XI.] 
OF SELBORNE. 
501 
one mile to the east of the village. Bishop Tanner mentions 
only two such houses of the Templars in all the county of 
Southampton, viz. Godesfield, founded by Henry de Blois, Bishop 
of Winchester, and South Badeisley, a preceptory of the Knights 
Templars, and afterwards of St. John of Jerusalem, valued at 
one hundred and eighteen pounds sixteen shillings and seven- 
pence per annum. Here then w^as a preceptory unnoticed hy 
antiquaries, between the village and Temple. Whatever the 
Although these are the different 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 HospitiJars ; and 
if in some passages of Notitia Moiiast. 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 probable the preceptories of the Templars, when given to the Hospi- 
talars, were still vulgarl}^, 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 these 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 Aicher, p. 609. Tanner, p. 300, 
col. 1, 720, note e. 
It is observable that the very statute for the dissolution of the Hospitalars 
holds the same language ; for there in the enumeration of particulars, occur 
"commandries, preceptories." Codex, p. 1190. Now this intercommunity 
of names, and that in an act of parliament too, made some of our ablest 
antiquaries look upon a preceptory and commandry as strictly synonymous ; 
accordingly we find Camden, in his "Britannia," explaining i^rrecci^torm in the 
text by a commandry in the margin, p. 356, 510. — J. L. 
Commandry, a manor or chief messuage with lands, &c. belonging to the 
priory of St. John of Jerusalem ; and he who had the government of such 
house was called the commander, who could not dispose of it but to the use 
of the priory, only taking thence his own sustenance, according to his degree, 
who was usually a brother of the same"priory. — Cowell. He adds (confound- 
ing these with preceptories) they are in many places termed Temples, as Temple 
Bruere in Lincolnshire, &c. Preceptories were possessed by the more eminent 
sort of Templars, whom the chief master created and c?lled FrcEceptores 
Templi. Cowell, who refers to Stephen's De Jurisd. lib. 4, c. 10, num. 27. 
Placita de juratis et assis coram Salom. de EofF et sociis suis justic. 
Itiner. apud Wynton, &c. anno regni R. Edwardi fil. Reg. Hen. octavo. — " et 
Magr. Milicie Templi in Angl. ht emendasse panis, & suis [cerevisise] in 
Sodington, & nescint q°. war. et — et magist. Milicie Templi non ven io 
distr.^ — Chapter House, Westminster. 
