OF SELBORNE. 
407 
LETTER II. 
HAT Selborne was a place of some distinction 
and note in the time of the Saxons, we can 
give most undoubted proofs. But, as there 
are few, if any, accounts of villages before 
Domesday, it will be best to begin with that 
venerable record. ^'Ipse rex tenet Selesburne. Eddid 
regina tenuit, et nunquam geldavit. De isto manerio dono 
dedit rex Radfredo presbytero dimidiam hidam cum ecclesia. 
Tempore regis Edwardi et post, valuit duodecim solidos et 
sex denarios ; modo octo solidos et quatuor denarios.^^ 
Here we see that Selborne was a royal manor; and that 
Editha, the queen of Edward the Confessor, had been lady 
of that manor ; and was succeeded in it by the Conqueror ; 
and that it had a church. Beside these, many circum- 
stances concur to prove it to have been a Saxon village ; 
such as the name of the place itself,^ the names of many 
fields, and some families,"^ with a variety of words in hus- 
bandry and common life, still subsisting among the country 
people. 
What probably first drew the attention of the Saxons to 
^ Selesburne, Seleburne, Selburn, Selbourn, Selborne, and Selborn, as 
it has been variously spelt at different periods, is of Saxon derivation ; 
for Sel signifies great, and bu?m torrens, a brook or rivulet : so that the 
name seems to be derived from the great perennial stream that breaks 
out at the upper end of the village. Sel also signifies " bonus, item, 
fcecundus, fertilis. S j\y -zun, foecunda graminis clausura ; fertile 
pascuum. Abiit tamen apud nonnullos in nomen proprium. Inde pratum 
quoddam apud Godelming in agro Surriensi hodie vocatur Sal-gars-ton'^ 
Lye's Saxon Dictionary, in the Supplement, by Mr. Manning. — G. W. 
2 Thus the name of Aldred signifies all-reverend, and that of Kemp 
means a soldier. Thus we have a church- litton, or enclosure for dead 
bodies, and not a church-yard : there is also a Culver-croft near the 
Grange-farm, being the enclosure where the priory pigeon-house stood, 
from cidcer, a pigeon Again there are three steep pastures in this 
parish called the L'ithe^ from Hlithe, clivv^. The wicker-work that binds 
