OF SELBORNE. 



435 



LETTER VIII. 



UR forefathers in this village were no doubt 

 as busy and bustling, and as important, as 

 ourselves : yet have their names and trans- 

 actions been forgotten from century to cen- 

 tury, and have sunk into oblivion ; nor has 

 this happened only to the vulgar, but even to men remark- 

 able 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 malecontent in the Mountfort faction, who distin- 

 guished 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 ir 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, intrenching himself in the woods 

 of Hampshire, towards the town of Farnham. After the 

 battle of Evesham, in which Mountfort fell, in the year 1265, 

 Gurdon might not think it safe to return to his house for 



