284 THE ANTIQUITIES 



became appropriated to the purposes of their founders, and 

 every precinct was drawn into the vortex. 



LETTER VIII 



OUR forefathers in this village were no doubt as busy and 

 bustling, and as important, as ourselves : yet have their 

 names and transactions been forgotten from century to 

 century, and have sunk into oblivion; nor has this happened 

 only to the vulgar, but even to men remarkable and 

 famous in their generation. I was led into this train of 

 thinking by finding in my vouchers that Sir Adam Gurdon 

 was an inhabitant of Selborne, and a man of the first 

 rank and property in the parish. By Sir Adam Gurdon I 

 would be understood to mean that leading and accom- 

 plished malcontent in the Mountfort faction, who dis- 

 tinguished himself by his daring conduct in the reign 

 of Henry III. The first that we hear of this person in 

 my papers is, that with two others he was bailiff of Alton 

 before the sixteenth of Henry III., viz. about 1231, and 

 then not knighted. Who Gurdon was, and whence he 

 came, does not appear : yet there is reason to suspect that 

 he was originally a mere soldier of fortune, who had raised 

 himself by marrying women of property. The name 

 of Gurdon does not seem to be known in the south ; 

 but there is a name so like it in an adjoining kingdom, and 

 which belongs to two or three noble families, that it is 

 probable this remarkable person was a North Briton ; and 

 the more so, since the Christian name of Adam is a 

 distinguished one to this day among the family of the 

 Gordons. But, be this as it may, Sir Adam Gurdon has 

 been noticed by all the writers of English history for 

 his bold disposition and disaffected spirit, in that he not 

 only figured during the successful rebellion of Leicester, 

 but kept up the war after the defeat and death of that 

 baron, entrenching himself in the woods of Hampshire, 



