OF SELBORNE. 547 



this pious propensity, which they observed so readily 

 influenced the breasts of men. Thus did the more 

 opulent monasteries add house to house, and field to 

 field ; and by degrees manor to manor : till at last 

 "there was no place left;" but every district around 

 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 cen- 

 tury 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 accomplished malecontent in the 

 Mountfort faction, who distinguished 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 ap- 

 pear : yet there is reason to suspect that he was origi- 

 nally 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 pro- 

 bable 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 



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