XI,] 
OF SELBORNE. 
503 
wliich cannot be ascertained, because they fell out before dates 
were usually inserted ; though probably they happened about 
the middle of the thirteenth century ; not long after Saunford 
became master. The first of these is that the Templars shall 
pay to the priory of Selborne, annually, the sum of ten shillings 
at two half-yearly payments from their chamber, " camera,'' at 
Sudington, "per manum lyrcccptoris, vel JjaUivi nostri, qui pro 
tempore fuerit ibidem," till they can provide the prior and 
canons with an equivalent in lands or rents within four or five 
miles of the said convent. It is also further agreed that, if 
the Templars shall be in arrears for one year, that then the 
prior shall be empowered to distrain upon their live stock in 
Bradeseth. The next matter was a grant from Kobert de 
Saunford to the Priory for ever, of a good and sufficient road, 
" clieminum,'' capable of admitting carriages, and proper for the 
drift of their larger cattle, from the way which extends from 
Sudington towards Blakemere, on to the lands which the 
convent possesses in Bradeseth. 
The third transaction (though for want of dates we cannot say 
which happened first and which last) was a grant from Ptobert 
Samford to the Priory of a tenement and its appurtenances in 
the village of Selborne, given to the Templars by Americus de 
Vasci.^ This property, by tlie manner of describing it, — " totum 
tenementum cum omnibus pertinentiis suis, scilicet in terris, & 
hommibus, in pratis & pascuis, & nemoribus," &c., seems to 
have been no inconsiderable purchase^ and was sold for two 
hundred marks sterling, to be applied for the buying of more 
land for the support of the holy war. 
Prior John is mentioned as the person to whom Vasci's land 
is conveyed. But in Willis's list there is no Prior John till 
1339, several years after the dissolution of the order of the 
Templars in 1312; so that unless Willis is wrong, and has 
omitted a Prior John since 1262 (that being the date of his 
first prior), these transactions muct have fallen out before 
that date. 
^ Americus de Vasci, by his name, must liave been an Italian, and had 
been probably a soldier of fortune, and one of Gurdon's captains. Americus 
Vespucio, the person who gave name to the new world, w^as a Florentine. 
