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 sold 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. 



1 Ainericus de 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. 



