294 THE ANTIQUITIES 



Gurdon had a natural son : this person was called by the 

 name of John Dastard, alias Wastard, but more probably 

 Bastard ; since bastardy in those days was not deemed any 

 disgrace, though dastardy was esteemed the greatest. He 

 was married to Gunnorie Duncun ; and had a tenement 

 and some land granted him in Selborne by his sister 

 Johanna. 



LETTER XI 



The Knights Templars,^ who have been mentioned in a 

 former letter, had considerable property in Selborne ; and 

 also a preceptory at Sudington, now called Southington, a 

 hamlet lying one mile to the east of the village. Bishop 

 Tanner mentions only two such houses of the Templars in 



The Military Orders of the Religious. 



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

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

 I loo, I Hen. I. 



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

 reign, which commenced 1135. The order was dissolved in 1 3 12, 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. — VU. 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 diiFerent denominations, which 

 Tanner at p. xxviii. assigns to the cells of these different orders, yet 

 throughout 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 prob- 

 able 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) commandries. 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. i, 720, note e. 



