OF SELBORNE 261 



foundation. The religious were not backward in keeping up 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 trans- 

 actions been forgotten from century 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 Selhome, 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 Mountfori 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 oi 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 dis- 

 affected 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, entrenching himself in the woods of Hamp- 

 shire, towards the town of Famham. After the battle oi Evesham, 

 in which Mountfori fell, in the year 1 265, Gurdon might not think 

 it safe to return to his house for fear of a surprise ; but cautiously 

 fortified himself amidst the forests and woodlands with which he 



