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 cen- 

 tury, 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 mal- 

 content 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 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's 



