OF S EL BORNE, 
441 
appear. At the same time Gurdon reserved to himself and 
his heirs a way through the said Plestor to a tenement and 
some crofts at the upper end, abutting on the south corner 
of the churchyard. This was, in old days, the manorial 
house of the street manor, though now a poor cottage j and 
is known at present by the modern name of Elliotts. Sir 
Adam also did, for the health of his own soul, and that of 
his wife Constantia, their predecessors and successors, grant 
to the prior and canons quiet possession of all the tenements 
and gardens, curtillagia/' which they had built and laid 
out on the lands in Selborne, on which he and his vassals, 
homines/' had undoubted right of common ; and more- 
over did grant to the convent the full privilege of that right 
of common ; and empowered the religious to build tene- 
ments and make gardens along the king^s highway in the 
village of Selborne. 
From circumstances put together, it appears that the above 
were the first grants obtained by the Priory in the village of 
Selborne, after it had subsisted about thirty-nine years: 
moreover they explain the nature of the mixed manor still 
remaining in and about the village, where one field or tene- 
ment shall belong to Magdalen College in the university of 
Oxford, and the next to Norton Powlet, Esq., of Rotherfield 
House ; and so down the whole street. The case was, that 
the whole was once the property of Gurdon, till he made his 
grants to the convent ; since which some belongs to the 
successors of Gurdon in the manor, and some to the college; 
and this is the occasion of the strange jumble of property. 
It is remarkable that the tenement and crofts which Sir 
Adam reserved at the time of granting the Plestor should 
still remain a part of the Gurdon manor, though so desirable 
an addition to the vicarage that is not as yet possessed of one 
inch of glebe at home ; but of late, viz. in January, 1785, 
Magdalen College purchased that little estate, which is life- 
holding, in reversion, for the generous purpose of bestowing 
it and its lands, being twelve acres (three of which abut 
on the churchyard and vicarage garden) as an improvement 
hereafter to the living, and an eligible advantage to future 
incumbents. 
