OP SELBORNE. 559 



bastardy in those days was not deemed any disgrace, 

 though dastard y was esteemed the greatest. He was 

 married to Gimnorie Duncun ; and had a tenement 

 and some land granted him in Selborne by his sister 

 Johanna. 



LETTER XL 



THE Knights Templars 1 , who have been mentioned in 

 a former letter, had considerable property in Selborne ; 

 and also a preceptory at Sudington, now called South- 

 ington, a hamlet lying one mile to the east of the village. 



1 The Military Orders of the Religious. 



The Knights Hospitalars of St. John of Jerusalem, afterwards called 

 Knights of Rhodes, now of Malta, came into England about the year 

 1100, 1 Hen. I. 



The Knights Templars came into England pretty early in Stephen's 

 reign, which commenced 1135. The order was dissolved in 1312, and 

 their estates given by act of Parliament to the Hospitalars in 1323, (all 

 in Edw. II.) though many of their estates were never actually enjoyed 

 by the said Hospitalars. Vid. Tanner, p. xxiv. x. 



The commandries of the Hospitalars, and preceptories of Templars, 

 were each subordinate to the principal house of their respective religion 

 in London. Although these are the different denominations, which Tan- 

 ner at p. xxviii. assigns to the cells of these different orders, yet through- 

 out the work very frequent instances occur of preceptories attributed to 

 the Hospitalars ; and if in some passages of Notitia Monast. commandries 

 are attributed to the Templars, it is only where the place afterwards 

 became the property of the Hospitalars, and so is there indifferently 

 styled preceptory or commandry ; see p. 243, 263, 276, 577, 678. But, to 

 account for the first observed inaccuracy, it is probable the preceptories 

 of the Templars, when given to the Hospitalars, were still vulgarly, 

 however, called by their old name of preceptories ; whereas in propriety 

 the societies of the Hospitalars were indeed (as has been said) comman- 

 dries. And such deviation from the strictness of expression in this case 

 might occasion those societies of Hospitalars also to be indifferently 

 called preceptories, which had originally been vested in them, having 

 never belonged to the Templars at all. See in Archer, p. 609. Tanner, 

 p. 300. col. 1. 720. note e. 



It is observable that the very statute for the dissolution of the Hospi- 

 talars holds the same language ; for there, in the enumeration of particu- 

 lars, occur "commandries, preceptories." Codex, p. 1190. Now this 

 intercommunity of names, and that in an act of parliament too, made 



