OF SELBORNE 265 



As soon as the prior became possessed of this piece of ground, 

 he procured a charter for a market 1 from king Henry III. and 

 began to erect houses and stalls, " seldas," around it. From this 

 period Selborne became a market town : but how long it enjoyed 

 that privilege does not appear. At the same time Gurdon 

 reserved to himself, and his heirs, a way through the said Plestor 

 to a tenement and some crofts at the upper end, abutting on the 

 south corner of the church-yard. This was, in old days, the 

 manerial house of the street manor, though now a poor cottage ; 

 and is known at present by the modern name of Elliot's. Sir 

 Adam also did, for the health of his own soul, and that of his wife 

 Constantia, their predecessors and successors, grant to the prior 

 and canons quiet possession of all the tenements and gardens, 

 " curtillagia," which they had built and laid out on the lands in 

 Selborne, on which he and his vassals, " homines" had undoubted 

 right of common : and moreover did grant to the convent the 

 full privilege of that right of common ; and empowered the 

 religious to build tenements and make gardens along the king's 

 highway in the village of Selborne. 



From circumstances put together it appears that the above 

 were the first grants obtained by the Priory in the village of 

 Selborne, after it had subsisted about thirty-nine years : moreover 

 they explain the nature of the mixed manor still remaining in 

 and about the village, where one field or tenement shall belong 

 to Magdalen-college in the university of Oxford, and the next to 

 Norton Potvlet, esq. of Rotherfield house ; and so down the whole 

 street. The case was, that the whole was once the property of 

 Gurdon, till he made his grants to the convent ; since which some 

 belongs to the successors of Gurdon in the manor, and some to 

 the college ; and this is the occasion of the strange jumble of 

 property. It is remarkable that the tenement and crofts which 

 Sir Adam reserved at the time of granting the Plestor should still 

 remain a part of the Gurdon-manor, though so desirable an 

 addition to the vicarage that is not as yet possessed of one inch 

 of glebe at home: but of late, viz. in January 1785, Magdalen- 



1 Bishop Tanner, in his Notitia Monastica, has made a mistake respecting the 

 market and/air at Selborne : for in his references to Dodsworth, cart. 54 Hen. III. 

 m. 3. he says, " De mercatu, et feria de Seleburn". But this reference is wrong; 

 for, instead of Seleburn, it proves that the place there meant was Lekebornt, or 

 Legeborne, in the county of Lincoln. This error was copied from the index of the 

 Cat. MSS. Angl. It does not appear that there ever was a chartered fair at Sel- 

 borne. For several particulars respecting the present fair at Selborne see Letter 

 XXVI. of these Antiquities. 



